y touch at
the end.

How delightful this bit of pleasant intimacy after the real toil is
over! It is like paterfamilias coming out of his house at dusk, after
the hard day's work, to read his newspaper on the doorstep. Or it may be
a bit of superb gesturing. No book is complete without a preface. Better
a preface without a book....

Many men have written books without prefaces. But not many have written
prefaces without books. And yet I am convinced it is one of the subtlest
pleasures. I have planned several books, not yet written; but the
prefaces are all ready this many a day. Let me show you the sort of
thing I mean.

PREFACE TO "THE LETTERS OF ANDREW MCGILL"

How well I remember the last time I saw Andrew McGill! It was in the
dear old days at Rutgers, my last term. I was sitting over a book one
brilliant May afternoon, rather despondent--there came a rush up the
stairs and a thunder at the door. I knew his voice, and hurried to open.
Poor, dear fellow, he was just back from tennis; I never saw him look so
glorious. Tall and thin--he was always very thin, _see_ p. 219 and
_passim_--with his long, brown face and sparkling black eyes--I can see
him still rambling about the room in his flannels, his curly hair damp
on his forehead. "Buzzard," he said--he always called me Buzzard--"guess
what's happened?"

"In love again?" I asked.

He laughed. A bright, golden laugh--I can hear it still. His laughter
was always infectious.

"No," he said. "Dear silly old Buzzard, what do you think? I've won the
Sylvanus Stall fellowship."

I shall never forget that moment. It was very still, and in the college
garden, just under my window, I could hear a party of Canadian girls
deliciously admiring things. It was a cruel instant for me. I, too, in
my plodding way, had sent in an essay for the prize, but without telling
him. Must I confess it? I had never dared mention the subject for fear
he, too, would compete. I knew that if he did he was sure to win. O
petty jealousies, that seem so bitter now!

"Rude old Buzzard," he said in his bantering way, "you haven't
congratulated!"

I pulled myself together.

"Brindle," I said--I always called him Brindle; how sad the nickname
sounds now--"you took my breath away. Dear lad, I'm overjoyed."

It is four and twenty years since that May afternoon. I never saw him
again. Never even heard him read the brilliant poem "Sunset from the
Mons Veneris" that was the beginning of his ca