sketch of ten or fifteen pages. Ten or fifteen pages seemed a great many
to fill with the personal details of a life which is as insignificant as
my own, and far too few for any adequate comment upon them. I did not
know how to begin. To pick up the thread, I began drawing lines and
arabesques. Then the pages grew in number and, like Faust's dog, my pile
soon waxed big, and brought forth this work.

At times, perhaps, the warmth of the author's feeling may appear ill-
advised to the reader; it may be that he will find his opinions
ridiculous and beside the mark on every page. I have merely sought to
sun my vanity and egotism, to bring them forth into the air, so that my
aesthetic susceptibilities might not be completely smothered.

This book has been a work of mental hygiene.




EGOTISM


Egotism resembles cold drinks in summer; the more you take, the
thirstier you get. It also distorts the vision, producing an hydropic
effect, as has been noted by Calderon in his _Life is a Dream_.

An author always has before him a keyboard made up of a series of I's.
The lyric and satiric writers play in the purely human octave; the
critic plays in the bookman's octave; the historian in the octave of the
investigator. When an author writes of himself, perforce he plays upon
his own "I," which is not exactly that contained in the octave of the