Chapter VI
Titania Learns the Business
Although he kept late hours, Roger Mifflin was a prompt riser. It isonly the very young who find satisfaction in lying abed in the morning.Those who approach the term of the fifth decade are sensitively awareof the fluency of life, and have no taste to squander it among theblankets.
The bookseller's morning routine was brisk and habitual. He wasgenerally awakened about half-past seven by the jangling bell thatbalanced on a coiled spring at the foot of the stairs. This ringingannounced the arrival of Becky, the old scrubwoman who came eachmorning to sweep out the shop and clean the floors for the day'straffic. Roger, in his old dressing gown of vermilion flannel, wouldscuffle down to let her in, picking up the milk bottles and the paperbag of baker's rolls at the same time. As Becky propped the front doorwide, opened window transoms, and set about buffeting dust and tobaccosmoke, Roger would take the milk and rolls back to the kitchen and giveBock a morning greeting. Bock would emerge from his literary kennel,and thrust out his forelegs in a genial obeisance. This was partlypoliteness, and partly to straighten out his spine after its all-nightcurvature. Then Roger would let him out into the back yard for a run,himself standing on the kitchen steps to inhale the bright freshness ofthe morning air.
This Saturday morning was clear and crisp. The plain backs of thehomes along Whittier Street, irregular in profile as the margins of afree verse poem, offered Roger an agreeable human panorama. Thinstrands of smoke were rising from chimneys; a belated baker's wagon wasjoggling down the alley; in bedroom bay-windows sheets and pillows werealready set to sun and air. Brooklyn, admirable borough of homes andhearty breakfasts, attacks the morning hours in cheery, smiling spirit.Bock sniffed and rooted about the small back yard as though the earth(every cubic inch of which he already knew by rote) held some newentrancing flavour. Roger watched him with the amused and tendercondescension one always feels toward a happy dog--perhaps the samemood of tolerant paternalism that Gott is said to have felt in watchinghis boisterous Hohenzollerns.
The nipping air began to infiltrate his dressing gown, and Rogerreturned to the kitchen, his small, lively face alight with zest. Heopened the draughts in the range, set a kettle on to boil, and wentdown to resuscitate the furnace. As he came upstairs for his bath,Mrs. Mifflin was descending, fresh and hearty in a starchy morningapron. Roger hummed a tune as he picked up the hairpins on the bedroomfloor, and wondered to himself why women are always supposed to be moretidy than men.
Titania was awake early. She smiled at the enigmatic portrait ofSamuel Butler, glanced at the row of books over her bed, and dressedrapidly. She ran downstairs, eager to begin her experience as abookseller. The first impression the Haunted Bookshop had made on herwas one of superfluous dinginess, and as Mrs. Mifflin refused to lether help get breakfast--except set out the salt cellars--she ran downGissing Street to a little florist's shop she had noticed the previousafternoon. Here she spent at least a week's salary in buyingchrysanthemums and a large pot of white heather. She was distributingthese about the shop when Roger found her.
"Bless my soul!" he said. "How are you going to live on your wages ifyou do that sort of thing? Pay-day doesn't come until next Friday!"
"Just one blow-out," she said cheerfully. "I thought it would be funto brighten the place up a bit. Think how pleased your floorwalkerwill be when he comes in!"
"Dear me," said Roger. "I hope you don't really think we havefloorwalkers in the second-hand book business."
After breakfast he set about initiating his new employee into theroutine of the shop. As he moved about, explaining the arrangement ofhis shelves, he kept up a running commentary.
"Of course all the miscellaneous information that a bookseller has tohave will only come to you gradually," he said. "Such tags of bookshoplore as the difference between Philo Gubb and Philip Gibbs, Mrs. WilsonWoodrow and Mrs. Woodrow Wilson, and all that sort of thing. Don't befrightened by all the ads you see for a book called "Bell and Wing,"because no one was ever heard to ask for a copy. That's one of thereasons why I tell Mr. Gilbert I don't believe in advertising. Someonemay ask you who wrote The Winning of the Best, and you'll have to knowit wasn't Colonel Roosevelt but Mr. Ralph Waldo Trine. The beauty ofbeing a bookseller is that you don't have to be a literary critic: allyou have to do to books is enjoy them. A literary critic is the kindof fellow who will tell you that Wordsworth's Happy Warrior is a poemof 85 lines composed entirely of two sentences, one of 26 lines and oneof 59. What does it matter if Wordsworth wrote sentences almost aslong as those of Walt Whitman or Mr. Will H. Hays, if only he wrote agreat poem? Literary critics are queer birds. There's ProfessorPhelps of Yale, for instance. He publishes a book in 1918 and calls itThe Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century. To my way ofthinking a book of that title oughtn't to be published until 2018.Then somebody will come along and ask you for a book of poems about atypewriter, and by and by you'll learn that what they want isStevenson's Underwoods. Yes, it's a complicated life. Never arguewith customers. Just give them the book they ought to have even ifthey don't know they want it."
