ere at last we did see a gathering of the folk. A number of
little wooden crosses peeped above the floor in the hollow. The
sundering floods and the forest do not always keep these folk from
congregation, and the comfort of the last communion._

_If the reader is also a writer, he will feel the challenge of that
passage--its spiritual quality, its rhythm, its images. And he will
know what gifts of mind, and what toil, have gone to its making._

OLD JUNK _is not, in the same organic sense, a book. The sketches and
essays of which it is composed are of different years and, as a glance
will show, of a wide diversity of theme. The lover of the great book
will be at home with the perfect picture of the dunes, as well as with
the two brilliantly contrasted voyages; while none who can feel the
touch of the interpreter will miss the beauty of the pieces that may be
less highly wrought._

_As to Tomlinson's future I would not venture a prediction.
Conceivably, when the horror has become a memory that can be lived with
and transfused, he may write one of the living books enshrining the
experience of these last five years. But, just as likely he may not. I
subscribe, in ending this rough note, to a judgment recently delivered
by a fellow worker that among all the men writing in England today
there is none known to us whose work reveals a more indubitable sense
of the harmonies of imaginative prose._

S. K. RATCLIFFE.

_New York, Christmas, 1919._

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

FOREWORD BY S. K. RATCLIFFE 11

I. THE AFRICAN COAST 21

II. T HE CALL 47

III. OLD JUNK 58

IV. BED-BOOKS AND NIGHT-LIGHTS 65

V. TRANSFIGURATION 75

VI. THE PIT MOUTH 80

VII. INITIATION 86

VIII. THE ART OF WRITING 92

IX. A FIRST IMPRESSION 100

X. THE DERELICT 107

XI. THE VOYAGE OF THE _Mona_ 118

XII. THE LASCAR'S WALKING-STICK 136

XIII. THE