94

FOR FREEDOM OF SPELLING 98

INCIDENTAL THOUGHTS ON A BALD HEAD 104

OF A BOOK UNWRITTEN 108

THE EXTINCTION OF MAN 115

THE WRITING OF ESSAYS 120

THE PARKES MUSEUM 124

BLEAK MARCH IN EPPING FOREST 128

THE THEORY OF QUOTATION 132

ON THE ART OF STAYING AT THE SEASIDE 135

CONCERNING CHESS 140

THE COAL-SCUTTLE 145

BAGARROW 150

THE BOOK OF ESSAYS DEDICATORY 155

THROUGH A MICROSCOPE 159

THE PLEASURE OF QUARRELLING 164

THE AMATEUR NATURE-LOVER 169

FROM AN OBSERVATORY 174

THE MODE IN MONUMENTS 177

HOW I DIED 182

CERTAIN PERSONAL MATTERS

THOUGHTS ON CHEAPNESS AND MY AUNT CHARLOTTE

The world mends. In my younger days people believed in mahogany; some of
my readers will remember it--a heavy, shining substance, having a
singularly close resemblance to raw liver, exceedingly heavy to move,
and esteemed on one or other count the noblest of all woods. Such of us
as were very poor and had no mahogany pretended to have mahogany; and
the proper hepatite tint was got by veneering. That makes one incline to
think it was the colour that pleased people. In those days there was a
word "trashy," now almost lost to the world. My dear Aunt Charlotte used
that epithet when, in her feminine way, she swore at people she did not
like. "Trashy" and "paltry" and "Brummagem" was the very worst she could
say of them. And she had, I remember, an intense aversion to plated
goods and bronze halfpence. The halfpence of her youth had been vast and
corpulent red-brown discs, which it was folly to speak of as small
change. They