Category: Humour
When, on returning home one evening, after a pipe party at my friend Jephson's, I informed my wife that I was going to write a novel, she expressed herself as pleased with the idea. She said she had often wondered I had never thought of doing so before. "Look," she added, "how...
When, on returning home one evening, after a pipe party at my friend Jephson's, I informed my wife that I was going to write a novel, she expressed herself as pleased with the i...
2. Chapter 2I can't honestly say that we made much progress at our first meeting. It was Brown's fault. He would begin by telling us a story about a dog. It was the old, old story of the do...
3. Chapter 3We had much trouble with our heroine. Brown wanted her ugly. Brown's chief ambition in life is to be original, and his method of obtaining the original is to take the unoriginal...
4. Chapter 4We held our next business meeting on my houseboat. Brown was opposed at first to my going down to this houseboat at all. He thought that none of us should leave town while the n...
5. Chapter 5Jephson had written that he would not be able to be with us until late in the evening, and Brown proposed that we should occupy ourselves until his arrival with plots.
6. Chapter 6"Cats," remarked Jephson to me, one afternoon, as we sat in the punt discussing the plot of our novel, "cats are animals for whom I entertain a very great respect. Cats and Nonc...
7. Chapter 7Does man ever reform? Balzac says he doesn't. So far as my experience goes, it agrees with that of Balzac--a fact the admirers of that author are at liberty to make what use of...
8. Chapter 8"It is a terribly sad reflection," remarked MacShaughnassy, musingly; "but what a desperately dull place this earth would be if it were not for our friends the bad people. Do yo...
9. Chapter 9The discussion arose in this way. I had proposed a match between our villain and the daughter of the local chemist, a singularly noble and pure-minded girl, the humble but worth...
10. Chapter 10The final question discussed at our last meeting been: What shall our hero be? MacShaughnassy had suggested an author, with a critic for the villain. My idea was a stockbroker,...
11. Chapter 11"Sit down and get on with your work," said MacShaughnassy from the sofa where he lay at full length with his heels on a chair; "we're discussing the novel. Paradoxes not admitte...
12. Chapter 12How much more of our--fortunately not very valuable--time we devoted to this wonderful novel of ours, I cannot exactly say. Turning the dogs'- eared leaves of the dilapidated di...