ould make
good coathangers for fairies--we asked ourself why we could not
be as straightforward as the bird and the frog, and talk about
what was in our mind.

The most exciting thing that happened to us when we got to New
York last February was finding a book in a yellow wrapper. Its
title was "Old Junk," which appealed to us. The name of the
author was H. M. Tomlinson, which immediately became to us a name
of honour and great meaning. All day and every day intelligent
men find themselves surrounded by oceans of what is quaintly
called "reading matter." Most of it is turgid, lumpy, fuzzy in
texture, squalid in intellect. The rewards of the literary
world--that is, the tangible, potable, spendable rewards--go
mostly to the cheapjack and the mountebank. And yet here was a
man who in every paragraph spoke to the keenest intellectual
sense--who, ten times a page, enchanted the reader with the
surprising and delicious pang given by the critically chosen
word. We sat up late at night reading that book, marvelling at
our good fortune. We wanted to cry aloud (to such as cared to
understand), "Rejoice and be exceeding glad, for here is born a
man who knows how to write!" In our exuberance we seized a pen
and wrote in the stern of our copy: "Here speaks the Lord God of
prose; here is the clear eye, the ironic mind, the compassionate
heart; the thrilling honesty and (apparent) simplicity of great
work." Then we set about making the book known to our friends. We
propelled them into bookshops and made them buy it. We took our
own copy down to William McFee on S.S. _Turrialba_ and a glad
heart was ours when he, too, said it was "the real thing." This
is a small matter, you say? When the discovery of an honest pen
becomes a small matter life will lose something of its savour.
Those who understand will understand; let the others spend their
time in the smoker playing pinochle. Those who care about these
things can get the book for themselves.

Of Mr. Tomlinson in person: he is a London newspaperman, we
understand, and now on the staff of the London _Nation_. (Trust
Mr. Massingham, the editor of that journal, to know an honest
writer when he sees him.) Mr. Tomlinson says of himself:

My life is like my portrait. It won't bear investigation. I am
not conscious of having done anything that would interest either
a policeman or the young lady of the kind who dotes on Daddy Long
Legs; worse luck. It's about time I