of dispelling the charm--all this is "Trivia." Where
are Marcus Aurelius or Epictetus or all the other Harold Bell Wrights of
old time? Baron Verulam himself treads a heavy gait beside this airy
elfin scamper. It is Atalanta's heels. It is a heaven-given scenario of
that shyest, dearest, remotest of essences--the mind of a strolling
bachelor.

Bless his heart, in a momentary panic of modesty at the thought of all
hi sacred plots laid bare, the heavenly man tries to scare us away.
"These pieces of moral prose have been written, dear Reader, by a
Carnivorous Mammal, belonging to that suborder of the Animal Kingdom
which includes also the Baboon, with his bright blue and scarlet
bottom, and the gentle Chimpanzee."

But this whimsical brother to the chimpanzee, despite this last
despairing attempt at modest evasion, denudes himself before us. And
his heart, we find is strangely like our own. His reveries, his
sadnesses, his exhilarations, are all ours, too. Like us he cries, "I
wish I were unflinching and emphatic, and had big bushy eyebrows and a
Message for the Age. I wish I were a deep Thinker, or a great
Ventriloquist." Like us he has only a ghost, a thin, unreal phantom in
a world of bank cashiers and duchesses and prosperous merchants and
other Real Persons. Like us he fights a losing battle against the
platitudes and moral generalizations that hem us round. "I can hardly
post a letter," he laments, "without marvelling at the excellence and
accuracy of the Postal System." And he consoles himself, good man,
with the thought of the meaningless creation crashing blindly through
frozen space. His other great consolation is his dear vice of
reading--"This joy not dulled by Age, this polite and unpunished vice,
this selfish, serene, life-long intoxication."

It is impossible by a few random snippets to give any just figment of
the delicious mental intoxication of this piercing, cathartic little
volume. It is a bright tissue of thought robing a radiant, dancing
spirit. Through the shimmering veil of words we catch, now and then, a
flashing glimpse of the Immortal Whimsy within, shy, sudden, and
defiant. Across blue bird-haunted English lawns we follow that
gracious figure, down dusky London streets where he is peering in at
windows and laughing incommunicable jests.

But alas, Mr. Pearsall Smith is lost to America. The warming pans and
the twopenny tube have lured him away from us. Never again will he
tread on peanut s