be
admitted, in the hope of learning rather what to avoid. I acquired,
too, the habit of publishing these patient little efforts. Some of
them appeared in "The Saturday Review" many years ago; others appeared
there more recently. I have selected, by kind permission of the
Editor, one from the earlier lot, and seven from the later. The other
nine in this book are printed for the first time. The book itself may
be taken as a sign that I think my own style is, at length, more or
less formed._

_M.B._

_Rapallo_, 1912.

CONTENTS

THE MOTE IN THE MIDDLE DISTANCE, H*NRY J*M*S

P.C., X, 36, R*D**RD K*PL*NG

OUT OF HARM'S WAY, A.C. B*NS*N

PERKINS AND MANKIND, H.G. W*LLS

SOME DAMNABLE ERRORS ABOUT CHRISTMAS, G.K. CH*ST*RT*N

A SEQUELULA TO "THE DYNASTS", TH*M*S H*RDY

SHAKESPEARE AND CHRISTMAS, FR*NK H*RR*S

SCRUTS, ARN*LD B*NN*TT

ENDEAVOUR, J*HN G*LSW*RTHY

CHRISTMAS, G.S. STR**T

THE FEAST, J*S*PH C*NR*D

A RECOLLECTION, EDM*ND G*SSE

OF CHRISTMAS, H*L**RE B*LL*C

A STRAIGHT TALK, G**RG* B*RN*RD SH*W

FOND HEARTS ASKEW, M**R*CE H*WL*TT

DICKENS, G**RGE M**RE

EUPHEMIA CLASHTHOUGHT, G**RGE M*R*D*TH

THE MOTE IN THE MIDDLE DISTANCE

_By_

H*NRY J*M*S

It was with the sense of a, for him, very memorable something that
he peered now into the immediate future, and tried, not without
compunction, to take that period up where he had, prospectively, left
it. But just where the deuce _had_ he left it? The consciousness of
dubiety was, for our friend, not, this morning, quite yet clean-cut
enough to outline the figures on what she had called his "horizon,"
between which and himself the twilight was indeed of a quality
somewhat intimidating. He had run up, in the course of time, against
a good number of "teasers;" and the function of teasing them back--of,
as it were, giving them, every now and then, "what for"--was in him so
much a habit that he would have been at a loss had there been, on the
face of it, nothing to lose. Oh, he always had offered rewards, of
course--had ever so liberally pasted the windows of his soul with
staring appeals, minute descriptions, promises that knew no bounds.
But the actual recovery of the article--the business of drawing and
crossing the cheque, blotched though this were with tears of joy--had
blankly appeared to him rather in the light of a sacrilege, casting,
he sometimes felt, a palpable chill on the fervour of the next quest.
It was just this ferv