PREFACE

ROM earliest childhood my favourite exercise has been what might properly be called lignoequestrianism. As soon as articulate speech was at my command, it was my practice to catch and mount, bare backed, any small, wild hobby which might happen to graze in the vicinity, and, with beating heart and flying hair, to ride it round and round the narrow enclosure of my immature ideas. Though frequently run away with, and often thrown or kicked by the vicious little beasts, my passion for this diversion suffered no diminution. Grown to maturity, my most serious efforts have been devoted to the collection and propagation of a stud of these interesting animals. I can now boast of a stable containing a long string of sleek and able cattle (for the hobby breeds freely in captivity), and I have a strongminded and tireless mount for every mood.

Settled in the saddle, I have covered a wide territory. Sometimes at a snail's pace, and with hanging bridle, I explore the pleasant country-side; passing those who are laboriously clearing new lands of science, or carefully tilling old fields of thought; always experiencing a cheerful satisfaction at the

reflexion that, unlike these, I am not tied to the soil of exact facts or demonstrable truths, but may wander where fancy leads.

Sometimes I mount to tilt pleasantly against conventional windmills, which whirl me head over heels. Again I chase small deer, which afford more exercise than the value of the quarry may justify. Or I cheerfully pursue the elusive shadows that drive across the landscape.

At other times, with hands low and feet well home, I gallop, ventre-à-terre, straight across country. There may be high hedges of tradition, or ticklish ditches of error, in this wild path, but owning none but true-bred hunting hobbies, at a touch of the heel they clear fences without flicking a rail, and take off cleanly from crumbling banks, and we hardly pause in our in our stride until we arrive breathless and triumphant - at nowhere in particular.

E. B.

AT THE SIGN OF THE

HOBBY-HORSE

I

THE MORALS OF THE MODERN HEROINE

W

HEN a "stream of tendency" manifests itself in literature, investigation usually leads one to distant fountains as its source, and the origin of the stream may often prove to be some impulse not obvious in the outward manifestations.

To find this underlying impulse is always more interesting than to study the actual form of the manifestation itself. As an example: I was for years unable to penetrate the dry and dreary fastnesses of any history of America or any history of American literature. At about the third chapter I always fell into a complete coma of ennui, and until very recently I remained entirely ignorant of what happened after the settlement of Jamestown, and owned not even a groping idea of who succeeded Michael Wigglesworth upon the completion of his cheerful epic concerning the Day of Doom. The