THE AFFABLE STRANGER THE AFFABLE STRANGER BY PETER McARTHUR TORONTO THOMAS ALLEN BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY PETER McARTHUR ALL RIGHTS RESERVED PREFACE To make clear the purpose of this book and to suggest possibilities to the reader the author offers the following article which was published in the _Toronto Globe_. Most of the chapters first appeared in the same journal. EKFRID, July 28.--This morning I got up feeling singularly cheerful and care-free. And no wonder. Yesterday I got even with the world--said everything I wanted to say about it right down to the last word. This morning I feel that I am making a fresh start with all scores paid, and I don't care whether school keeps or not. The explanation of this unusual state of mind is quite simple. Yesterday I finished writing a book, in which I said just what I wanted to say--said what I have been aching to say for years--about the world and things in general. No matter what happens to the book, it has already served its purpose. It has rid my mind of "the perilous stuff, etc.," that accumulated during the war and since. And the result has been so refreshing that I have no hesitation in recommending the book cure to every one. Nowadays any one can write a book, and most every one does. The mistake is in regarding the book as a literary venture. What you should do is to make a pad of paper and a lead pencil your father confessor and ease your mind of its worries. When the book is done, you can send it out into the wilderness as the Israelites sent the scapegoat--bearing your sins with it. Then you can make a fresh start. If you don't want to publish it--though publication seems necessary to complete absolution--you can tie a stone to it and throw it into the lake, or do it up in a parcel and leave it for some one to find, just as boys used to do with neat parcels in which they placed pebbles on which they had rubbed their warts--hoping in that way to rid themselves of warts. I know there are some old-fashioned people who will be shocked at this levity in speaking of books, but they should waken up to the fact that since the coming of the wood-pulp era no particular merit attaches to writing a book. And if books can be given a medicinal value to take the place of their old-time literary value, why shouldn't we recognize the fact? Anyway, the writing of a book put me in the frame of mind to parody Sir Sidney Smith and exclaim: "Fate cannot harm me, I have had my say." * * * * *