INTRODUCTION



There are good things which we want to share with the world and
good things which we want to keep to ourselves. The secret of our
favourite restaurant, to take a case, is guarded jealously from
all but a few intimates; the secret, to take a contrary case, of
our infallible remedy for seasickness is thrust upon every
traveller we meet, even if he be no more than a casual
acquaintance about to cross the Serpentine. 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