life—rapine, barratry, drunkenness, privies and cannibalism—were all that I knew; no childish innocence relieved the blackness of my character and no good woman’s tears wore a channel through which delicacy of feeling might have penetrated my flinty bosom. But upon my twenty-first birthday I made my escape, and sought shelter in the hut of a snowy-haired old journalist who treated me with the first kindness that I had ever known, and instructed me in the rudiments of his lowly but necessary trade. In the employment of a journalist I have remained ever since, eking out a meagre but honest living and trying to forget those early horrors. But now and then, when swept along on the high tide of prose, some telltale evidence of my pirate days creeps into what I am saying, and the hateful word “privy” bursts upon the air. Now that you know my dreadful secret, can you find it in your heart to censure me?
• O F H IS R EMOTE B ENEVOLENCE •
M ONTHS AGO I wrote to a class of school children in the U.S.A. on a subject in which they, and I, were interested. Today I received thirty-seven letters in return. One boy tells me that his appreciation of my letter is “greatly high”; another tells me that he was “greatly joyed” to hear from me, and wishes that we could meet because “to have a friend and not to see him is very uneasy”; a little girl ends her letter charmingly thus: “There are many other things I would like to say, but you know how it is in School”; my favourite, however, is the little girl who says: “I have often pictured a writerwith a serious mind and a boredom for children.” Several of them asked me for photographs of myself, which I shall not send, for fear of destroying the notion they have of me as a benevolent old gentleman who has no boredom for children.… The success of this venture leads me to wonder whether I do not get on better with children by letter than face to face? In a letter I am able to express all the easy-going affability which I feel when I am alone in a room by myself; I find it hard to do this when I am in a room with thirty-seven children. Perhaps I shall go down in history as a Great Lover of Children By Correspondence.
• O F M ONEY IN G ALLSTONES •
I CHATTED WITH that man on our hostess’ right before dinner, and he tells me that the Chinese value gallstones highly for their supposed medicinal properties, and that they will pay as high as $60 a pound for gallstones in good condition. The sale of extirpated gallstones should certainly be taken into consideration whenever it is necessary to finance the building of a new hospital.
• O F A NTISEPSIS •
I T WAS HOT LAST NIGHT , and as I brewed myself a refreshing pot of tea, I reflected that without tea and alcohol the human race would probably have perished of its own filthiness centuries ago. Our modern supplies of clean drinking water are a thing of the last sixty or seventy years; before that time water was so unspeakably polluted that nobody in his right senses drank the stuff, and used it for washing only with the greatest caution. The nations of the East preserved themselves by drinking beverages in which antiseptic herbs had been boiled; the nations of the West drank enough alcoholin one form or another to keep themselves reasonably pure, if a little pixillated. Even today alcohol is the great sterilizer, and water is used only if it has been boiled. I pondered on mankind’s debt to booze for a while, and then pensively added a noggin of rum to my tea, just to make sure that I came to no harm.
• T HE M IGHTY M INDS OF P HOTOGRAPHERS •
I ATTENDED A lecture on photography this afternoon and was bemused by the complexity of it. It seems to resemble astrology closely, and also the mysterious tables by which the date of Easter is determined. If you want to take a picture of the baby, or your aunt gardening, and if your camera is anything more complicated than a pinhole affair which you have made yourself,
• O F H IS R EMOTE B ENEVOLENCE •
M ONTHS AGO I wrote to a class of school children in the U.S.A. on a subject in which they, and I, were interested. Today I received thirty-seven letters in return. One boy tells me that his appreciation of my letter is “greatly high”; another tells me that he was “greatly joyed” to hear from me, and wishes that we could meet because “to have a friend and not to see him is very uneasy”; a little girl ends her letter charmingly thus: “There are many other things I would like to say, but you know how it is in School”; my favourite, however, is the little girl who says: “I have often pictured a writerwith a serious mind and a boredom for children.” Several of them asked me for photographs of myself, which I shall not send, for fear of destroying the notion they have of me as a benevolent old gentleman who has no boredom for children.… The success of this venture leads me to wonder whether I do not get on better with children by letter than face to face? In a letter I am able to express all the easy-going affability which I feel when I am alone in a room by myself; I find it hard to do this when I am in a room with thirty-seven children. Perhaps I shall go down in history as a Great Lover of Children By Correspondence.
• O F M ONEY IN G ALLSTONES •
I CHATTED WITH that man on our hostess’ right before dinner, and he tells me that the Chinese value gallstones highly for their supposed medicinal properties, and that they will pay as high as $60 a pound for gallstones in good condition. The sale of extirpated gallstones should certainly be taken into consideration whenever it is necessary to finance the building of a new hospital.
• O F A NTISEPSIS •
I T WAS HOT LAST NIGHT , and as I brewed myself a refreshing pot of tea, I reflected that without tea and alcohol the human race would probably have perished of its own filthiness centuries ago. Our modern supplies of clean drinking water are a thing of the last sixty or seventy years; before that time water was so unspeakably polluted that nobody in his right senses drank the stuff, and used it for washing only with the greatest caution. The nations of the East preserved themselves by drinking beverages in which antiseptic herbs had been boiled; the nations of the West drank enough alcoholin one form or another to keep themselves reasonably pure, if a little pixillated. Even today alcohol is the great sterilizer, and water is used only if it has been boiled. I pondered on mankind’s debt to booze for a while, and then pensively added a noggin of rum to my tea, just to make sure that I came to no harm.
• T HE M IGHTY M INDS OF P HOTOGRAPHERS •
I ATTENDED A lecture on photography this afternoon and was bemused by the complexity of it. It seems to resemble astrology closely, and also the mysterious tables by which the date of Easter is determined. If you want to take a picture of the baby, or your aunt gardening, and if your camera is anything more complicated than a pinhole affair which you have made yourself,
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