They went outside the front door, and Roger lit his pipe. In thelittle area in front of the shop windows stood large empty boxessupported on trestles. "The first thing I always do----," he said.
"The first thing you'll both do is catch your death of cold," saidHelen over his shoulder. "Titania, you run and get your fur. Roger,go and find your cap. With your bald head, you ought to know better!"
When they returned to the front door, Titania's blue eyes weresparkling above her soft tippet.
"I applaud your taste in furs," said Roger. "That is just the colourof tobacco smoke." He blew a whiff against it to prove the likeness.He felt very talkative, as most older men do when a young girl looks asdelightfully listenable as Titania.
"What an adorable little place," said Titania, looking round at thebookshop's space of private pavement, which was sunk below the streetlevel. "You could put tables out here and serve tea in summer time."
"The first thing every morning," continued Roger, "I set out theten-cent stuff in these boxes. I take it in at night and stow it inthese bins. When it rains, I shove out an awning, which is mighty goodbusiness. Someone is sure to take shelter, and spend the time inlooking over the books. A really heavy shower is often worth fifty orsixty cents. Once a week I change my pavement stock. This week I'vegot mostly fiction out here. That's the sort of thing that comes in inunlimited numbers. A good deal of it's tripe, but it serves itspurpose."
"Aren't they rather dirty?" said Titania doubtfully, looking at somelittle blue Rollo books, on which the siftings of generations hadaccumulated. "Would you mind if I dusted them off a bit?"
"It's almost unheard of in the second-hand trade," said Roger; "but itmight make them look better."
Titania ran inside, borrowed a duster from Helen, and beganhousecleaning the grimy boxes, while Roger chatted away in highspirits. Bock already noticing the new order of things, squatted onthe doorstep with an air of being a party to the conversation. Morningpedestrians on Gissing Street passed by, wondering who the bookseller'sengaging assistant might be. "I wish _I_ could find a maid like that,"thought a prosperous Brooklyn housewife on her way to market. "I mustring her up some day and find out how much she gets."
Roger brought out armfuls of books while Titania dusted.
"One of the reasons I'm awfully glad you've come here to help me," hesaid, "is that I'll be able to get out more. I've been so tied down bythe shop, I haven't had a chance to scout round, buy up libraries, makebids on collections that are being sold, and all that sort of thing.My stock is running a bit low. If you just wait for what comes in, youdon't get much of the really good stuff."
Titania was polishing a copy of The Late Mrs. Null. "It must bewonderful to have read so many books," she said. "I'm afraid I'm not avery deep reader, but at any rate Dad has taught me a respect for goodbooks. He gets s
o mad because when my friends come to the house, andhe asks them what they've been reading, the only thing they seem toknow about is Dere Mable."
Roger chuckled. "I hope you don't think I'm a mere highbrow," he said."As a customer said to me once, without meaning to be funny, 'I likeboth the Iliad and the Argosy.' The only thing I can't stand isliterature that is unfairly and intentionally flavoured with vanilla.Confectionery soon disgusts the palate, whether you find it in MarcusAurelius or Doctor Crane. There's an odd aspect of the matter thatsometimes strikes me: Doc Crane's remarks are just as true as LordBacon's, so how is it that the Doctor puts me to sleep in a paragraph,while my Lord's essays keep me awake all night?"
Titania, being unacquainted with these philosophers, pursued thecharacteristic feminine course of clinging to the subject on which shewas informed. The undiscerning have called this habit of mindirrelevant, but wrongly. The feminine intellect leaps like agrasshopper; the masculine plods as the ant.
"I see there's a new Mable book coming," she said. "It's called That'sMe All Over Mable, and the newsstand clerk at the Octagon says heexpects to sell a thousand copies."
