manuscript, and said: "Here's a rotten story." Yet it must be that he
found pleasure in playing the whole scale, in hopping from the G-string to
the E-, in surprising his public each day with a new whim or a recently
discovered broken image. I suspect, anyhow, that he delighted in making
his editor stare and fumble in the Dictionary of Taboos.

Ben will deny most of this. He denies everything. It doesn't matter. It
doesn't even matter much, Ben, that your typing was sometimes so blind or
that your spelling was occasionally atrocious, or that it took three
proof-readers and a Library of Universal Knowledge to check up your
historical allusions.

* * * * *

The preface is proving horribly inadequate. It is not at all what Ben
wants. It does not seem possible to support his theory that "One Thousand
and One Afternoons," springing from a literary passion so authentic and
continuing so long with a fervor and variety unmatched in newspaper
writing, are hack-work, done for a meal ticket. They must have had the
momentum of a strictly artistic inspiration and gained further momentum
from the need of expression, from pride in the subtle use of words, from
an ardent interest in the city and its human types. Yes, they are
newspaper work; they are the writings of a reporter emancipated from the
assignment book and the copy-desk; a reporter gone to the heaven of
reporters, where they write what they jolly well please and get it printed
too! But the sketches are also literature of which I think Ben cannot be
altogether ashamed; else why does he print them in a book, and how could
Mr. Rosse be moved to make the striking designs with which the book is
embellished? Quite enough has been said. The author, the newspaper editor,
the proof-readers and revisers have done their utmost with "One Thousand