Trivia

Trivia

The Project Gutenberg EBook of Trivia, by Logan Pearsall Smith
Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the
copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing
this or any other Project Gutenberg eBook.
This header should be the first thing seen when viewing this Project
Gutenberg file. Please do not remove it. Do not change or edit the
header without written permission.
Please read the "legal small print," and other information about the
eBook and Project Gutenberg at the bottom of this file. Included is
important information about your specific rights and restrictions in how
the file may be used. You can also find out about how to make a
donation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved.
**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts**
**eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since
1971**
*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of
Volunteers!*****
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

Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TRIVIA ***

Produced by Joris Van Dael, Charles Aldarondo, Charles Franks and
the Online Distributed Proofreading Team

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