However, she
married him in the end all right.
But if you don't call your book Phyllis or John Temple or Mrs.
Elmsley, what--I hear you asking--are you to call it? Well, you
might call it Kapak, as I see somebody has done. The beauty of
Kapak as a title is that if you come into the shop by the back
entrance, and so approach the book from the wrong end, it is
still Kapak. A title which looks the same from either end is of
immense advantage to an author. Besides, in this particular case
there is a mystery about Kapak which one is burning to solve. Is
it the bride's pet name for her father-in-law, the password into
the magic castle, or that new stuff with which you polish brown
boots? Or is it only a camera? Let us buy the book at once and
find out.
Another mystery title is The Man with Thicker Beard, which
probably means something. It is like Kapak in this, that it reads
equally well backwards; but it is not so subtle. Still, we should
probably be lured on to buy it. On the other hand, A Welsh
Nightingale and a Would-be Suffragette is just the sort of book
to which we would not be tempted by the title. It is bad enough
to have to say to the shopman, "Have you A Welsh Nightingale and
a Would-be Suffragette?" but if we forgot the title, as we
probably should, and had to ask at random for a would-be
nightingale and a Welsh suffragette, or a wood nightingale and a
Welsh rabbit, or the Welsh suffragette's night in gaol, we should
soon begin to wish that we had decided on some quite simple book
such as Greed, Earth, or Jonah.
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