Autobiography Of A Cad by A. I, who write this little book, am in my fiftieth year. For I was born in and I am writing in But I am only presenting to you the story of the first thirty-eight years of my life.
That is to say, it is in that I come before the curtain at the end of my performance, to receive your applause, your derision, or your execration, whichever you will. For myself, it is equal, as our French friends say. Cheers, laughs, or hisses, are all one to me. It is a long time since I was touched or moved by the opinions of the herd. But a reason is owed to you for this apparently arbitrary selection of dates.
Why do you not bring your story down to ? Why break off just at the moment when the world is a-tiptoe to follow your life and career down to its latest moment? But there is a reason. I do not suppose that a high sense of artistic rightness is implanted deep in the bosom of everyone. But, on the other hand, no one was ever less ready than myself to claim a monopoly of such a sense.
There must be a few others, scattered here and there, if one only knew where to look for them, who also have this fine appreciation of what may be called Symmetry.
The modern style is slipshod. No one takes the trouble nowadays to tell a story, to tie up loose ends, to build an arch in which every stone falls truly and certainly into its predestined place so that a thing of symmetrical beauty is left at the end. But those of us who have clung to the classical tradition think otherwise. I chose the year nineteen hundred and twenty-six as the end of my story, because it represented the climax of a symmetrical story. It was in the month of May of that year that I dropped, gently but with what an exquisite accuracy, the keystone into my arch so that my arch stood graceful and strong against whatever storm might blow.
