So I feel that it is we of the older school who do most of the smoking.  We smoke unconsciously while we are doing other things; they try, but not very successfully, to do other things while they are consciously smoking.  No doubt they despise us, and tell themselves that we are not real smokers, but I fancy that they feel a little uneasy sometimes.  For my young friends are always trying to persuade me to join their school, to become one of the white-spotted ones.  I have no desire to be of their company, but I am prepared to make a suggestion to the founder of the school.  It is that he should invent a pipe, white spot and all, which smokes itself.  His pupils could hang it in the mouth as picturesquely as before, but the incidental bother of keeping it alight would no longer trouble them.

The Path to Glory

My friend Mr. Sidney Mandragon is getting on.  He is now one of the great ones of the earth.  He has just been referred to as “Among those present was Mr. Sidney Mandragon.”

As everybody knows (or will know when they have read this article) the four stages along the road to literary fame are marked by the four different manners in which the traveller’s presence at a public function is recorded in the Press.  At the first stage the reporter glances at the list of guests, and says to himself, “Mr. George Meredith —­never heard of him,” and for all the world knows next morning, Mr. George Meredith might just as well have stayed at home.  At the second stage (some years later) the reporter murmurs to his neighbour in a puzzled sort of way:  “George Meredith?  George Meredith?  Now where have I come across that name lately?  Wasn’t he the man who pushed a wheelbarrow across America?  Or was he the chap who gave evidence in that murder trial last week?” And, feeling that in either case his readers will be interested in the fellow, he says:  “The guests included ...  Mr. George Meredith and many others.”  At the third stage the reporter knows at last who Mr. George Meredith is.  Having seen an advertisement of one of his books, and being pretty sure that the public has read none of them, he refers to him as “Mr. George Meredith, the well-known novelist.”  The fourth and final stage, beyond the reach of all but the favoured few, is arrived at when the reporter can leave the name to his public unticketed, and says again, “Among those present was Mr. George Meredith.”

The third stage is easy to reach—­indeed, too easy.  The “well-known actresses” are not Ellen Terry, Irene Vanbrugh and Marie Tempest, but Miss Birdie Vavasour, who has discovered a new way of darkening the hair, and Miss Girlie de Tracy, who has been arrested for shop-lifting.  In the same way, the more the Press insists that a writer is “well-known,” the less hope will he have that the public has heard of him.  Better far to remain at the second stage, and to flatter oneself that one has really arrived at the fourth.