from its inception, of the existence of this League.
Journalists have to be aware of such things. He in no way resented the
League; he brushed it aside as of no account. And, indeed, it was not
aimed at him personally, nor at his wife personally, but at the great
mass of thought--or of incoherent, muddled emotion that passed for
thought--which the Anti-Potters had agreed, for brevity's sake, to call
'Potterism.' Potterism had very certainly not been created by the
Potters, and was indeed no better represented by the goods with which
they supplied the market than by those of many others; but it was a handy
name, and it had taken the public fancy that here you had two Potters
linked together, two souls nobly yoked, one supplying Potterism in
fictional, the other in newspaper, form. So the name caught, about the
year 1912.

The twins both heard it used at Oxford, in their second year. They
recognised its meaning without being told. And both felt that it was up
to them to take the opportunity of testifying, of severing any connection
that might yet exist in any one's mind between them and the other
products of their parents. They did so, with the uncompromising decision
proper to their years, and with, perhaps, the touch of indecency,
regardlessness of the proprieties, which was characteristic of them.
Their friends soon discovered that they need not guard their tongues in
speaking of Potterism before the Potter twins. The way the twins put it
was, 'Our family is responsible for more than its share of the beastly
thing; the least we can do is to help to do it in,' which sounded
chivalrous. And another way they put it was, 'We're not going to have any
one connecting _us_ with it,' which sounded sensible.

So they joined the Anti-Potter League, not blind to the piquant humour of
their being found therein.

6

Mr. Potter said to the twins, in his thin little voice, 'Don't mind
mother and me, children. Tell us all about the A.P.L. It may do us good.'

But the twins knew it would not do their mother good. It would need too
much explanation; and then she would still not understand. She might even
be very angry, as she was (though she pretended she was only amused) with
some reviewers.... If your mother is Leila Yorke, and has hard blue eyes
and no sense of humour, but a most enormous sense of importance, you
cannot, or you had better not, even begin to explain to her things like
Potterism, or the Anti-Potter League, and s