Trivia

ⷤTrivia

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Title: Trivia
Author: Logan Pearsall Smith
Release Date: July, 2005 [EBook #8544] [Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule] [This file was first posted on July 21, 2003]
Edition: 10
Language: English
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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 this morning out of dreams into what we call Reality, into the daylight, the furniture of my familiar bedroom--in fact into the well-known, often-discussed, but, to my mind, as yet unexplained Universe.
Then I, who came out of Eternity and seem to be on my way thither, got up and spent the day as I usually spend it. I read, I pottered, I talked, and took exercise; and I sat punctually down to eat the cooked meals that appeared at stated intervals.

The Afternoon Post
The village Post Office, with its clock and letter-box, its postmistress lost in tales of love-lorn Dukes and coroneted woe, and the sallow-faced grocer watching from his window opposite, is the scene of a daily crisis in my life, when every afternoon I walk there through the country lanes and ask that well-read young lady for my letters. I always expect good news and cheques; and then, of course, there is the magical Fortune which is coming, and word of it may reach me any day. What it is, this strange Felicity, or whence it shall come, I have no notion; but I hurry down in the morning to find the news on the breakfast table, open telegrams in delighted panic, and say to myself "Here it is!" when at night I hear wheels approaching along the road. So, happy in the hope of Happiness, and not greatly concerned with