The Fourteen Points

The author of Craig Kennedy cradled his occipital protuberance in the hollows of his palms, looked aloft for a few moments, and made this amazing retort: "Not a bad idea, but you've left out one of the senses." "For example?" "The sixth—common sense. Now with the points of the compass, the elements, and the six senses we've got fourteen points. Very much obliged. Seven thousand words on each of these separate subjects means ninetyeight thousand words. Just the right length for a book. The return of Craig Kennedy!" He purred the last sentence. "Can you use these tales at the rate of two a month?" The blond gentleman had suddenly become a colossus. Dazed, yet aware that something important had occurred, I offered my hand as a sign that a bargain had been concluded. Exit the blue-eyed man who had shown such incredible speed and dexterity in the merchandising of his imagination. A preface is a dangerous thing, the more so because it appears in the same volume with the material that inspires it. It is like a cross-word puzzle; when it seems perfectly all right in the horizontal it is imperfect in the perpendicular. Some day a magnificent preface will be written to a book that has never been printed, and under the circumstances the book never should be printed.