Selected Works of P. G. Wodehouse

The roof of the Sheridan Apartment House, near Washington Square, New York. Let us examine it. There will be stirring happenings on this roof in due season, and it is well to know the ground.

The Sheridan stands in the heart of New York's Bohemian and artistic quarter. If you threw a brick from any of its windows, you would be certain to brain some rising interior decorator, some Vorticist sculptor or a writer of revolutionary vers libre. And a very good thing, too. Its roof, cosy, compact and ten storeys above the street, is flat, paved with tiles and surrounded by a low wall, jutting up at one end of which is an iron structureÑthe fire-escape. Climbing down this, should the emergency occur, you would find yourself in the open-air premises of the Purple Chicken restaurantÑone of those numerous oases in this great city where, in spite of the law of Prohibition, you can still, so the cognoscenti whisper, "always get it if they know you." A useful thing to remember.

On the other side of the roof, opposite the fire-escape, stands what is technically known as a "small bachelor apartment, penthouse style." It is a white-walled, red-tiled bungalow, and the small bachelor who owns it is a very estimable young man named George Finch, originally from East Gilead, Idaho, but now, owing to a substantial legacy from an uncle, a unit of New York's Latin Quarter. For George, no longer being obliged to earn a living, has given his suppressed desires play by coming to the metropolis and trying his hand at painting. From boyhood up he had always wanted to be an artist; and now he is an artist; and, what is more, probably the worst artist who ever put brush to canvas.

For the rest, that large round thing that looks like a captive balloon is the water-tank. That small oblong thing that looks like a summer-house is George Finch's outdoor sleeping-porch. Those things that look like potted shrubs are potted shrubs. That stoutish man sweeping with a broom is George's valet, cook, and man-of-all-work, Mullett.

And this imposing figure with the square chin and the horn-rimmed spectacles which, as he comes out from the door leading to the stairs, flash like jewels in the sun, is no less a person than J. Hamilton Beamish, author of the famous Beamish Booklets ("Read Them and Make the World Your Oyster") which have done so much to teach the populace of the United States observation, perception, judgment, initiative, will-power, decision, business acumen, resourcefulness, organisation, directive ability, self-confidence, driving-power, originalityÑand, in fact, practically everything else from Poultry-Farming to Poetry.

The first emotion which any student of the Booklets would have felt on seeing his mentor in the fleshÑapart from that natural awe which falls upon us when we behold the greatÑwould probably have been surprise at finding him so young. Hamilton Beamish was still in the early thirties. But the brain of Genius ripens quickly: and those who had the privilege of acquaintance with Mr. Beamish at the beginning of his career say that he knew everything there was to be knownÑor behaved as if he didÑat the age of ten.