"Well, there's a meaning in that," said Roger. "People have a cravingto be amused, and I'm sure I don't blame 'em. I'm afraid I haven'tread Dere Mable. If it's really amusing, I'm glad they read it. Isuspect it isn't a very great book, because a Philadelphia schoolgirlhas written a reply to it called Dere Bill, which is said to be as goodas the original. Now you can hardly imagine a Philadelphia flapperwriting an effective companion to Bacon's Essays. But never mind, ifthe stuff's amusing, it has its place. The human yearning for innocentpastime is a pathetic thing, come to think about it. It shows what adesperately grim thing life has become. One of the most significantthings I know is that breathless, expectant, adoring hush that fallsover a theatre at a Saturday matinee, when the house goes dark and thefootlights set the bottom of the curtain in a glow, and the latecomerstank over your feet climbing into their seats----"
"Isn't it an adorable moment!" cried Titania.
"Yes, it is," said Roger; "but it makes me sad to see what tosh ishanded out to that eager, expectant audience, most of the time. Therethey all are, ready to be thrilled, eager to be worked upon,deliberately putting themselves into that glorious, rare, receptivemood when they are clay in the artist's hand--and Lord! what miserablesubstitutes for joy and sorrow are put over on them! Day after day Isee people streaming into theatres and movies, and I know that morethan half the time they are on a blind quest, thinking they aresatisfied when in truth they are fed on paltry husks. And the sad partabout it is that if you let yourself think you are satisfied withhusks, you'll have no appetite left for the real grain."
Titania wondered, a little panic-stricken, whether she had beenpermitting herself to be satisfied with husks. She remembered howgreatly she had enjoyed a Dorothy Gish film a few evenings before."But," she ventured, "you said people want to be amused. And if theylaugh and look happy, surely they're amused?"
"They only think they are!" cried Mifflin. "They think they're amusedbecause they don't know what real amusement is! Laughter and prayerare the two noblest habits of man; they mark us off from the brutes.To laugh at cheap jests is as base as to pray to cheap gods. To laughat Fatty Arbuckle is to degrade the human spirit."
Titania thought she was getting in rather deep, but she had thetenacious logic of every healthy girl. She said:
"But a joke that seems cheap to you doesn't seem cheap to the personwho laughs at it, or he wouldn't laugh."
Her face brightened as a fresh idea flooded her mind:
"The wooden image a savage prays to may seem cheap to you, but it's thebest god he knows, and it's all right for him to pray to it."
"Bully for you," said Roger. "Perfectly true. But I've got away fromthe point I had in mind. Humanity is yearning now as it never didbefore for truth, for beauty, for the things that comfort and consoleand make life seem worth while. I feel this all round me, every day.We've been through a frightful ordeal, and every decent spirit isasking itself what we can do to pick up the fragments and remould theworld nearer to our heart's desire. Look here, here's something Ifound the other day in John Masefield's preface to one of his plays:'The truth and rapture of man are holy things, not lightly to bescorned. A carelessness of life and beauty marks the glutton, theidler, and the fool in their deadly path across history.' I tell you,I've done some pretty sober thinking as I've sat here in my bookshopduring the past horrible years. Walt Whitman wrote a little poemduring the Civil War--Year that trembled and reeled beneath me, saidWalt, Must I learn to chant the cold dirges of the baffled, and sullenhymns of defeat?--I've sat here in my shop at night, and looked roundat my shelves, looked at all the brave books that house the hopes andgentlenesses and dreams of men and women, and wondered if they were allwrong, discredited, defeated. Wondered if the world were still merelya jungle of fury. I think I'd have gone balmy if it weren't for WaltWhitman. Talk about Mr. Britling--Walt was the man who 'saw itthrough.'
"The glutton, the idler, and the fool in their deadly path acrosshistory. . . . Aye, a deadly path indeed. The German military menweren't idlers, but they were gluttons and fools to the nth power.Look at their deadly path! And look at other deadly paths, too. Lookat our slums, jails, insane asylums. . . .
"I used to wonder what I could do to justify my comfortable existencehere during such a time of horror. What right had I to shirk in aquiet bookshop when so many men were suffering and dying through nofault of their own? I tried to get into an ambulance unit, but I'vehad no medical training and they said they didn't want men of my ageunless they were experienced doctors."
"I know how you felt," said Titania, with a surprising look ofcomprehension. "Don't you suppose that a great many girls, whocouldn't do anything real to help, got tired of wearing neat littleuniforms with Sam Browne belts?"
"Well," said Roger, "it was a bad time. The war contradicted anddenied everything I had ever lived for. Oh, I can't tell you how Ifelt about it. I can't even express it to myself. Sometimes I used tofeel as I think that truly noble simpleton Henry Ford may have feltwhen he organized his peace voyage--that I would do anything, howeverstupid, to stop it all. In a world where everyone was so wise andcynical and cruel, it was admirable to find a man so utterly simple andhopeful as Henry. A boob, they called him. Well, I say bravo forboobs! I daresay most of the apostles were boobs--or maybe they calledthem bolsheviks."
