2 MORE POT-POURRI 



critical judgment. Then there were those who said and 

 wrote — and need I state that they are the flatterers who 

 come most home to the author's heart, as is but natural? 

 — ' We have read your book; we like it; we have found 

 it useful and helpful, entertaining or suggestive. Cannot 

 you give us more? ' To these I answered : ' Give me 

 time and I will try. ' The result was that throughout 

 the last year I have been making various notes about my 

 life, things I saw and things I did, exactly as they oc- 

 curred. These very likely will prove less interesting 

 than former notes, which were more or less connected 

 with the life that was behind me. 



One newspaper had it that I must have a very gooa 

 memory. As a matter of fact, I have no memory at all, 

 but from my youth I have kept, more or less continu- 

 ously, commonplace books — a jumble of all sorts of 

 things as I came across them in my very desultory read- 

 ing. These notes were often so carelessly kept as not 

 even to acknowledge where I stole the thought that gave 

 me pleasure. This accounts for my having quotations 

 at hand. Another reviewer kindly said that I had a 

 'marked grace of style.' My dear old mother used to 

 say she never considered a compliment worth having 

 that was not totally undeserved ! I never had the slight- 

 est idea of possessing any style at all. But what is 

 style? It is a weary topic when so much is said about 

 'getting style' (like 'getting religion'). Schopenhauer's 

 remarks on the subject are worth noticing. He writes: 

 ' There is no quality of style that can be got by reading 

 writers who possess it. But if the qualities exist in us 

 — exist, that is to say, potentially — we can call them forth 

 and bring them into consciousness. We can learn the 

 purposes to which they can be put. We can be strength- 

 ened in an inclination to use them, or get courage to do 

 so. The only way in which reading can form style is by 



