Abstract

In the Driftway

"Not being a gentleman, at least by the Wildean definition, the Drifter is never rude except by inadvertence. That is the reason, perhaps, why examples of deliberate, unprovoked insults have for him a horrid fascination. He blushes for the perpetrator even more than for the victim, and lie is proud to say that he has never been able to understand fully the motive behind some of the classical specimens of which he has made a collection." These reflections are occasioned by an anecdote in Berton Braley's recently published autobiography, "Pegasus Pulls a Hack." Some excuse might even be found journalist W.S. Gilbert on that occasion when he said to the editor of "Punch" that the latter must receive a good many amusing manuscripts, and then, when he got a modestly affirmative answer, came out with the devastating question, "Why don't you publish some of them ?"