This is very old book; it was published in 1915, and as it is a collection of magazine pieces most of the material undoubtedly pre-dates that by a fair amount. I picked it up…well, I was reading Chuck Jones delightful memoir, Chuck Amuck. When he was a kid he lived in Southern California in a series of rented houses. And in those days, if you rented a furnished house, one of the things it came furnished with was books. From his point of view, his family would move into a house, read all of the books in it, and then move on. And, he says, he read everything, voraciously. It didn’t matter, so he says, whether it was good or bad; he sneered through all of Horatio Alger, and laughed his way through all of Stephen Leacock.

Hmmm. Stephen Leacock. Chuck Jones thinks Stephen Leacock is funny. Chuck Jones thinks Stephen Leacock is funny. Hmmm. He might be worth looking into.

So happens, we have a neat new-and-used bookshop not too far away, one that specializes in genre fiction; and as they cater to collectors they’ve quite an amazing selection. And, in fact, they had some of Leacock’s books, of which I chose this one.

Verdict? He’s funny, but he’s no P.G. Wodehouse. He’s got some very funny ideas and some really good lines; I especially liked his bit about a literary agency that exists to read the latest novels and serials for industrious millionaires who have no time for reading. But if I read more of him I think I’ll have to get him from the library (assuming they have him), for while he’s funny he’s a little too expensive to buy in first editions.