TRIVIA ***

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TRIVIA

By Logan Pearsall Smith

1917

_Bibliographical Note_

Some of these pieces were privately printed at the Chiswick Press in 1902. Others have appeared in the "New Statesman" and "The New Republic," and are here reprinted with the Editors' permission.

_Preface_

"You must beware of thinking too much about Style," said my kindly adviser, "or you will become like those fastidious people who polish and polish until there is nothing left."

"Then there really are such people?" I asked, lost in the thought of how much I should like to meet them. But the well-informed lady could give me no precise information about them.

I often hear of them in this tantalizing manner, and perhaps one day I shall get to know them. They sound delightful.

_The Author_

These pieces of moral prose have been written, dear Reader, by a large Carnivorous Mammal, belonging to that suborder of the Animal Kingdom which includes also the Orang-outang, the tusked Gorilla, the Baboon with his bright blue and scarlet bottom, and the long-eared Chimpanzee.

_List of Contents_

BOOK I

Preface

The Author

Happiness

To-day

The Afternoon Post

The Busy Bees

The Wheat

The Coming of Fate

My Speech

Stonehenge

The Stars

Silvia Doria

Bligh House

In Church

Parsons

The Sound of a Voice

What Happens

A Precaution

The Great Work

My Mission

The Birds

High Life

Empty Shells

Dissatisfaction

A Fancy

They

In the Pulpit

Human Ends

Lord Arden

The Starry Heaven

My Map

The Snob

Companions

Edification

The Rose

The Vicar of Lynch

Tu Quoque Fontium

The Spider

BOOK II

L'Oiseau Bleu

At the Bank

Mammon

I See the World

Social Success Apotheosis

The Spring in London

Fashion Plates

Mental Vice

The Organ of Life

Humiliation

Green Ivory

In the Park

The Correct

"Where Do I Come In?"

Microbes

The Quest

The Kaleidoscope

Oxford Street

Beauty

The Power of Words

Self-Analysis

The Voice of the World

And Anyhow

Drawbacks

Talk

The Church of England

Misgiving

Sanctuaries

Symptoms

Shadowed

The Incredible

Terror

Pathos

Inconstancy

The Poplar

On the Doorstep Old Clothes

Youth

Consolation

Sir Eustace Carr

The Lord Mayor

The Burden

Under an Umbrella

TRIVIA

BOOK I

_How blest my lot, in these sweet fields assign'd Where Peace and Leisure soothe the tuneful mind._

SCOTT, of Amwell, _Moral Eclogues_ (1773)

_Happiness_

Cricketers on village greens, haymakers in the evening sunshine, small boats that sail before the wind--all these create in me the illusion of Happiness, as if a land of cloudless pleasure, a piece of the old Golden World, were hidden, not (as poets have imagined), in far seas or beyond inaccessible mountains, but here close at hand, if one could find it, in some undiscovered valley. Certain grassy lanes seem to lead between the meadows thither; the wild pigeons talk of it behind the woods.

_To-Day_

I woke t...

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