I cannot understand the people who take literature seriously; but I can love them and I do. Out of my love I warn them to keep clear of this book. It is a collection of crude and shapeless papers upon current or rather flying subjects; and they must be published pretty much as they stand. They were written as a rule at the last moment; they were handed in the moment before it was too late and I do not think that our commonwealth would have been shaken to its foundations if they had been handed in the moment after. They must go out now with all their imperfections on their head or rather on mine; for their vices are too vital to be improved with a blue pencil or with anything I can think of except dynamite. Their chief vice is that so many of them are very serious; because I had no time to make them flippant. It is so easy to be solemn; it is so hard to be frivolous. Let any honest reader shut his eyes for a few moments and approaching the secret tribunal of his soul ask himself whether he would really rather be asked in the next two hours to write the front page of the Times which is full of long leading articles or the front page of Tit-Bits which is full of short jokes. If the reader is the fine conscientious fellow I take him for he will at once reply that he would rather on the spur of the moment write ten Times articles than one Tit-Bits joke.