Postscript . • •
I HAVE been reading S. N. Behrman's charmingly perceptive Conversation with Max, which con- firms me in my view that Max Beerbohm has been more fully appreciated as a serious writer—less I mustn't forestall the review of the book that Kingsley Amis is doing for our Christmas number, but Mr. Behrman's book prompts me to record my own version of Max's story of how he lost the tract that Logan Pearsall Smith had given him. I wrote it down on the evening of the day he told it to my wife and me, at Rapallo, and I have never printed it. It may not be truer than the version Mr. Behrman gives on page 89 of his book, but I like it better, and it goes like this : When Logan Pearsall died, he was at once so old and so urbane that it was not generally known and was, indeed, difficult to believe, that his father had been a Pennsylvania Quaker of the most uncompromisingly evangelical kind. Somewhere back in the 1870s or 1880s, when Logan Pearsall Smith was a very little boy, it occurred to Mr. Smith, his stern, unbending father, to put his own experiences at the disposal of other fathers of families, and he wrote a very serious missionary tract entitled, quite simply, How Little Logan Was Brought to Jesus. And when little Logan was no longer little Logan, but Logan Pearsall Smith, and a man of the world in London, mixing with other men of the world in London, he thought with a certain amount of sophisticated amusement of the tract entitled How Little Logan Was Brought to Jesus—so much so, Max told us, that he bought up all the few remaining copies he could lay his hands on; had them specially bound by the finest binders in London, in splendid morocco, with the title on the spine, How Little Logan Was Brought to Jesus, and presented one each to his closest and dearest friends, suitably inscribed.
`Logan invited me to luncheon,' said Max' 'and gave me my copy, and very beautiful it was, and after luncheon I went off in a cab to the Athenaeum to write some letters. And it was only after I'd left the club, on my way to an- other engagement, that 1 realised that I n° longer had Logan's present with me. `So back I went to the Athenxum, and said t° the porter, "I haven't time to go upstairs again' or to wait, but I've left a book in the drawing' room, and I should be very much obliged if VII would be kind enough to look out for it for me, and put it on one side until I call again. It's 8 thin book, bound in morocco." "Certainly, sir," said the porter. "What is the title of the book?" and I said'—and at this point in his story, Max coughed a little, or cleared his throat, rather, and touched his very trim moustache with his finger-tip, and said, answered, "How Little Logan Was Brought Jesus"—and he wrote it down.
'Next day, I called again at the Athencearn' and there was a different porter on duty, and, I told him that I'd called to see if a book had been found in the drawing-room that I had try quired about on the previous day, a thin book, bound in morocco; and the porter said. 111 inquire, sir: what is the title of the book?" and I had to say again, "How Little Logan Was Brought to Jesus." 'And do you know, Ray,' said Max, 'the WO hadn't been found, and I couldn't have left it at the club, and it occurred to me that I must have, left it in the cab, or dropped it in the street, and of course I ought to have gone to Scotland 'fatd to ask if it had been found. But—do you !cowl —having uttered that title twice, I found that . couldn't utter it a third time—and to a police. man.'
*
I don't suppose that Logan Pearsall Smith's papa, even though he was a Pennsylvanian. ever came across—or, if. he did, ever indulged in—. the Philadelphia Fish-House Punch that I have been reading about in an enchanting (and enlight- ening) book I picked up in a second-hand book- shop the other day: 'How to Mix Drinks, or 'rile Bon-Vivant's Companion, by Jerry Thomas,' 'Formerly principal Bar-tender at the Metropoly tan Hotel, New York, and the Planter's House' St. Louis,' and published in New York in 1862' no doubt to help in bolstering Yankee morale, s after Bull Run. Even as long ago as that, thl., ° punch was described as 'famous,' and there olaY., be those who would like to chance their arm at tipple so hallowed by tradition for their autumn- evening parties. It is a cold punch made by mixing 1 pint of peach brandy, 1 pint of c08 and # pint of Jamaica rum with 1 pint of le111A jwuaicer,.1 lb. of white sugar, and 24 pints te of cold juice, haven't tried it yet myself, and I should be glad to hear from those readers that d°- ,e asking them more particularly to let me ° 0, whether they agree with the redoubtable . Thomas that 'the above isgenerally sufticien_i
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