n turned later upon questions of style in writing or
speaking, and with perhaps pardonable revenge, she said to her rival:

"I always notice that you say 'one' so often--'_one_ does this or
that,' and so forth."

"Really, dear? That is curious. Now I always notice that _you_ say 'I'
so continually!"

The cut and thrust came with the rapidity of expert fencers.

And this brings me to the real gist of my story.

It is considered the most heinous offence "_to say I_," and every
conceivable device is resorted to, no matter how clumsy, in order to
prevent the catastrophe of a writer being forced to speak of himself in
the first person.

To my mind, there is a good deal of affectation and pose about this, and
in anything of an autobiography it becomes insupportable.

"The writer happened upon one occasion to be present, etc." "He who pens
these unworthy pages was once travelling to Scotland, etc. etc."

Which of us has not groaned under these self-conscious euphemisms? "Why
not say '_I_' and have done with it?" we are wont to exclaim in
desperation after pages of this kind of thing.

Now I propose "to say _I_" and "have done with it," and not waste time
in trying to find ingenious and wearisome equivalents.

That is my first point.

Secondly, in this record of psychic experiences I mean to keep clear of
another intolerable nuisance--I mean the continual introduction of
capital letters and long dashes in order to conceal identity in such
episodes.

The motive is admirable, but the method is detestable.

One can only judge by personal experience. I know that when I read a
rather involved narrative of sufficiently involved psychic doings, and
Mr Q----, Miss B----, Mr C----, and Mr C.'s maternal aunt Mrs G----
figure wildly in it, I am driven desperate in trying to force some idea
of personality into these meaningless letters of the alphabet.

To conceal the identity of Mr Brown, who was once guilty of seeing a
ghost, may be and most frequently is, a point of honour, but why not
call him Mr Smith, and say he lived in Buckinghamshire, and thus rouse
a definite mental conception in your reader's brain, instead of
calling him Mr Z. of W----, and thus setting up mental irritation
before the ghost comes upon the scene?

Having cleared the ground so far, I will now mention my third and last
point.

It is usual when writing reminiscences of any kind to anticipate your
reader's criticisms, and try to increase his inte