Sunshine sketches of a little town

Front matter

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HENLEACCfc

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

Preface

living, dead, and half-dead, and knew nothing of the outside world. In this diligent pursuit of words I spent about sixteen hours of each day. Very soon after graduation I had forgotten the languages, and found myself intellectually bankrupt. In other words I was what is called a distinguished graduate, and, as such, I took to school teachi»ng as the only trade I could find that needed neither experience nor intellect. I spent my time from 1891 to 1899 0^ ^^ staff of Upper Canada College, an experience which has left me with a profound sympathy for the many gifted and brilliant men who are compelled to spend their lives in the most dreary, the most thankless, and the worst paid profession in the world. I have noted that of my pupils, those who seemed the laziest and the least enamoured of books are now rising to eminence at the bar, in business, and in public life ; the really promising boys who took all the prizes are now able with difficulty to earn the wages of a clerk in a summer hotel or a deck hand on a canal boat.

In 1899 I gave up school teaching in disgust, borrowed enough money to live upon for a few months, and went to the University of Chicago to study economics and political science. I was soon appointed to a Fellowship in political economy, and by means of this and some temporary employment by McGill University, I survived until I took the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in 1903. The meaning of this degree is that the re-

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Prefc ace

cipient of instruction is examined for the last time in his life, and is pronounced completely full. After this, no new ideas can be imparted tu him.

From this time, and since my marriage which had occurred at this period, I have belonged to the staff of McGill University, first as lecturer in Political Science, and later as head of the department of Economics and Political Science. As this position is one of the prizes of my profession I am able to regard myself as singularly fortunate. The emolument is so high as to place me distinctly above the policemen, postmen, streetcar conductors, and other salaried officials of the neighborhood, while I am able to mix with the poorer of the business men of the city on terms of something like equality. In point of leisure, I enjoy more in the four corners of a single year than the business man know^s in his whole life. I thus have what the business man can never enjoy, an ability to think, and, what is still better, to stop thinking altogether for months at a time.

I have written a number of things in connection with my college life — a book on Political Science, and many essays, magazine articles, and so on. I belong to the Political Science Association of America, to the Royal Colonial Institute, and to the Church of England. These th;ligs, surely, are a proof of respectability. I have had some small connection with politics and public life. A few years ago I went all round the British Em-

Prefc ace pire delivering addresses on Imperial organization. When I state that these lectures were followed almost immediately by the Union of South Africa, the Banana Riots in Trinidad, and the Turco-Italian war, I think the reader can form some idea of their importance. In Canada I belong to the Conservative party, but as yet I have failed entirely in Canadian politics, never having received a contract to build a bridge, or make a wharf, nor to construct even the smallest section of the Transcontinental Railway. This, however, is a form of national ingratitude to which one becomes accustomed in this Dominion.

Apart from my college work, I have written two books, one called "Literary Lapses" and the other "Nonsense Novels." Both of these are published by John Lane Company, New York, and John Lane, London, and can be obtained, absurd though it sounds, for one dollar and twenty-five cents and one dollar, respectively. Any reader of this preface, for example, ridiculous though it appears, could walk into a bookstore and buy both of these books for two dollars and a quarter. Yet these works are of so humorous a character that for many years it was found impossible to print them. The compositors fell back from their task suffocated with laughter and gasping for air. Nothing but the invention of the linot3^pe machine — or rather, of the kind of men who operate it — made it possible to print these books. Even now people have to be very