The Leacock Roundabout

New York: Dodd Mead & Co, 1946 Apparent first edition 1946 Dodd Mead, a collection of humerous essays by Stephen Leacock. No dust jacket. Nice generic gift inscription on ffep, "to mother from son,`` which should be reuseable! Nice peach coloured boards with gilt lettering, with small pencil eraser size stain on front board. Upper page edge dyed green. Very slight yellowing of pages but on the whole Very Good. It`s been some time since I read any Leacock, so I briefly reviewed the offerings here and indeed, he writes very well and can be very funny. One enjoyable bit, from the Chapter, `Humour as I See It,``I can imagine a group of prehistoric men standing round the ice-hole where he had disappeared and laughing until their sides split. If there had been such a thing as a prehistoric newspaper, the affair would have been headed up: ``Amusing Incident. Unknown Gentleman Breaks Through Ice and Is Drowned.`` But our sense of humour under civiilization has been weakened, Much of the fun of this sort of thing has been lost on us. Children, however, still retain a large share of this primitive sense of enjoyment.``