The prudent husbandman, after having taken from his field all the straw that is there, rakes it over with a wooden rake and gets as much again. The wise child, after the lemonade jug is empty, takes the lemons from the bottom of it and squeezes them into a still larger brew. So does the sagacious author, after having sold his material to the magazines and been paid for it, clap it into book-covers and give it another squeeze. But in the present case the author is of a nice conscience and anxious to place responsibility where it is due. He therefore wishes to make all proper acknowledgments to the editors of "Vanity Fair, The American Magazine, The Popular Magazine, Life, Puck, The Century, Methuen's Annual," and all others who are in any way implicated in the making of this book.

-- STEPHEN LEACOCK

Who but Stephen Leacock would endeavor to describe a boarding house -- in terms of schoolroom geometry? ("The landlady of a boarding-house is a parallelogram -- that is, an oblong angular figure, which cannot be described, but which is equal to anything.") Or to detail the terrible ordeal of Melpomenus Jones, unable to say, "Good-bye"?

Leacock (1869-1944) did have his serious side -- for he wrote learnedly of Twain and Dickens, and was a professor of political science and economics at McGill University . . . but it was when he set aside seriousness for levity, with such sketches as "How Tennyson Killed the May Queen" or "Hoodoo McFiggin's Christmas," that he has won over the English-reading public everywhere.