Many men have written books without prefaces. But not many have written prefaces without books. And yet I am convinced it is one of the subtlest pleasures. I have planned several books, not yet written; but the prefaces are all ready this many a day. Let me show you the sort of thing I mean. PREFACE TO "THE LETTERS OF ANDREW MCGILL" How well I remember the last time I saw Andrew McGill! It was in the dear old days at Rutgers, my last term. I was sitting over a book one brilliant May afternoon, rather despondent--there came a rush up the stairs and a thunder at the door. I knew his voice, and hurried to open. Poor, dear fellow, he was just back from tennis; I never saw him look so glorious. Tall and thin--he was always very thin, _see_ p. 219 and _passim_--with his long, brown face and sparkling black eyes--I can see him still rambling about the room in his flannels, his curly hair damp on his forehead. "Buzzard," he said--he always called me Buzzard--"guess what's happened?" "In love again?" I asked. He laughed. A bright, golden laugh--I can hear it still. His laughter was always infectious. "No," he said. "Dear silly old Buzzard, what do you think? I've won the Sylvanus Stall fellowship." I shall never forget that moment. It was very still, and in the college garden, just under my window, I could hear a party of Canadian girls deliciously admiring things. It was a cruel instant for me. I, too, in my plodding way, had sent in an essay for the prize, but without telling him. Must I confess it? I had never dared mention the subject for fear he, too, would compete. I knew that if he did he was sure to win. O petty jealousies, that seem so bitter now! "Rude old Buzzard," he said in his bantering way, "you haven't congratulated!" I pulled myself together. "Brindle," I said--I always called him Brindle; how sad the nickname sounds now--"you took my breath away. Dear lad, I'm overjoyed." It is four and twenty years since that May afternoon. I never saw him again. Never even heard him read the brilliant poem "Sunset from the Mons Veneris" that was the beginning of his career, for the week before commencement I was taken ill and sent abroad for my health. I never came back to New York; and he remained there. But I followed his career with the closest attention. Every newspaper cutting, every magazine article in which his name was mentioned, went into my scrapbook. And almost every week for twenty years he wrote to me--those long, radiant letters, so full of _verve_ and _élan_ and ringing, ruthless wit. There was always something very Gallic about his saltiness. "Oh, to be born a Frenchman!" he writes. "Why wasn't I born a Frenchman instead of a dour, dingy Scotsman? Oh, for the birthright of Montmartre! Stead of which I have the mess of pottage--stodgy, porridgy Scots pottage" (_see_ p. 189).