Preface
Reading edition
These papers are selections from a series contributed weekly, without intermission, to the New Statesman since April 1913. I do not feel that the responsibility for reprinting them rests on my shoulders; I trust that where it does rest it will rest lightly. I shall have done all I hope to do if I have produced the sort of book that one reads in, without tedium, for ten minutes before one goes to sleep.
The pseudonym “Solomon Eagle,” I may explain, is not intended to posit any claim to unusual wisdom or abnormally keen sight. The original bearer of the name was a poor maniac who, during the Great Plague of London, used to run naked through the street, with a pan of coals of fire on his head, crying “Repent, repent.”
S. E.