Shandygaff

I wanted to call these exercises "Casual Ablutions," in memory of the immortal sign in the washroom of the British Museum, but my arbiter of elegance forbade it. You remember that George Gissing, homeless and penniless on London streets, used to enjoy the lavatory of the Museum Reading Room as a fountain and a shrine. But the flinty hearted trustees, finding him using the wash-stand for bath-tub and laundry, were exceeding wroth, and set up the notice I would like to issue the same warning to the implacable reader: these fugitive pieces, very casual rinsings in the great basin of letters, must not be too bitterly resented, even by their publishers. To borrow O. Henry's joke, they are more demitasso than Tasso. The real purpose in writing books is to have the pleasure of dedicating them to someone, and here I am in a quandary. So many dedications have occurred to me, it seems only fair to give them all a chance. For permission to reprint, I denounce The New York Evening Post, The Boston Transcript, The Bellman, The Smart Set, The New York Sun, The New York Evening Sun, The American Oxonian, Collier's, and The Ladies' Home Journal. Wyncote, Pa. November. 1917. SHANDYGAFF: a very refreshing drink, being a mixture of bitter ale or beer and ginger-beer, commonly drunk by the lower classes in England, and by strolling tinkers, low church parsons, newspaper men, journalists, and prizefighters. Said to have been invented by Henry VIII as a solace for his matrimonial difficulties. It is believed that a continual bibbing of shandygaff saps the will, the nerves, the resolution, and the finer faculties, but there are those who will abide no other tipple. John Mistletoe: Dictionary of Deplorable Facts.