Titania had only the vaguest notion about bolsheviks, but she had seena good many newspaper cartoons.
"I guess Judas was a bolshevik," she said innocently.
"Yes, and probably George the Third called Ben Franklin a bolshevik,"retorted Roger. "The trouble is, truth and falsehood don't come laidout in black and white--Truth and Huntruth, as the wartime joke had it.Sometimes I thought Truth had vanished from the earth," he criedbitterly. "Like everything else, it was rationed by the governments.I taught myself to disbelieve half of what I read in the papers. I sawthe world clawing itself to shreds in blind rage. I saw hardly any onebrave enough to face the brutalizing absurdity as it really was, anddescribe it. I saw the glutton, the idler, and the fool applauding,while brave and simple men walked in the horrors of hell. Thestay-at-home poets turned it to pretty lyrics of glory and sacrifice.Perhaps half a dozen of them have told the truth. Have you readSassoon? Or Latzko's Men in War, which was so damned true that thegovernment suppressed it? Humph! Putting Truth on rations!"
He knocked out his pipe against his heel, and his blue eyes shone witha kind of desperate earnestness.
"But I tell you, the world is going to have the truth about War. We'regoing to put an end to this madness. It's not going to be easy. Justnow, in the intoxication of the German collapse, we're all rejoicing inour new happiness. I tell you, the real Peace will be a long timecoming. When you tear up all the fibres of civilization it's a slowjob to knit things together again. You see those children going downthe stree
t to school? Peace lies in their hands. When they are taughtin school that war is the most loathsome scourge humanity is subjectto, that it smirches and fouls every lovely occupation of the mortalspirit, then there may be some hope for the future. But I'd like tobet they are having it drilled into them that war is a glorious andnoble sacrifice.
"The people who write poems about the divine frenzy of going over thetop are usually those who dipped their pens a long, long way from theslimy duckboards of the trenches. It's funny how we hate to facerealities. I knew a commuter once who rode in town every day on the8.13. But he used to call it the 7.73. He said it made him feel morevirtuous."
There was a pause, while Roger watched some belated urchins hurryingtoward school.
"I think any man would be a traitor to humanity who didn't pledge everyeffort of his waking life to an attempt to make war impossible infuture."
"Surely no one would deny that," said Titania. "But I do think the warwas very glorious as well as very terrible. I've known lots of men whowent over, knowing well what they were to face, and yet went gladly andhumbly in the thought they were going for a true cause."
"A cause which is so true shouldn't need the sacrifice of millions offine lives," said Roger gravely. "Don't imagine I don't see thedreadful nobility of it. But poor humanity shouldn't be asked to benoble at such a cost. That's the most pitiful tragedy of it all.Don't you suppose the Germans thought they too were marching off for anoble cause when they began it and forced this misery on the world?They had been educated to believe so, for a generation. That's theterrible hypnotism of war, the brute mass-impulse, the pride andnational spirit, the instinctive simplicity of men that makes themworship what is their own above everything else. I've thrilled andshouted with patriotic pride, like everyone. Music and flags and menmarching in step have bewitched me, as they do all of us. And thenI've gone home and sworn to root this evil instinct out of my soul.God help us--let's love the world, love humanity--not just our owncountry! That's why I'm so keen about the part we're going to play atthe Peace Conference. Our motto over there will be America Last!Hurrah for us, I say, for we shall be the only nation over there withabsolutely no axe to grind. Nothing but a pax to grind!"
It argued well for Titania's breadth of mind that she was not dismayednor alarmed at the poor bookseller's anguished harangue. She surmisedsagely that he was cleansing his bosom of much perilous stuff. In somemysterious way she had learned the greatest and rarest of the spirit'sgifts--toleration.
"You can't help loving your country," she said.
"Let's go indoors," he answered. "You'll catch cold out here. I wantto show you my alcove of books on the war."
"Of course one can't help loving one's country," he added. "I lovemine so much that I want to see her take the lead in making a new erapossible. She has sacrificed least for war, she should be ready tosacrifice most for peace. As for me," he said, smiling, "I'd bewilling to sacrifice the whole Republican party!"
"I don't see why you call the war an absurdity," said Titania. "We HADto beat Germany, or where would civilization have been?"
