The Project Gutenberg EBook of Mince Pie, by Christopher Darlington Morley

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net

Title: Mince Pie

Author: Christopher Darlington Morley

Release Date: October 10, 2004 [EBook #13694]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MINCE PIE ***

Produced by Gene Smethers and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team

MINCE PIE

CHRISTOPHER MORLEY

TO

F.M. AND L.J.M.

[Illustration]

INSTRUCTIONS

This book is intended to be read in bed. Please do not attempt to read
it anywhere else.

In order to obtain the best results for all concerned do not read a
borrowed copy, but buy one. If the bed is a double bed, buy two.

Do not lend a copy under any circumstances, but refer your friends to
the nearest bookshop, where they may expiate their curiosity.

Most of these sketches were first printed in the Philadelphia _Evening
Public Ledger_; others appeared in _The Bookman_, the Boston _Evening
Transcript_, _Life_, and _The Smart Set_. To all these publications I am
indebted for permission to reprint.

If one asks what excuse there can be for prolonging the existence of
these trifles, my answer is that there is no excuse. But a copy on the
bedside shelf may possibly pave the way to easy slumber. Only a mind
"debauched by learning" (in Doctor Johnson's phrase) will scrutinize
them too anxiously.

It seems to me, on reading the proofs, that the skit entitled "Trials of
a President Travelling Abroad" is a faint and subconscious echo of a
passage in a favorite of my early youth, _Happy Thoughts_, by the late
F.C. Burnand. If this acknowledgment should move anyone to read that
delicious classic of pleasantry, the innocent plunder may be pardonable.

And now a word of obeisance. I take this opportunity of thanking several
gentle overseers and magistrates who have been too generously friendly
to these eccentric gestures. These are Mr. Robert Cortes Holliday,
editor of _The Bookman_ and victim of the novelette herein entitled "Owd
Bob"; Mr. Edwin F. Edgett, literary editor of The Boston _Transcript_,
who has often permitted me to cut outrageous capers in his hospitable
columns; and Mr. Thomas L. Masso