BINDLE

SOME CHAPTERS IN THE
LIFE OF JOSEPH BINDLE

BY
HERBERT JENKINS

"Bindle is the greatest Cockney
that has come into being through
the medium of literature since
Dickens wrote Pickwick Papers"
MR. T. P. O'CONNOR, M.P.

HERBERT JENKINS LIMITED
YORK STREET LONDON S.W.1
1916

A
HERBERT
JENKINS
BOOK

Eighteenth Printing Completing 283,711 copies:

Printed In Great Britain at the Athenæum Printing Works, Redhill.

TO

MY MOTHER

WHO AS HER SON'S
BEST FRIEND IS
PROBABLY HIS
WORST CRITIC

FOREWORD

Some years ago I wrote an account of one of Bindle's "little jokes," ashe calls them, which appeared in Blackwood's Magazine. As a resultthe late Mr. William Blackwood on more than one occasion expressed theopinion that a book about Bindle should be written, and suggested thatI offer it to him for publication. Other and weighty mattersintervened, and Bindle passed out of my thoughts.

Last year, however, the same suggestion was made from other quarters,and in one instance was backed up by a material reasoning that I foundirresistible.

A well-known author once assured me that in his opinion the publisherwho wrote books should, like the double-headed ass and five-leggedsheep, be painlessly put to death, preferably by the Society ofAuthors, as a menace to what he called "the legitimate."

Authors have been known to become their own publishers, generally, Ibelieve, to their lasting regret; why, therefore, should not apublisher become his own author? At least he would find somedifficulty in proving to the world that his failure was due tounder-advertising.

H. J.

12, ARUNDEL PLACE,
    HAYMARKET, LONDON, S.W.
August, 1916.

CONTENTS