to be light reading. It may revenge itself for occasional
disappointments by remembering that a novel is not always light writing.

Let me conclude with a few words that may be timely. Of all the literary
cants that I despise and hate, the one I hate and despise the most is
that which would have the world believe that greatly gifted men who have
become distinguished in literature and are earning thousands a year by
it, and have no public existence and no apology apart from it, hold it
in pity as a profession and in contempt as an art. For my own part, I
have found the profession of letters a serious pursuit, of which in no
company and in no country have I had need to be ashamed. It has demanded
all my powers, fired all my enthusiasm, developed my sympathies,
enlarged my friendships, touched, amused, soothed, and comforted me. If
it has been hard work, it has also been a constant inspiration, and I
would not change it for all the glory and more than all the emoluments
of the best-paid and the most illustrious profession in the world.

'_THE SOCIAL KALEIDOSCOPE_'

BY GEORGE R. SIMS

My first book hardly deserved the title. I have only a dim remembrance
of it now, because it is one of those things which I have studiously set
myself to forget. I was very proud of it before I saw it. After I had
seen it, I realised in one swift moment's anguish the concentrated truth
of the word vanity as applied to human wishes. Hidden away in the bottom
corner of an old box, which is not to be opened until after I am dead,
that first book lies at the present moment; that is to say, unless the
process of decay, which had already set in upon the paper on which it
was printed, has gone on to the bitter end, and the book has disappeared
entirely of its own accord.

[Illustration: 12 CLARENCE TERRACE]

Before that book was published, I used to lie awake at night and fancy
how great and how grand a thing it would be for me to see a book with
my name on the cover lying on Smith's bookstalls, and staring me in the
face from the booksellers' windows. After it was published, I felt that
I owed Messrs. Smith & Sons a deep debt of gratitude for refusing to
take it, and my heart rejoiced within me greatly that the only
booksellers who exhibited it lived principally in old back streets and
half-finished suburban thoroughfares.

[Illustration: THE HALL]

Stay--I will go upstairs to my lumber room, I will open that box, I will
dig deep do