A Plea For Old Cap Collier

by Irvin S. Cobb




To Will H. Hogg, Esquire


For a good many years now I have been carrying this idea round
with me. It was more or less of a loose and unformed idea, and
it wouldn't jell. What brought it round to the solidification
point was this: Here the other week, being half sick, I was laid
up over Sunday in a small hotel in a small seacoast town. I had
read all the newspapers and all the magazines I could get hold of.
The local bookstore, of course, was closed. They won't let the
oysters stay open on Sunday in that town. The only literature my
fellow guests seemed interested in was mailorder tabs and price
currents.

Finally, when despair was about to claim me for her own, I ran
across an ancient Fifth Reader, all tattered and stained and having
that smell of age which is common to old books and old sheep. I
took it up to bed with me, and I read it through from cover to
cover. Long before I was through the very idea which for so long
had been sloshing round inside of my head--this idea which, as one
might say, had been aged in the wood--took shape. Then and there
I decided that the very first chance I had I would sit me down and
write a plea for Old Cap Collier.