Ponkapog Papers | Page 5

stand on its head for the rest of its natural life. I
cor- dially dislike several persons, but I hate no- body, living or dead,
excepting Philip II. of Spain. He appears to give me as much trouble as
Charles I. gave the amiable Mr. Dick.
AMONG the delightful men and women whom you are certain to meet
at an English country house there is generally one guest who is sup-
posed to be preternaturally clever and amusing --"so very droll, don't
you know." He recites things, tells stories in costermonger dialect, and
mimics public characters. He is a type of a class, and I take him to be
one of the elemen- tary forms of animal life, like the acalephae. His
presence is capable of adding a gloom to an undertaker's establishment.
The last time I fell in with him was on a coaching trip through Devon,
and in spite of what I have said I must confess to receiving an instant of
entertainment at his hands. He was delivering a little dis- sertation on
"the English and American lan- guages." As there were two Americans
on the back seat--it seems we term ourselves "Amur- ricans"--his
choice of subject was full of tact. It was exhilarating to get a lesson in

pronuncia- tion from a gentleman who said boult for bolt, called
St. John Sin' Jun, and did not know how to pronounce the
beautiful name of his own college at Oxford. Fancy a perfectly sober
man saying Maudlin for Magdalen! Perhaps the purest English
spoken is that of the English folk who have resided abroad ever since
the Elizabethan period, or thereabouts.
EVERY one has a bookplate these days, and the collectors are after it.
The fool and his book- plate are soon parted. To distribute one's ex-
libris is inanely to destroy the only significance it has, that of
indicating the past or present ownership of the volume in which it is
placed.
WHEN an Englishman is not highly imaginative he is apt to be the
most matter-of-fact of mortals. He is rarely imaginative, and seldom
has an alert sense of humor. Yet England has produced the finest of
humorists and the greatest of poets. The humor and imagination which
are diffused through other peoples concentrate themselves from time to
time in individual Englishmen.
THIS is a page of autobiography, though not written in the first person:
Many years ago a noted Boston publisher used to keep a large
memorandum-book on a table in his personal office. The volume
always lay open, and was in no manner a private affair, being the
receptacle of nothing more important than hastily scrawled reminders
to attend to this thing or the other. It chanced one day that a very young,
unfledged author, passing through the city, looked in upon the
publisher, who was also the editor of a famous magazine. The
unfledged had a copy of verses secreted about his person. The pub-
lisher was absent, and young Milton, feeling that "they also serve who
only stand and wait," sat down and waited. Presently his eye fell upon
the memorandum-book, lying there spread out like a morning
newspaper, and almost in spite of himself he read: "Don't forget to see
the binder," "Don't forget to mail E----- his contract," "Don't forget
H-----'s proofs," etc. An inspiration seized upon the youth; he took a
pencil, and at the tail of this long list of "don't forgets " he wrote:
"Don't forget to accept A 's poem." He left his manuscript on the table

and disappeared. That afternoon when the publisher glanced over his
memo- randa, he was not a little astonished at the last item; but his
sense of humor was so strong that he did accept the poem (it required a
strong sense of humor to do that), and sent the lad a check for it, though
the verses remain to this day unprinted. That kindly publisher was wise
as well as kind.
FRENCH novels with metaphysical or psycholo- gical prefaces are
always certain to be particu- larly indecent.
I HAVE lately discovered that Master Harry Sandford of England, the
priggish little boy in the story of "Sandford and Merton," has a worthy
American cousin in one Elsie Dinsmore, who sedately pirouettes
through a seemingly end- less succession of girls' books. I came across
a nest of fifteen of them the other day. This impossible female is
carried from infancy up to grandmotherhood, and is, I believe, still lei-
surely pursuing her way down to the tomb in an ecstatic state of
uninterrupted didacticism. There are twenty-five volumes of her and
the grand- daughter, who is also christened Elsie, and is her
grandmother's own child, with the same preco- cious readiness to
dispense ethical instruction to her elders. An interesting instance of