And, lying back in the depths of my arm-chair, watching the dusky shadows of the firelight move over the ceiling as waves do on a calm day in mid-channel, I thought how pleasant would be the writing of such a book that would pass as conversation does from books to life, and from life to cricket, and so back to books again. How pleasant to let the pen follow the fancy of the anecdote, to let impression flow into impression, to snatch away the blinkers of the technique of formal narrative and criticism. Tired and well content and drowsy I let my thoughts wander out of my control on their lazy, haphazard journey. II About a year ago my American publishers asked me to send them some personal material for press publicity, and I spent a hot summer afternoon describing my parentage, my tastes, my aversions, and what use I made of days and hours. I am now receiving by every second mail syndicated cuttings of my confessions. I am learning quite a lot about myself. I am, I have discovered, a methodical and industrious person. Every Monday and Friday I go to a publisher’s office in Henrietta Street where I read manuscripts, draft advertisements, and generally entertain myself and my employers. During the three middle days of the week I write. I follow a regular routine on my writing days. I have breakfast at half-past eight. From nine to ten I walk over Hampstead Heath. From ten to one o’clock I write. In the afternoon I go to a cinema. From five to seven I write again. I work at the rate of 3500 words a day. During the week-end I enjoy myself. I dance, I play football or cricket as the time of year ordains. I see my friends. It is, in fact, a picture of the sort of young man who wins prizes at a Sunday school and makes good in the business novel. I suppose that I must have in some such way spent the week previous to my confession. Or perhaps I felt that I needed organising, that it was on such lines my time should be arranged, and that by the mere fact of writing down a time-table I should “Coué” myself into an observance of it; at any rate it is not, I need perhaps hardly say, very much like that. I do not confine my entertainment entirely to the weekends. Usually three days a week in summer-time are spent lazily on a cricket field. Were I to maintain an average rate of ten thousand words a week, I should produce some half a million words a year, and heaven knows what I should do with them. Nor am I very often down to breakfast by half-past eight.