le 87
On Giving Up Golf Forever 96
"Grape-Vine" Erudition 108
Business Before Grammar 114
Wood Ashes and Progress 118
The Vacant Room in Drama 128
On Giving an Author a Plot 132
The Twilight Veil 136
Spring in the Garden 154
The Bubble, Reputation 168
The Old House on the Bend 180
Concerning Hat-trees 184
The Shrinking of Kingman's Field 189
Mumblety-peg and Middle Age 209
Barber Shops of Yesterday 229
The Button Box 234
Peppermints 239

[Illustration]

_Author's Foreword_

It is not a little unfortunate that no one can attempt the essay form
nowadays, more especially that type of essay which is personal,
reminiscent, "an open letter to whom it may concern," without being
accused of trying to write like Charles Lamb. Of course, if we were
ever accused of succeeding, that would be another story! There is, to
be sure, no doubt that the gentle Elia impressed his form and method
on all English writers who followed him, and still reaches out across
a century to threaten with his high standards those who still venture
into this pleasant and now so neglected field. Such are the rigors of
triumphant gentleness. Still--and he would have been the first to
recognize the fact--it is rather unfair to demand of every essayist
the revelation of a personality like Lamb's. Fundamentally, all
literature, even naturalistic drama, is the revelation of a
personality, a point of view. But it is the peculiar flavor of the
essay that it reveals an author through his chat about himself, his
friends, his memories and fancies, in something of the direct manner
of a conversation or a letter; and he himself feels, in writing, a
delightful sense of intimacy with his future readers. That Lamb was a
master of this art like no other, without a visible or probable riv