The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Chronicles of Clovis, by Saki

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Title: The Chronicles of Clovis

Author: Saki

Posting Date: April 30, 2009 [EBook #3688]
Release Date: January, 2003
First Posted: July 16, 2001

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CHRONICLES OF CLOVIS ***

Produced by Richard E. Henrich, Jr. HTML version by Al Haines.

THE CHRONICLES OF CLOVIS

by

"SAKI" (H. H. MUNRO)

with an Introduction by A. A. MILNE

TO THE LYNX KITTEN,
WITH HIS RELUCTANTLY GIVEN CONSENT,
THIS BOOK IS AFFECTIONATELY
DEDICATED

H. H. M.

August, 1911

INTRODUCTION

There are good things which we want to share with the world and good
things which we want to keep to ourselves. The secret of our favourite
restaurant, to take a case, is guarded jealously from all but a few
intimates; the secret, to take a contrary case, of our infallible
remedy for seasickness is thrust upon every traveller we meet, even if
he be no more than a casual acquaintance about to cross the Serpentine.
So with our books. There are dearly loved books of which we babble to a
neighbour at dinner, insisting that she shall share our delight in
them; and there are books, equally dear to us, of which we say nothing,
fearing lest the praise of others should cheapen the glory of our
discovery. The books of "Saki" were, for me at least, in the second
class.

It was in the WESTMINSTER GAZETTE that I discovered him (I like to
remember now) almost as soon as he was discoverable. Let us spare a
moment, and a tear, for those golden days in the early nineteen
hundreds, when there were five leisurely papers of an evening in which
the free-lance might graduate, and he could speak of his Alma Mater,
whether the GLOBE or the PALL MALL, with as much pride as, he never
doubted, the GLOBE or the PALL MALL would speak one day of him. Myself
but lately down from ST. JAMES', I was not too proud to take some
slight but pitying interest in men of other colleges. The unusual name
of a freshman up at WESTMINSTER attracted my attention; I read what he
had to say; and it was only by