The Project Gutenberg EBook of Old Junk, by H. M. Tomlinson

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Title: Old Junk

Author: H. M. Tomlinson

Commentator: S. K. Ratcliffe

Release Date: May 19, 2008 [EBook #25523]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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OLD JUNK

BY

H. M. TOMLINSON

FOREWORD BY S. K. RATCLIFFE

NEW YORK ALFRED . A . KNOPF 1920

COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY
ALFRED A. KNOPF, INC.
_Second Printing August, 1920_

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

_To

C. H. G. H.

Who saw with me so much of what is in this book_

(_Killed in action in Artois, August 27th, 1918_)

These stories of travel and chance have been selected from writings
published in various periodicals between January 1907 and April 1918,
and are arranged in order of time.

Foreword

_The author of_ OLD JUNK _has been called a legend. A colleague who
during the later stages of the war visited the western front assured me
that this was the right word by which to describe the memory left among
officers and men, not so much by his work as a war correspondent, as by
his original and fascinating character. A legend, too, he appears to be
in the newspaper world of London: but there in a different sense, by
reason of the singular contradiction between the human creature beloved
of all his fellows and the remarkable productions of his pen._

_The first thing to say about H. M. Tomlinson, the thing of which you
become acutely aware on making his acquaintance, is that he is a
Londoner. "Nearly a pure-blooded London Saxon" is his characterization
of himself. And so it is. He could have sprung from no other stock. In
person and speech, in the indefinable quality of the man, in the humour
which continually tempers his tremendous seriousness, he belongs to
London. Among the men of our time who have done creative writing I can
think of no other about whom this can be so precisely stated._

_It was in the opening years of the century that I first began to
notice his work. His name was appearing in t