Hodgepodge [antikvár]

^oreword'i;The first time I met the term was in "The Adventure of the Missing Three-Quarter," when Sherlock Holmes "stretched out his hand and took down . . . his commonplace book." In my vocabulary, commonplace meant "trite" or "ordinary," and because nothing about the exotic Holmes could possibly be either, I went to the dictionary. There it was: "A book containing memoranda of passages or events for reference." I never saw Holmes's commonplace book, of course, but I have now read Robert Southey's and W. H. Auden's, which so fascinated me that I decided to compile one of my own. Hodgepodge is it.The title might quite as well have been Potpourri or Gallimaufry or Salmagundi or Olla-podrida, or Canapés or Snacks or Chowchow or even Hash. Any word suggesting a miscellany would do, because that is what this book is: a miscellaneous collection of oddities and curiosities, anecdotes, idle thoughts, quips and quizzes, unusual incidents, and bits ofixI I