I have written a number of things in connection with my college
life--a book on Political Science, and many essays, magazine
articles, and so on. I belong to the Political Science Association of
America, to the Royal Colonial Institute, and to the Church of
England. These things, surely, are a proof of respectability. I have
had some small connection with politics and public life. A few years
ago I went all round the British Empire delivering addresses on
Imperial organization. When I state that these lectures were followed
almost immediately by the Union of South Africa, the Banana Riots in
Trinidad, and the Turco-Italian war, I think the reader can form some
idea of their importance. In Canada I belong to the Conservative
party, but as yet I have failed entirely in Canadian politics, never
having received a contract to build a bridge, or make a wharf, nor to
construct even the smallest section of the Transcontinental Railway.
This, however, is a form of national ingratitude to which one becomes
accustomed in this Dominion.

Apart from my college work, I have written two books, one called
"Literary Lapses" and the other "Nonsense Novels." Each of these is
published by John Lane (London and New York), and either of them can
be obtained, absurd though it sounds, for the mere sum of three
shillings and sixpence. Any reader of this preface, for example,
ridiculous though it appears, could walk into a bookstore and buy
both of these books for seven shillings. Yet these works are of so
humorous a character that for many years it was found impossible to
print them. The compositors fell back from their task suffocated with
laughter and gasping for air. Nothing but the intervention of the
linotype machine--or rather, of the kind of men who operate it--made
it possible to print these books. Even now people have to be very
careful in circulating them, and the books should never be put into