"Charles Garvice and Nat Gould," I said, and the Professor thought me a wonderful fellow, for I had guessed aright. There is a whiskered Ford story which tells that Mr. Ford took a new car from his factory and invited a visitor to have a spin. They started off, and went seven miles out. Then the car stopped. Ford jumped out and lifted the bonnet. "Good Lord!" he cried, "the engine hasn't been put in! The car must have run seven miles on its reputation!" I think that books run many miles on reputation alone. Like a snowball the farther a circulation rolls the more it gathers to itself. But what is it that makes a book popular? The best press notices in the world will not send the circulation of a book up to a hundred thousand level. What sells a book is talk. Scores of people said to me: "Oh, _have_ you read _The Young Visitors_?" I hasten to add, as a Scot, that I personally did not help to increase the circulation; I borrowed the book from an enthusiast. Talk sells a book, but we have to discover why people talk about _The Young Visitors_ and not about--er--_The Booming of Bunkie_. The book that is to sell well must be able to touch a chord in the crowd heart, and _The Young Visitors_ sold because it touched the infantile chord in the crowd heart; it brought back the happiest days of life, the schooldays: again, its naive Malapropisms appealed to the crowd, because we are all glad to laugh at the social and grammatical errors we have made and conveniently forgotten about. _Bunkie_ did not reach the hundred thousand level because it was too clever; it was a purely intellectual essay in wit rather than humour. And the crowd distrusts wit, and that is why the witty plays of Oscar Wilde are seldom produced, while _Charley's Aunt_ goes on for ever. I am tempted to go on to a comparison of wit with humour, but I shall only remark that wit is an intellectual thing, whereas humour is emotional. Humour is elemental, but wit is cultural. Without a language you could have humour, but without language there could be no wit. * * * * * I have just come across a small book entitled _Hints on School Discipline_, by Ernest F. Row, B.Sc. "Boys will only respect a master whom they fear," he says. I have been preaching this doctrine for years . . . that respect always has fear behind it . . . and it pleases me to find that an exponent of the old methods should support my argument. When I began to read the book I was amazed. "Good Lord!" I cried, "this chap should have published his book in the year 1820. He advocates a system that modern psychology has shown to be fatal to the child. It is army discipline applied to schools."