Is it any wonder that I am driven to
offer to young people in our suburbs the desperate advice: Do
something that will get you into trouble? But please do not suppose
that I defend a state of things which makes such advice the best that
can be given under the circumstances, or that I do not know how
difficult it is to find out a way of getting into trouble that will
combine loss of respectability with integrity of self-respect and
reasonable consideration for other peoples' feelings and interests on
every point except their dread of losing their own respectability.
But when there's a will there's a way. I hate to see dead people
walking about: it is unnatural. And our respectable middle class
people are all as dead as mutton. Out of the mouth of Mrs Knox I have
delivered on them the judgment of her God.
The critics whom I have lampooned in the induction to this play under
the names of Trotter, Vaughan, and Gunn will forgive me: in fact Mr
Trotter forgave me beforehand, and assisted the make-up by which Mr
Claude King so successfully simulated his personal appearance. The
critics whom I did not introduce were somewhat hurt, as I should have
been myself under the same circumstances; but I had not room for them
all; so I can only apologize and assure them that I meant no
disrespect.
The concealment of the authorship, if a _secret de Polichinelle_ can
be said to involve concealment, was a necessary part of the play.
Pages:
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25