Thirty-three epitomal English and American personal essays chosen by a novelist who conceived the reader of his anthology as "a friend spending the evening in happy gossip along the shelves." Selected by Christopher Morley "American Literature" by John Macy "Mary White" by William Allen White "Niagara Falls" by Rupert Brooke "The Almost Perfect State" by Don Marquis "The Man-o'-War's 'Er 'Usband" by David W. Bone "The Market" by William McFee "Holy Ireland" by Joyce Kilmer "A Familiar Preface" by Joseph Conrad "On Drawing" by A. P. Herbert "O. Henry" by O. W. Firkins "The Mowing of a Field" by Hilaire Belloc "The Student Life" by William Osler "The Decline of the Drama" by Stephen Leacock "America and the English Tradition" by Harry Morgan Ayres "The Russian Quarter" by Thomas Burke "A Word for Autumn" by A. A. Milne "A Clergyman" by Max Beerbohm "Samuel Butler: Diogenes of the Victorians" by Stuart P. Sherman "Bed-Books and Night-Lights" by H. M. Tomlinson "The Precept of Peace" by Louise Imogen Guiney "On Lying Awake at Night" by Stewart Edward White "A Woodland Valentine" by Marian Storm "The Elements of Poetry" by George Santayana "Nocturne" by Simeon Strunsky "Beer and Cider" by George Saintsbury "A Free Man's Worship" by Bertrand Russell "Some Historians" by Philip Guedalla "Winter Mist" by Robert Palfrey Utter "Trivia" by Logan Pearsall Smith "Beyond Life" by James Branch Cabell "The Fish Reporter" by Robert Cortes Holliday "Some Nonsense About a Dog" by Harry Esty Dounce "The Fifty-First Dragon" by Heywood Broun