So with our books.
There are dearly loved books of which we babble to a neighbour at
dinner, insisting that she shall share our delight in them; and
there are books, equally dear to us, of which we say nothing,
fearing lest the praise of others should cheapen the glory of our
discovery. The books of "Saki" were, for me at least, in the
second class.
It was in the WESTMINSTER GAZETTE that I discovered him (I like to
remember now) almost as soon as he was discoverable. Let us spare
a moment, and a tear, for those golden days in the early nineteen
hundreds, when there were five leisurely papers of an evening in
which the free-lance might graduate, and he could speak of his
Alma Mater, whether the GLOBE or the PALL MALL, with as much pride
as, he never doubted, the GLOBE or the PALL MALL would speak one
day of him. Myself but lately down from ST. JAMES', I was not too
proud to take some slight but pitying interest in men of other
colleges. The unusual name of a freshman up at WESTMINSTER
attracted my attention; I read what he had to say; and it was only
by reciting rapidly with closed eyes the names of our own famous
alumni, beginning confidently with Barrie and ending, now very
doubtfully, with myself, that I was able to preserve my
equanimity.
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