CONTENTS

A GREETING ix REASSURANCE 3 THE GREAT ADVENTURE 4 THE BEATIFIC VISION 5 FACES 6 THE OBSERVER 7 CHAOS 8 THE GHOST 9 THE HOUR-GLASS 10 THE LATCHKEY 11 GOOD PRACTICE 12 EVASION 13 DINING OUT 14 WHAT'S WRONG 15 AT SOLEMN MUSIC 17 THE GOAT 18 SELF-CONTROL 19 THE COMMUNION OF SOULS 20 WAXWORKS 21 ADJECTIVES 22 WHERE? 23 IN THE STREET 24 THE ABBEY AT NIGHT 25 DESPERANCE 26 CHAIRS 27 A GRIEVANCE 28 [Pg iv]THE MOON 29 LONGEVITY 30 IN THE BUS 31 JUSTIFICATION 32 THE SAYING OF A PERSIAN POET 33 MONOTONY 34 DAYDREAM 35 PROVIDENCE 36 ACTION 37 WAITING 38 THE WRONG WORD 40 IONS 41 A FIGURE OF SPEECH 42 A SLANDER 43 SYNTHESIS 44 THE AGE 45 COMFORT 46 APPEARANCE AND REALITY 47 LONELINESS 48 THE WELSH HARP 49 MISAPPREHENSION 51 THE LIFT 52 SLOAN STREET 53 REGENT'S PARK 54 THE AVIARY 55 ST. JOHN'S WOOD 56 THE GARDEN SUBURB 57 SUNDAY CALLS 59 [Pg v]AN ANOMALY 60 THE LISTENER 61 ABOVE THE CLOUDS 62 THE BUBBLE 63 CAUTION 64 DESIRES 65 MOMENTS 66 THE EPITAPH 67 INTERRUPTION 68 THE EAR-TRUMPET 70 GUILT 71 CADOGAN GARDENS 72 THE RESCUE 73 CHARM 74 CARAVANS 75 THE SUBURBS 76 THE CONCERTO 77 SOMEWHERE 78

THE PLATITUDE 79 THE FETISH 80 THE ECHO 81 THE SCAVENGER 82 THE HOT-BED 83 APHASIA 84 MAGIC 85 MRS. BACKE 86 WHISKERS 87 THE SPELLING LESSON 88 [Pg vi]JEUNESSE 89 HANGING ON 90 SUPERANNUATION 91 AT THE CLUB 92 DELAY 93 SMILES 94 THE DAWN 95 THE PEAR 96 INSOMNIA 97 READING PHILOSOPHY 98 MORAL TRIUMPH 99 A VOW 100 THE SPRINGS OF ACTION 101 IN THE CAGE 102 SHRINKAGE 103 VOICES 104 EVANESCENCE 105 COMPLACENCY 106 MY PORTRAIT 107 THE RATIONALIST 108 THOUGHTS 109 PHRASES 110 DISENCHANTMENT 111 ASK ME NO MORE 112 FAME 113 NEWS ITEMS 114 JOY 115 IN ARCADY 116 [Pg vii]WORRIES 117 THINGS TO WRITE 118 PROPERTY 119 IN A FIX 120 VERTIGO 122 THE EVIL EYE 123 THE EPITHET 124 THE GARDEN PARTY 125 WELTSCHMERZ 126 BOGEYS 127 LIFE-ENHANCEMENT 129 ECLIPSE 130 THE PYRAMID 131 THE FULL MOON 132 LUTON 133 THE DANGER OF GOING TO CHURCH 134 THE SONNET 136 WELTANSCHAUUNG 137 THE ALIEN 138 HYPOTHESES 139 THE ARGUMENT 140

[Pg ix]

A GREETING

'What funny clothes you wear, dear Readers! And your hats! The thought of your hats does make me laugh. And I think your sex-theories quite horrid.'

Thus across the void of Time I send, with a wave of my hand, a greeting to that quaint, remote, outlandish, unborn people whom we call Posterity, and whom I, like other very great writers, claim as my readers—urging them to hurry up and get born, that they may have the pleasure of reading 'More Trivia.'

MORE TRIVIA

[Pg 3]

REASSURANCE

I look at my overcoat and my hat hanging in the hall with reassurance; for although I go out of doors with one individuality to-day, when yesterday I had quite another, yet my clothes keep my various selves buttoned up together, and enable all these otherwise irreconcilable aggregates of psychological phenomena to pass themselves off as one person.

[Pg 4]

THE GREAT ADVENTURE

Before opening the front-door I paused, for a moment of profound consideration.

Dim-lit, shadowy, full of menace and unimaginable chances, stretched all around my door the many-peopled streets. I could hear, ominous and muffled, the tides of multitudinous traffic, sounding along their ways. Was I equipped for the navigation of those waters, armed and ready to adventure out into that dangerous world again?

Gloves? Money? Cigarettes? Matches? Yes; and I had an umbrella for its tempests, and a latchkey for my safe return.

[Pg 5]

THE BEATIFIC VISION

Shoving and pushing, and shoved and pushed, a dishonoured bag of bones about London, or carted like a herring in a box through tunnels in the clay beneath it, as I bump my head in a bus, or hang, half-suffocated; from a greasy strap in the Underground, I dream, like other Idealists and Saints and Social Thinkers, of a better world than this, a world that might be, a City of Heaven brought down at last to earth.

One footman flings open the portals of my palace in that New Jerusalem for me; another unrolls a path of velvet to the enormous motor which floats me, swift and silent, through the city traffic—I leaning back like God on hallowed cushions, smoking a big cigar.

[Pg 6]

FACES

Almost always the streets are full of dreary-looking people; sometimes for weeks on end the poor face-hunter returns unblest from his expeditions, with no provision with which to replenish his daydream-larder.

Then one day the plenty is all too great; there are Princesses at the street-crossings, Queens in the taxi-cabs, Beings fair as the day-spring on the tops of busses; and the Gods themselves can be seen promenading up and down Piccadilly.

[Pg 7]

THE OBSERVER

Talk of ants! It's the precise habits, the incredible proceedings of human insects I like to note and study.

Walking to-day, like a stranger dropped upon this planet, towards Victoria, I chanced to see a female of this species, a certain Mrs. Jones of my acquaintance, approaching from the opposite direction. Immediately I found myself performing the oddest set of movements and manœuvres. I straightened my back and simpered, I lifted my hat in the air; and then, seizing the paw of this female, I moved it up and down several times, giving utterance to a set formula of articulated sounds.

These anthropological gestures and vocalisations, and my automatic performance of them, reminded me that it was after all from inside one of them, that I was observing these Bipeds.

[Pg 8]

CHAOS

Punctual, commonplace, keeping all appointments, as I go my round in the obvious world, a bit of Chaos and old Night seems to linger on inside me; a dark bewilderment of mind, a nebulous sea of speculation, a looming of shadowy universes out of nothing, and their collapse, as in a dream.

[Pg 9]

THE GHOST

When people talk of Ghosts and Hauntings, I never mention the Apparition by which I am pestered, the Phantom that shadows me about the streets, the image or spectre, so familiar, so like myself, and yet so abhorrent, which lurks in the plate-glass of shop-windows, or leaps out of mirrors to waylay me.

[Pg 10]