SIMEON STRUNSKY

MEMBERS OF THE
THREE HOURS FOR LUNCH CLUB

[Illustration]

Almost all these sketches were originally published in the New
York _Evening Post_ and the _Literary Review_. One comes from
_The Outlook_, one from _The Atlantic Monthly_, one from the
_Haverford Alumni Quarterly_, and one from the Philadelphia
_Evening Public Ledger_. The author is indebted to these
publishers for permission to reprint.

Roslyn, Long Island
July, 1921

[Illustration]

CONTENTS

The Perfect Reader
The Autogenesis of a Poet
The Old Reliable
In Memoriam, Francis Barton Gummere
Adventures at Lunch Time
Secret Transactions of the Three Hours for Lunch Club
Initiation
Creed of the Three Hours for Lunch Club
A Preface to the Profession of Journalism
Fulton Street, and Walt Whitman
McSorley's
A Portrait
Going to Philadelphia
Our Tricolour Tie
The Club of Abandoned Husbands
West Broadway
The Rudeness of Poets
1100 Words
Some Inns
The Club in Hoboken
The Club at Its Worst
A Suburban Sentimentalist
Gissing
A Dialogue
At the Gasthof zum Ochsen
Mr. Conrad's New Preface
The Little House
Tadpoles
Magic in Salamis
Consider the Commuter
The Permanence of Poetry
Books of the Sea
Fallacious Meditations on Criticism
Letting Out the Furnace
By the Fireplace
A City Note-Book
Thoughts in the Subway
Dempsey _vs._ Carpentier
A Letter to a Sea Captain

PLUM PUDDING

[Illustration]

THE PERFECT READER

On Christmas Eve, while the Perfect Reader sits in his armchair
immersed in a book--so absorbed that he has let the fire go out--I
propose to slip gently down the chimney and leave this tribute in
his stocking. It is not a personal tribute. I speak, on behalf of
the whole fraternity of writers, this word of gratitude--and envy.

No one who has ever done any writing, or has any ambition toward
doing so, can ever be a Perfect Reader. Such a one is not
disinterested. He reads, inevitably, in a professional spirit. He
does not surrender himself with complete willingness of enjoyment.
He reads "to see how the other fellow does it"; to note the turn of
a phrase, the cadence of a paragraph; carrying on a constant
subconscious comparison with his own work. He broods constantly as
to whether he himself, in some happy conjuncture of quick mi