The Book of This and That

In spite of the progress of civilisation, there are still women to whom the returning Spring is mainly a festival of dresses. It is pleasant to know that there is, after all, a...

One of the reasons why one rather disbelieves in reverencing stupidity is that it is not always as honest as it looks. It is often an armour instinctively, if not deliberately,...

It is clear, then, that being shocked is simply a way of recovering our balance. It is also a way of recovering our sense of superiority. There is more pleasure in being shocked...

This, however, is to discuss Cain as a statesman rather than Cain as a human being--to consider the social right to kill rather than the individual right to kill. Public morals...

It is a pleasure to see a modern clergyman expressing his horror of the dancing of the moment as Canon Newbolt did in St Paul's. One had begun to fear lately that the clergy wer...

It is only now and then, when some great disaster like the sinking of the _Empress of Ireland_ occurs, that man recovers his ancient dread of the sea. We have grown comfortably...

On the whole, it may be doubted whether the Christmas spirit has not grown stronger and deeper since the time of Dickens. Only a few years ago it seemed as though it were dying....

Nature, assuredly, has provided us with coincidences so lavishly that we may well go about in amazement. Even the fiction of Mr William Le Queux is not quite so abundant in stra...

The difficulty is to retain this faith after one has been, as it were, inside politics. One goes into politics believing in the faith that will remove mountains: one remains in...

With the warning of the cheerful theatre before us, then, it would be the stupidest folly to pay any heed to the new plea for cheerful books. It is an extraordinary fact that th...

That is the penalty of the jester on serious subjects like murder. He is nearly always believed. The very mention of prepense death puts a great many people into a solemn mood t...

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Mr E. F. Benson has been attacking the critics, and reviving against them the old accusation that they are merely men who have failed in the arts. There could scarcely be a more...