Punch, or the London Charivari, page 9 by Various Authors
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Dash, taking it for granted that I knew it more or less by heart.
So having read some of Darnock's earlier work and thought it good, I acquired a copy of Dash and settled down to it.
I had not read more than two pages when it occurred to me that I ought to know what the other books in the library parcel were; so I went to look at them. One was a series of episodes in the career of a wonderful blind policeman who, in spite of his infirmity, performed prodigies of tact on point duty, and by the time I had finished glancing through this it was bed-time. I put Dash under my arm, for I always read for half-an-hour or so in bed. How it happened I cannot imagine, but when I picked up the book and began to read I found, much to my surprise, that it was the other library novel.
"Have you begun Dash yet?" B. asked me at lunch.
"Oh, yes, rather," I said.
"I envy you," he replied. "How far have you got?"
"Not very far yet," I said.
"It's fine, isn't it?" he remarked.
"Fine."
The next evening I had just taken up Dash again when I remembered that that other novel must be finished if it was to be changed on the morrow, so I turned dutifully to that instead. It was a capital story about a criminal who murdered people in an absolutely undetectable way by lending them a poisoned pencil which would not mark until the point was moistened. I enjoyed it thoroughly.
The next evening I was getting on famously with the fifth page of Dash when the library parcel again arrived, containing two new books for those I had returned in the morning.
Meeting C. the next day he asked me if I did not think Dash the finest thing I had ever read.
I said yes, but asked him if he had not found it a little difficult to get into.
"Possibly," he said, "possibly. But what a reward!"
"You like books all in long conversations?" I asked.
"I love Dash," he said, "anyway."<