FOREWORD
SOME years ago I wrote an account of one of Bindle's "little jokes," as he calls them, which appeared in Blackwood's Magazine. As a result the late Mr. William Blackwood on more than one occasion expressed the opinion that a book about Bindle should be written, and suggested that I offer it to him for publication. Other and weighty matters intervened, and Bindle passed out of my thoughts.
Last year, however, the same suggestion was made from other quarters, and in one instance was backed up by a material reasoning that I found irresistible.
A well-known author once assured me that in his opinion the publisher who wrote books should, like the double-headed ass and five-legged sheep, be painlessly put to death, preferably by the Society of Authors, as a menace to what he called "the legitimate."
Authors have been known to become their own publishers, generally, I believe, to their lasting regret; why, therefore, should not a publisher become his own author? At least he would find some difficulty in proving to the world that his failure was due to under-advertising.
12, Arundel Place,
Haymarket, London, S.W.
August, 1916.