Page:Tex; a chapter in the life of Alexander Teixeira de Mattos (IA texchapterinlife00mcke).pdf/104

Rh manuscript of some short stories''; though there are one or two points on which I remain adamant. If you wish to shorten your life, ask any Cold-*streamer whether he belongs to the Coldstreams. It is always either the Coldstream Guards or the Coldstream (I suspected you of being right, but I was not ashamed to ask you. You may or may not have observed how much less of a snob I am than most of the people you strike. Cricketing terms, nautical terms, military terms, Latin quantities, those endless excuses for the worst forms of British snobbery, all leave me cold.)''

In discussing methods of work, he writes:

( It will interest you to know that Oscar Wilde dropped all his pleasures when he wrote his plays; retired into rooms in St. James' Place, hired ad hoc, to write the first line; and did not leave them till he had written the last. And one of them a least, The Importance, was a perfect work of art, whatever one may think of the others.)

Though he enjoyed his rest-cure, it gave him—he complained—no news to communicate: