The Book of This and That

By Robert Lynd

Book Overview

"Delightful book....Mr. Lynd writes so wittily and pleasantly." -Pall Mall Gazette "His cleverness is amazing; fresh, amusing, suggestive." -Manchester Guardian "An elegant writer; jocund and attractive." -English Review "There is nothing that makes us feel so good as the idea that some one else is an evildoer. Our scandal about our neighbours is nearly all a muttered tribute to our own virtue. It fills us with a new pride in ourselves that it was not we who gambled with trust money or made love to our neighbour's wife or ran away in battle. By kicking our neighbours down for their sins we secure for ourselves, it seems, a better place on the ladder." "There are some people who want to throw their arms round you simply because it is Christmas; there are other people who want to strangle you simply because it is Christmas." "The most superstitious people of all are often to be found among those who do not believe in God, and who would not dream of entering a church-gate unless there was no other way of avoiding walking under a ladder. These it is who pick up pins with the greatest enthusiasm, and who become downcast if a dog howls, and who had rather not sleep at all than sleep in a room numbered thirteen. They will deride the cherubim and the seraphim, but they will not risk offending the demon to whom they throw an oblation of the salt they have just spilt on the table. It is as though each man carried his own little firmament of immortals about with him, and sacrificed to them on his own infinitesimal altars. This is not, I suspect, because he loves them, but because he fears them. He regards them as a species of blackmailers--the Scottish way of looking at fairies. Nearly every portent is to him a portent of misfortune. The number thirteen, the spilling of salt, the bay of a dog, the sight of a red-haired man first thing on New Year's morning, dreams about babies--these things cast a gloom over his world deeper than midnight; and of this kind are nearly all the portents which wriggle like little snakes in the superstitious imagination." CONTENTS I. Suspicion II. On Good Resolutions III. The Sin of Dancing IV. Thoughts at a Tango Tea V. The Humours of Murder VI. The Decline and Fall of Hell VII. On Cheerful Readers VIII. St G. B. S. and the Bishop IX. Stupidity X. Waste XI. On Christmas XII. On Demagogues XIII. On Coincidences XIV. On Indignation XV. The Heart of Mr Galsworthy XVI. Spring Fashions XVII. On Black Cats XVIII. On Being Shocked XIX. Confessions XX. The Terrors of Politics XXI. On Disasters XXII. The Rights of Murder XXIII. The Humour of Hoaxes XXIV. Anatole France XXV. The Sea XXVI. The Futurists XXVII. A Defence of Critics XXVIII. On the Beauty of Statistics

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1537076787
• ISBN13: 9781537076782
• Release Date: August 2016
• Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
• Length: 166 Pages
• Weight: 0.68 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.0" x 0.4" x 6.0"