CHAPTER XX 



" THE PLEASURES OF LIFE " (1887) 



(Age 53) 



Dear Sir — We have been considering the proposal 

 you were good enough to make to us this morning in 

 regard to a book of miscellaneous essays to be entitled 

 The Pleasures of Life, to contain among other papers 

 your address upon the pleasures of reading. We are 

 inclined to think that such a book, if it does not bear 

 the appearance of a mere re-issue of papers which have 

 appeared elsewhere, but is substantially a new book, 

 forming an organic whole, would have a very fair chance 

 of success. Whether it would have a permanent sale, 

 as your scientific books have had, we hardly feel prepared 

 to say. 



The above is an extract from a letter of the 

 firm of publishers which brought out several of 

 Sir John Lubbock's scientific books, and also, 

 eventually, the proposed Pleasures of Life to 

 which it refers. 



It was not a great many years after this that 

 I heard my wife, sitting next to Lord Avebury at 

 dinner, tell him that she had been informed that 

 Jessica's First Prayer had been translated into 

 more languages than any other book except the 

 Bible. I do not know whence the information 

 came — that does not matter, nor whether it is 



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