Are they the same at home? [antikvár]

Author's Note Mr. George Moore once gave me this piece of advice: 'Never write a preface. If you do, the critics will review the preface only, and leave the rest of the book untouched.' This is not a preface but a story, told in order to prove to you that George Moore was speaking truly when he referred to the critics. A few days before our meeting somebody had sent him a review which I had written of his book Celibate Lives. He read the review and it interested him. On the strength of it, he asked me to lunch. I here confess shamelessly that although I reviewed Celibate Lives, I had read only a fraction of it. I had read the preface, which enunciated an appealing theory of sesthetics, and I had read two out of about nine of the stories in order to test the truth of that theory. Life, in the shape of a hundred duties and pleasures, prevented me from reading more. But it did not prevent me from writing my review. So when I went to lunch with him in Ebury Street, here was the scene set for a very pretty comedy - myself at one end of the table, fingering a glass of yellow wine, George Moore at the other end, pink and white, toying with a glass of water, and a parlourmaid hovering in the background with an omelette from which the glory was rapidly departing. 'Which of the stories did you like the best?' crooned Moore. I closed my eyes for a fraction of a second. In those days -long, long ago - at least six months past - I was reviewing half a dozen books a week. I did my best with those books. I read them grimly, conscientiously, usually in their entirety. But in how short a time did they fade from my memory! In how short a time did one heroine blend into another, were the features of one hero inseparable from those of the next, did sunlight and starlight and moonlight blend into a universal dusk of oblivion! I remembered Moore's stories better than almost any others. But in these surroundings, with a parlourmaid breath- 9