PREFATORY NOTE I “If Winter Comes” placed its author not only as a Best Seller, but as one of the Great Novelists of to-day. Not always are those royalties crowned by those laurels. Tarzan (of, if I remember rightly, the Apes) never won the double event. And I am told by superior people that, intellectually, Miss Ethel M. Dell takes the hindmost. Personally, I found “If Winter Comes” a most sympathetic and interesting... more...

DOES THE YOUNG MAN KNOW EVERYTHING WORTH KNOWING? I am told that American professors are "mourning the lack of ideals" at Columbia University—possibly also at other universities scattered through the United States. If it be any consolation to these mourning American professors, I can assure them that they do not mourn alone. I live not far from Oxford, and enjoy the advantage of occasionally listening to the jeremiads of English University... more...

BAYARD TAYLOR. (BORN, 1825—DIED, 1878) SELECTIONS FROM THE EXPERIENCES OF THE A.C. "Bridgeport! Change cars for the Naugatuck Railroad!" shouted the conductor of the New York and Boston Express Train, on the evening of May 27, 1858.... Mr. Johnson, carpet-bag in hand, jumped upon the platform, entered the office, purchased a ticket for Waterbury, and was soon whirling in the Naugatuck train towards his destination. On reaching... more...

HOW TO FAIL IN LITERATURE What should be a man’s or a woman’s reason for taking literature as a vocation, what sort of success ought they to desire, what sort of ambition should possess them?  These are natural questions, now that so many readers exist in the world, all asking for something new, now that so many writers are making their pens “in running to devour the way” over so many acres of foolscap.  The... more...

EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION. As I sat, one evening, idly musing on memories of roers and Boers, and contemplating the horns of a weendigo I had shot in Labrador and the head of a Moo Cow1 from Canada, I was roused by a ring at the door bell. 1 A literary friend to whom I have shown your MS. says a weendigo is Ojibbeway for a cannibal. And why do you shoot poor Moo Cows?—Publisher. Mere slip of the pen. Meant a Cow Moose. Literary gent no... more...

IN A COLLEGE GARDEN.      Senex. Saye, cushat, callynge from the brake,               What ayles thee soe to pyne?             Thy carefulle heart shall cease to ake                 When dayes be... more...

(I) AN IRREDUCIBLE DETECTIVE STORY HANGED BY A HAIR OR A MURDER MYSTERY MINIMISED The mystery had now reached its climax. First, the man had been undoubtedly murdered. Secondly, it was absolutely certain that no conceivable person had done it. It was therefore time to call in the great detective. He gave one searching glance at the corpse. In a moment he whipped out a microscope. "Ha! ha!" he said, as he picked a hair off the lapel of the... more...

FOREWORD By the Editor of "The Bystander."   HEN Tommy went out to the great war, he went smiling, and singing the latest ditty of the halls. The enemy scowled. War, said his professors of kultur and his hymnsters of hate, could never be waged in the Tipperary spirit, and the nation that sent to the front soldiers who sang and laughed must be the very decadent England they had all along denounced as unworthy of world-power. I fear the... more...

The Young Nuts of America IT is with a feeling of the utmost reluctance, amounting—if I may use so strong a word—to distress, that I take my pen in hand to indite the exceedingly painful account which follows; yet I feel I owe it not only to myself and the parishioners of St. Barnabas', but to the community at large, to explain in amplified detail why I have withdrawn suddenly, automatically as it were, from the organisation of... more...

A RIPPLE OF DISSENSION AND WHAT CAME OF IT. I was about to be married. My numerous charms and attractions had won the affections of a young man who was equally charming with myself. We were sitting on a luxurious divan and he held my milk-white hand in his. I do not make that statement as a startling announcement of an unusual occurrence, but simply as a matter of fact. We had been conversing about the culinary and domestic arrangements of our... more...