Chapter I: From "first Aid to Literature."

By _Edmund Gosse_.

... Not the least interesting and delicate of my duties as a confidential adviser were connected with a work of reminiscences which created some stir in the nineteen-twenties. How it came about I cannot recollect, but it was thought that my poor assistance as a friendly censor of a too florid exuberance in candour might not be of disservice to the book, and I accepted the invitation. The volume being by no means yet relegated to oblivion's dusty shelves I am naturally reluctant to refer to it with such particularity as might enable my argus-eyed reader to identify it and my own unworthy share therein, and therefore in the following dialogue, typical of many between the author and myself, I disguise her name under an initial. _Quis custodiet?_ It would be grotesque indeed if one whose special mission was to correct the high spirits of others should himself fail in good taste.

_Mrs. A. (laying down the MS. with a bang)._ I see nothing but blue pencil marks, and blue was never my colour. Why are you so anxious that I should be discreet? Indiscretion is the better part of authorship.

_EDMUND (earnestly)._ It is your fame of which I am thinking. If you adopt my emendations you will go down to history as the writer of the best book of reminiscences in English.

_Mrs. A. (with fervour)._ I don't want to go down to history. I want to stay here and make it. And you (_with emotion_)--you have cramped my style. I can't think why I asked you to help.

_EDMUND._ Everyone asks me to help. It is my destiny. I am the Muses' _amicus curiæ_.

_Mrs. A._ Oh, blow Latin! (_Lighting two cigarettes at once_) What's the good of reminiscences of to-day, by me, without anything about L.G.?

_EDMUND._ Dear lady, it would never have done. Be reasonable. There are occasions when reticence is imperative.

_Mrs. A._ Reticence! What words you use!

(_Cætera desunt._)