6 MORE POT-POURRI 



their opinions. One said to a friend of mine, a few 

 months after the book had come out, that it was going 

 into the sixth edition and that he ' couldn't conceive why, 

 as there was nothing in it.' Another shrewdly remarked 

 that he called the book ' a social success, not a literary 

 one.' There was a vein running through several letters 

 which I thought perhaps accounted in some way for the 

 success of the book, as it proved that many people 

 wished to give it to someone else because they found in 

 it a gentle rod wherewith to scourge their neighbour. One 

 critic said that ' a spirit of benign and motherly mate- 

 rialism broods over the book ' an expression which I 

 thought rather nice, as it was what I had aimed at. A 

 second said the book was ' full of good spirits from 

 beginning to end,' and a third discovered that ' a tone of 

 sadness ran through it all.' 



After critics came the friends who amusingly said: 

 ' The book is so extraordinarily like yourself, we can hear 

 your voice speaking all through it.' Strangers, I am told, 

 who know me only by reputation or not at all, kindly 

 settled that it was not written by me, but by some 

 mysterious unknown person they could not quite hit 

 upon. 



It is quite true, and I wish to state it again, as I did 

 in my first preface, that I had very real and practical 

 assistance from one of my nieces, who made a most 

 efficient secretary. Our method of working was simple 

 enough. I wrote what I wanted to say and then dictated 

 it to her. In reading aloud, the more flagrant mistakes 

 and repetitions struck the ear quicker than the eye, as is 

 but natural for one more accustomed to speak than to 

 write. Two or three other people helped me by toning 

 down my crude opinions and taking out whole sen- 

 tences that might have been causes of offence. It has 

 for a long time been a favourite theory of mine that, as 