"We had to beat Germany, yes, but the absurdity lies in the fact thatwe had to beat ourselves in doing it. The first thing you'll find,when the Peace Conference gets to work, will be that we shall have tohelp Germany onto her feet again so that she can be punished in anorderly way. We shall have to feed her and admit her to commerce sothat she can pay her indemnities--we shall have to police her cities toprevent revolution from burning her up--and the upshot of it all willbe that men will have fought the most terrible war in history, andendured nameless horrors, for the privilege of nursing their enemy backto health. If that isn't an absurdity, what is? That's what happenswhen a great nation like Germany goes insane.
"Well, we're up against some terribly complicated problems. My onlyconsolation is that I think the bookseller can play as useful a part asany man in rebuilding the world's sanity. When I was fretting overwhat I could do to help things along, I came across two lines in myfavourite poet that encouraged me. Good old George Herbert says:
A grain of glory mixed with humblenesse Cures both a fever and lethargicknesse.
"Certainly running a second-hand bookstore is a pretty humble calling,but I've mixed a grain of glory with it, in my own imagination at anyrate. You see, books contain the thoughts and dreams of men, theirhopes and strivings and all their immortal parts. It's in books thatmost of us learn how splendidly worth-while life is. I never realizedthe greatness of the human spirit, the indomitable grandeur of man'smind, until I read Milton's Areopagitica. To read that great outburstof splendid anger ennobles the meanest of us simply because we belongto the same species of animal as Milton. Books are the immortality ofthe race, the father and mother of most that is worth while cherishingin our hearts. To spread good books about, to sow them on fertileminds, to propagate understanding and a carefulness of life and beauty,isn't that high enough mission for a man? The bookseller is the realMr. Valiant-For-Truth.
"Here's my War-alcove," he went on. "I've stacked up here most of thereally good books the War has brought out. If humanity has senseenough to take these books to heart, it will never get itself into thismess again. Printer's ink has been running a race against gunpowderthese many, many years. Ink is handicapped, in a way, because you canblow up a man with gunpowder in half a second, while it may take twentyyears to blow him up with a book. But the gunpowder destroys itselfalong with its victim, while a book can keep on exploding forcenturies. There's Hardy's Dynasts for example. When you read thatbook you can feel it blowing up your mind. It leaves you gasping, ill,nauseated--oh, it's not pleasant to feel some really pure intellectfiltered into one's brain! It hurts! There's enough T. N. T. in thatbook to blast war from the face of the globe. But there's a slow fuseattached to it. It hasn't really exploded yet. Maybe it won't foranother fifty years.
"In regard to the War, think what books have accomplished. What wasthe first thing all the governments started to do--publish books! BlueBooks, Yellow Books, White Books, Red Books--everything but BlackBooks, which would have been appropriate in Berlin. They knew thatguns and troops were helpless unless they could get the books on theirside, too. Books did as much as anything else to bring America intothe war. Some German books helped to wipe the Kaiser off his throne--IAccuse, and Dr. Muehlon's magnificent outburst The Vandal of Europe,and Lichnowsky's private memorandum, that shook Germany to herfoundations, simply because he told the truth. Here's that book Men inWar, written I believe by a Hungarian officer, with its noblededication "To Friend and Foe." Here are some of the Frenchbooks--books in which the clear, passionate intellect of that race,with its savage irony, burns like a flame. Romain Rolland's Au-Dessusde la Melee, written in exile in Switzerland; Barbusse's terrible LeFeu; Duhamel's bitter Civilization; Bourget's strangely fascinatingnovel The Meaning of Death. And the noble books that have come out ofEngland: A Student in Arms; The Tree of Heaven; Why Men Fight, byBertrand Russell--I'm hoping he'll write one on Why Men Are Imprisoned:you know he was locked up for his sentiments! And here's one of themost moving of all--The Letters of Arthur Heath, a gentle, sensitiveyoung Oxford tutor who was killed on the Western front. You ought toread that book. It shows the entire lack of hatred on the part of theEnglish. Heath and his friends, the night before they enlisted, sat upsinging the German music they had loved, as a kind of farewell to theold, friendly joyous life. Yes, that's the kind of thing Wardoes--wipes out spirits like Arthur Heath. Please read it. Thenyou'll have to read Philip Gibbs, and Lowes Dickinson and all the youngpoets. Of course you've read Wells already. Everybody has."
"How about the Americans?" said Titania. "Haven't they writtenanything about the war that's worth while?"
