Mince Pie

(_underscores_ denote italics) This book is intended to be read in bed. Please do not attempt to read it anywhere else. In order to obtain the best results for all concerned do not read a borrowed copy, but buy one. If the bed is a double bed, buy two. Do not lend a copy under any circumstances, but refer your friends to the nearest bookshop, where they may expiate their curiosity. Most of these sketches were first printed in the Philadelphia _Evening Public Ledger_; others appeared in _The Bookman_, the Boston _Evening Transcript_, _Life_, and _The Smart Set_. To all these publications I am indebted for permission to reprint. If one asks what excuse there can be for prolonging the existence of these trifles, my answer is that there is no excuse. But a copy on the bedside shelf may possibly pave the way to easy slumber. Only a mind "debauched by learning" (in Doctor Johnson's phrase) will scrutinize them too anxiously. It seems to me, on reading the proofs, that the skit entitled "Trials of a President Travelling Abroad" is a faint and subconscious echo of a passage in a favorite of my early youth, _Happy Thoughts_, by the late F.C. Burnand. If this acknowledgment should move anyone to read that delicious classic of pleasantry, the innocent plunder may be pardonable. And now a word of obeisance. I take this opportunity of thanking several gentle overseers and magistrates who have been too generously friendly to these eccentric gestures. These are Mr. Robert Cortes Holliday, editor of _The Bookman_ and victim of the novelette herein entitled "Owd Bob"; Mr. Edwin F. Edgett, literary editor of The Boston _Transcript_, who has often permitted me to cut outrageous capers in his hospitable columns; and Mr. Thomas L. Masson, of _Life_, who allows me to reprint several of the shorter pieces. But most of all I thank Mr. David E. Smiley, editor of the Philadelphia _Evening Public Ledger_, for whom the majority of these sketches were written, and whose patience and kindness have been a frequent amazement to THE AUTHOR. PHILADELPHIA September, 1919.