I Speak for Myself

AFTER forty years of service as literary editor of the Boston Transcript, Mr. Edgett comes out with an autobiography on a new plan — new, at least, to us — which seems really a sensible one. The book is made up of ninety-five chapters, running mostly to two or three pages apiece, following no set sequence, not even chronological. It is a series of vignettes, each dealing with some person, group, institution, or circumstance to which the author has stood in some sort of noteworthy relation. We are immensely taken with this autobiographical scheme; its advantages to both writer and reader are so obvious that one wonders why it has not been more generally adopted. The spirit of the book is admirable. Mr. Edgett reveals himself as a lonely survivor of that superb breed which was marked by the very noblest of ecbt-American virtues — cussedness. He thinks clearly, knows what he thinks, unlimbers it good and hot, and if anyone takes umbrage it is just too bad. If there are any readers left in America who respect this virtue, who are sick of milk-and-bilgewater journalism, wheel-horse editing, and what Mr. Jefferson called ‘the interested clamours and sophistry’ of propaganda, we can promise them great comfort and encouragement from this work of a kindred spirit.