Produced by Al Haines. This charming chronicle has no plot. It is an attempt to present a happy, witty simple-minded woman who attracted love because she gave it out, and tried to make her home a little well of happiness in the desert of the world. After all most people live their lives without its incidents forming in any sense a "plot." However, to tell this sort of story is difficult; the attention of the reader must be aroused and held by the sheer merit of the writing, and the publishers believe they have found in Catherine Cotton a writer with just the right gifts of wit, sympathy, and understanding. *EXPERIENCE* _by_ *CATHERINE COTTON* LONDON 48 PALL MALL W. COLLINS SONS & CO LTD GLASGOW SYDNEY AUCKLAND Copyright First Impression, June, 1922 Second Impression, November, 1922 Third Impression, January, 1923 Fourth Impression, September, 1923 Fifth Impression, March, 1925 Sixth Impression, April, 1926 Seventh Impression, October, 1927 Eighth Impression, February, 1928 Ninth Impression, October, 1928 Tenth Impression, July, 1929 _Printed in Great Britain_ TO ARTHUR, CHARLIE, ROSS, ALEC, AND BOB (Five very gallant gentlemen who gave their lives for England) *PREFACE* It has been said that ’Novelists are the Showmen of life.’ Perhaps because the world has passed through a time of special stress and strain it has come about that the modern novel is largely concerned with the complexities of life and is very often an unhappy and a tiring thing to read. Yet humour, happiness, and love exist and are just as real as gloom, so need the ’realism’ of a book be called in question because it pictures pleasant scenes? For there are still some joyous souls who smile their way through life because they take its experience with a simplicity that is rarer than it used to be. This, then, is the story of a woman whose outlook was a happy one; whose mind was never rent by any great temptations, and who, because she was NOT ’misunderstood in early youth,’ never struggled for ’self-expression,’ but only to express herself (in as many words as possible!) to the great amusement and uplifting of her family!