al,
hardly constitutes a reason for denying to less delightful men and
gifted artists the right also to practice it, to put themselves and
their intimate little affairs and idiosyncrasies into direct and
personal touch with such few readers as they may find. For the readers
of his essays are the author's friends in a sense that the readers of
his novels or dissertations, or the witnesses of his plays, can never
be. There will be no story to hold them, no fictional, independent
characters, no ideas nor arguments on high questions of policy. There
will be only a joint interest in the minutiae of life. If I like cats
and snowstorms, and you like cats and snowstorms, we are likely to
come together on that mutual ground, and clasp shadow hands across the
page. But if you do not like cats and snowstorms, why then you will
not like me, and we needn't bore each other, need we?

The little papers in this volume, issued from the peaceful town of
Sewanee atop the Cumberland plateau, between Thumping Dick Hollow and
Little Fiery Gizzard Creek, have been written at various times and
places in the past fifteen years, many of them while I still dwelt in
New York, and babbled o' green fields, many before, and some few
after, the outbreak of the Great War. That War, you will perhaps
discover, finds in them no reflection. It has been consciously
excluded, for though the world can never be the same world again, as
we are in no danger of forgetting, there are some things which even
war and revolution cannot change, such as the memories of our
childhood, the joy of violets in the Spring, the delight in melody,
the humor of small dogs, the coo of babies. I have fancied we are
sometimes by way of forgetting that. At any rate, of such matters, in
hours when he has no thought but to please himself, the essayist
chats, and shall chat in the happy years that are to come again, or
all our bloodshed has been in vain. If, at the same time, he chances
to please an editor also, and then to make a few friends who like what
he likes, smiles sympathetically at what makes him smile, why, that is
clear again!

This author has been fortunate enough to please several editors in the
past, and to all of them, who have given him permission to reprint
such papers in this volume as have appeared in their periodicals, he
extends his gratitude. They are specifically, the editors of _The
Atlantic Monthly_, _Scribner's_, _House and Garden_, _The Dial_,
_Ainslee's_