Literary Lapses

by Stephen Leacock

Literary Lapses  (1910)  by Stephen Leacock

Published in 1910.
one or more chapters are available in a spoken word format.

Table of Contents

• My Financial Career
• Lord Oxhead's Secret
• Boarding-House Geometry
• The Awful Fate of Melpomenus Jones
• A Christmas Letter
• How to Make a Million Dollars
• How to Live to be 200
• How to Avoid Getting Married
• How to Be a Doctor
• The New Food
• A New Pathology
• The Poet Answered
• The Force of Statistics
• Men Who Have Shaved Me
• Getting the Thread of it
• Telling his Faults
• Winter Pastimes
• Number Fifty-Six
• Aristocratic Education
• The Conjurer's Revenge
• Hints to Travellers
• A Manual of Education
• Hoodoo McFiggin's Christmas
• The Life of John Smith
• On Collecting Things
• Society Chit-Chat
• Insurance up to Date
• Borrowing a Match
• A Lesson in Fiction
• Helping the Armenians
• A Study in Still Life: The Country Hotel
• An Experiment with Policeman Hogan
• The Passing of the Poet
• Self-Made Men
• A Model Dialogue
• Back to the Bush
• Reflections on Riding
• Saloonio
• Half-Hours with the Poets--

  I. Mr. Wordsworth and the Little Cottage Girl

  II. How Tennyson Killed the May Queen

  III. Old Mr. Longfellow on Board the Hesperus

• A, B, and C

Acknowledgments

Many of the sketches which form the present volume have already appeared in print. Others of them are new. Of the re-printed pieces, "Melpomenus Jones," "Policeman Hogan," "A Lesson in Fiction," and many others were contributions by the author to the New York Truth. The "Boarding-House Geometry" first appeared in Truth, and was subsequently republished in the London Punch, and in a great many other journals. The sketches called the "Life of John Smith," "Society Chit-Chat," and "Aristocratic Education" appeared in Puck. "The New Pathology" was first printed in the Toronto Saturday Night, and was subsequently republished by the London Lancet, and by various German periodicals in the form of a translation. The story called "Number Fifty-Six" is taken from the Detroit Free Press. "My Financial Career" was originally contributed to the New York Life, and has been frequently reprinted. The Articles "How to Make a Million Dollars" and "How to Avoid Getting Married," etc. are reproduced by permission of the Publishers' Press Syndicate. The wide circulation which some of the above sketches have enjoyed has encouraged the author to prepare the present collection.

The author desires to express his sense of obligation to the proprietors of the above journals who have kindly permitted him to republish the contributions which appeared in their columns.

This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1923. The author died in 1944, so this work is also in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 60 years or less. This work may also be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.