Page:The Yellow Book - 07.djvu/153

 taken this excellent maxim to heart is Mr. John Oliver Hobbes. His was the next book I directed an attack upon, after I had beaten my retreat from the impenetrable Manxman. But I found myself confronted with Pretentiousness at the very drawbridge. There fluttered a flag—I daresay, on my unsupported testimony, you could scarce believe it; but I can refer you to the book itself, or (it has been advertised like a patent medicine) to its publishers’ advertisements, for corroboration—there fluttered a flag bearing this device—

THE GODS SOME MORTALS AND LORD WICKENHAM BY JOHN OLIVER HOBBES

This, in Christian England! And above it and below it were wonderful drawings, drawings of gods and goddesses and mortals; and, at one side of it, another wonderful drawing, a drawing of an Owl.

When I recovered my breath I turned to Chapter 1., An Aristocratic Household, and before I had reached the bottom of that short first page, here is the sort of sentence I had to face and vanquish: "The young girl who came forward seemed to have been whipped up into a fragile existence from the very cream of tenderness, love, and folly." It is doubtless very pretty, but do you know what it means? Anyhow, it has the great merit of being Pretentious. I can see the Pressman-Critic, as his eye lights upon it. I can see him "sit up." I can hear him gasp, and