to a like condition, have the compelling effect of unsentimental truth.  Few clouds of glory, for example, trail about the protagonists of “A Day,” a tribute to the joyous intoxication of a day-long orgie of naughtiness deliberate and wholly unrepented.  You will find much in these pages to waken half-forgotten and perhaps secret pleasures.  Thus there was for me a personal echo in the rejection as a seaside entertainment of castle-building and the ordered sequence of the tides in favour of the infinitely more variable delight of running water and a sufficiency of mud.  Perhaps I have said enough to suggest the charm of an engaging volume, itself a memorial of one whose kindly laughter will be missed by many.

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[Illustration:  Young Alf. “CHUCK IT, JIMMY.  ’E AIN’T GOT A KIND FACE.”]