Page:Americans (1922).djvu/339

 among the English-speaking peoples—through the strenuous years in New York, when a Sunday dinner broke up his one precious day of "scholarly leisure," and, when, as critic, he wrote for immortality with one hand what, as editor of The Nation, he ruthlessly abridged with the other. He pleasantly discusses the vices and foibles of reviewers; and so by insensible degrees he passes to the prevailing foibles and vices of man; and thence to the present and perennial need for satire.

If I understand him aright, he intimates that the unifying spirit of this book is a hope that it will "vex somebody." It has vexed me sharply at some points and pleased me much at others, as everything that he writes does. I shall explain my pleasure and my vexation with that freedom which I learned from him and from his equally independent predecessor, Hammond Lamont, two editors, who taught their reviewers to fear nothing but deviations from the truth and the insidious vices of puffery and log-rolling. Of the terrible integrity of that office I fondly cherish one recollection. I had sent in—it was long ago—a very "pleasant" review of an amusing novel by an author who, as I happened to know, was an old friend of the editor; and I added a note to the effect that, though the book had some defects, it seemed not worth while to speak of them in so brief a notice. Back came the proof, inscribed in Mr. Lamont's bold hand, with the only suggestion that he ever made for an alteration in my copy.