"Here's one that I found a lot of meat in, streaked with philosophicalgristle," said Roger, relighting his pipe. He pulled out a copy ofProfessor Latimer's Progress. "There was one passage that I remembermarking--let'
s see now, what was it?--Yes, here!
"It is true that, if you made a poll of newspaper editors, you mightfind a great many who think that war is evil. But if you were to takea census among pastors of fashionable metropolitan churches--"
"That's a bullseye hit! The church has done for itself with mostthinking men. . . . There's another good passage in Professor Latimer,where he points out the philosophical value of dishwashing. Some ofLatimer's talk is so much in common with my ideas that I've been ratherhoping he'd drop in here some day. I'd like to meet him. As forAmerican poets, get wise to Edwin Robinson----"
There is no knowing how long the bookseller's monologue might havecontinued, but at this moment Helen appeared from the kitchen.
"Good gracious, Roger!" she exclaimed, "I've heard your voice pipingaway for I don't know how long. What are you doing, giving the poorchild a Chautauqua lecture? You must want to frighten her out of thebook business."
Roger looked a little sheepish. "My dear," he said, "I was only layingdown a few of the principles underlying the art of bookselling----"
"It was very interesting, honestly it was," said Titania brightly.Mrs. Mifflin, in a blue check apron and with plump arms floury to theelbow, gave her a wink--or as near a wink as a woman ever achieves (askthe man who owns one).
"Whenever Mr. Mifflin feels very low in his mind about the business,"she said, "he falls back on those highly idealized sentiments. Heknows that next to being a parson, he's got into the worst line thereis, and he tries bravely to conceal it from himself."
"I think it's too bad to give me away before Miss Titania," said Roger,smiling, so Titania saw this was merely a family joke.
"Really truly," she protested, "I'm having a lovely time. I've beenlearning all about Professor Latimer who wrote The Handle of Europe,and all sorts of things. I've been afraid every minute that somecustomer would come in and interrupt us."
"No fear of that," said Helen. "They're scarce in the early morning."She went back to her kitchen.
"Well, Miss Titania," resumed Roger. "You see what I'm driving at. Iwant to give people an entirely new idea about bookshops. The grain ofglory that I hope will cure both my fever and my lethargicness is myconception of the bookstore as a power-house, a radiating place fortruth and beauty. I insist books are not absolutely dead things: theyare as lively as those fabulous dragons' teeth, and being sown up anddown, may chance to spring up armed men. How about Bernhardi? Some ofmy Corn Cob friends tell me books are just merchandise. Pshaw!"
"I haven't read much of Bernard Shaw" said Titania.
"Did you ever notice how books track you down and hunt you out? Theyfollow you like the hound in Francis Thompson's poem. They know theirquarry! Look at that book The Education of Henry Adams! Just watchthe way it's hounding out thinking people this winter. And The FourHorsemen--you can see it racing in the veins of the reading people.It's one of the uncanniest things I know to watch a real book on itscareer--it follows you and follows you and drives you into a corner andMAKES you read it. There's a queer old book that's been chasing me foryears: The Life and Opinions of John Buncle, Esq., it's called. I'vetried to escape it, but every now and then it sticks up its headsomewhere. It'll get me some day, and I'll be compelled to read it.Ten Thousand a Year trailed me the same way until I surrendered. Wordscan't describe the cunning of some books. You'll think you've shakenthem off your trail, and then one day some innocent-looking customerwill pop in and begin to talk, and you'll know he's an unconsciousagent of book-destiny. There's an old sea-captain who drops in herenow and then. He's simply the novels of Captain Marryat put intoflesh. He has me under a kind of spell; I know I shall have to readPeter Simple before I die, just because the old fellow loves it so.That's why I call this place the Haunted Bookshop. Haunted by theghosts of the books I haven't read. Poor uneasy spirits, they walk andwalk around me. There's only one way to lay the ghost of a book, andthat is to read it."
"I know what you mean," said Titania. "I haven't read much BernardShaw, but I feel I shall have to. He meets me at every turn, bullyingme. And I know lots of people who are simply terrorized by H. G.Wells. Every time one of his books comes out, and that's pretty often,they're in a perfect panic until they've read it."
Roger chuckled. "Some have even been stampeded into subscribing to theNew Republic for that very purpose."
"But speaking of the Haunted Bookshop, what's your special interest inthat Oliver Cromwell book?"
"Oh, I'm glad you mentioned it," said Roger. "I must put it back inits place on the shelf." He ran back to the den to get it, and justthen the bell clanged at the door. A customer came in, and theone-sided gossip was over for the time being.