d the circulation of the blood; as witness the
lamentable consequences to whoever it was who, probably by the process
of eating a mess of miscellaneous wild fungoids, disclosed to a bereaved
family and a benefited world the important fact that certain mushrooms
were nourishing and certain toadstools were fatal.

To your true discoverer the compensations of his trade come when he
points with pride to the continent or the great natural fact or the new
author he discovered and cries aloud before all creation: "See what I
have found!"

So, aside from the compliment and the honor of it, I feel added
gratification and added pleasure that I should be invited to write a
foreword for the first American edition of Miss Daisy Ashford's second
book. You see, I claim the distinction of having been the first person
in America other than its publisher and my friend Mr. George H. Doran to
read the manuscript of that immortal work "The Young Visiters." If I did
not actually discover Miss Ashford, at the age of nine when she wrote
"The Young Visiters"--for indeed no one appears to have discovered her
then excepting perhaps her parents--at least I had a hand in discovering
her on this side of the Atlantic ocean at a time when mention of her
name, which now is so famous a name, meant nothing to the casual hearer.

After the lapse of nearly a year the event stands in my memory as
marking one of those hours of pure and perfect joy which come but too
rarely to human beings. At the request of Mr. Doran I read the
manuscript which he had just brought with him from Europe. I read the
story itself first and afterwards the preface, or foreword. This, I
think, was as it should be. By rights a preface however sprightly and
well done--and a preface by Sir James Barrie would have to be well
done--should be served with a book as cheese is served with a dinner: at
its finish and not at the beginning.

When I had read the story through to the last delicious sentence of the
last delectable paragraph and when I had caught up with my breath which
I had lost by laughing or rather when my breath had caught up with me, I
sapiently said to him:

"Publish it? Of course you ought to publish it. Aside from such sordid
considerations as the profits which are certain to accrue you owe it to
yourself as a responsible member of the human race to give this glorious
thing circulation among the reading public of North America. If I were
you I'd print thirty thousand