s writing
signed reviews for the New York _Times_ Review of Books. 1913-14 he was
assistant literary editor of the New York _Tribune_. His meditations on
the reviewing job are embalmed in "That Reviewer Cuss." In 1914 the wear
and tear of continual hard work on Grub Street rather got the better of
him: he packed a bag and spent the summer in England. Four charming
essays record his adventures there, where we may leave him for the
moment while we warm up to another aspect of the problem. Let us just
set down our second memorandum:

[Illustration]

Second Memo--Mr. Holliday knows the Literary Game from All Angles!

CHAPTER IV

(OUR HERO'S BOOK AND HEART SHALL NEVER PART)

Perhaps I should apologize for treating Mr. Holliday's "Walking-Stick
Papers" in this biographical fashion. And yet I cannot resist it for
this book is Mr. Holliday himself. It is mellow, odd, aromatic and
tender, just as he is. It is (as he said of something else) "saturated
with a distinguished, humane tradition of letters."

The book is exciting reading because you can trace in it the growth and
felicitous toughening of a very remarkable talent. Mr. Holliday has been
through a lively and gruelling mill. Like every sensitive journalist, he
has been mangled at Ephesus. Slight and debonair as some of his pieces
are, there is not one that is not an authentic fiber from life. That is
the beauty of this sort of writing--the personal essay--it admits us to
the very pulse of the machine. We see this man: selling books at
Scribner's, pacing New York streets at night gloating on the yellow
windows and the random ring of words, fattening his spirit on hundreds
of books, concocting his own theory of the niceties of prose. We see
that volatile humor which is native in him flickering like burning
brandy round the rich plum pudding of his theme. With all his
playfulness, when he sets out to achieve a certain effect he builds
cunningly, with sure and skillful art. See (for instance) in his "As to
People," his superbly satisfying picture (how careless it seems!) of his
scrubwoman, closing with the precis of Billy Henderson's wife, which
drives the nail through and turns it on the under side--

Billy Henderson's wife is handsome; she is rich; she is an excellent
cook; she loves Billy Henderson.

See "My friend the Policeman," or "On Going a Journey," or "The
Deceased"--this last is perhaps the high-water mark of the book. To vary
the figure, t