It also has always seemed strange that a man or woman who writes books, however thin and lacking in importance, is invariably given, wherever he goes, a luncheon, a dinner, or that altogether horrible form of human intercourse known as a “tea.” Other men and women who from every point of view have made a success of their lives can enter a town, stay for two weeks and depart without being noticed. But when Richard Thyng Snooks (author of “The Swill Barrel: A Story of To-day,” a very poor story I beg to assert) arrives, innumerable festivities are arranged in his honor. He is asked to luncheon and dinner, it is hoped that he can be prevailed upon to “say something,” anything, at some entertainment during his all too brief stay. The local branch of the Federated Women’s Clubs invariably tries to lasso him, and is terribly disappointed if it doesn’t succeed. Knowing many writers of books, as by accident I happen to, this is something I have never been able to comprehend. Personally, my feeling toward my various scribbling friends is that I like them, not because they write, but in spite of it. We meet and gossip about a thousand things, but I can scarcely remember talking with any of them on the subject of writing. It is only with the kind of person who looks upon a printed and launched book as a sort of achievement (which of course it isn’t) that one talks about the making of books. Men and women who write, I have learned, are usually grateful when they can temporarily be made to forget about it.