The Haunted Bookshop

earns the

nd satisfaction in lying abed in the morning. Those who approach the term of the fifth decade a

is old dressing gown of vermilion flannel, would scuffle down to let her in, picking up the milk bottles and the paper bag of baker's rolls at the same time. As Becky propped the front door wide, opened window transoms, and set about buffeting dust and tobacco smoke, Roger would take the milk and rolls back to the kitchen and give Bock a morning g

n the alley; in bedroom bay-windows sheets and pillows were already set to sun and air. Brooklyn, admirable borough of homes and hearty breakfasts, attacks the morning hours in cheery, smiling spirit. Bock sniffed and rooted about the small back yard as though the earth (every cubic i

ge, set a kettle on to boil, and went down to resuscitate the furnace. As he came upstairs for his bath, Mrs. Mifflin was descending, fresh and hearty in a starchy

rst impression the Haunted Bookshop had made on her was one of superfluous dinginess, and as Mrs. Mifflin refused to let her help get breakfast-except set out the salt cellars-she ran down Gissing Street to a little

to live on your wages if you do that sort of

t would be fun to brighten the place up a bit. Think h

on't really think we have floorwalke

o the routine of the shop. As he moved about, explaining the

nd you'll have to know it wasn't Colonel Roosevelt but Mr. Ralph Waldo Trine. The beauty of being a bookseller is that you don't have to be a literary critic: all you have to do to books is enjoy them. A literary critic is the kind of fellow who will tell you that Wordsworth's Happy Warrior is a poem of 85 lines composed entirely of two sentences, one of 26 lines and one of 59. What does it matter if Wordsworth wrote sentences almost as long as those of Walt Whitman or Mr. Will H. Hays, if only he wrote a great poem? Literary critic

little area in front of the shop windows stood large empty boxe

elen over his shoulder. "Titania, you run and get your fur. Roger, g

door, Titania's blue eyes were

moke." He blew a whiff against it to prove the likeness. He felt very talkative,

bookshop's space of private pavement, which was sunk below the stree

which is mighty good business. Someone is sure to take shelter, and spend the time in looking over the books. A really heavy shower is often worth fifty or sixty cents. Once a week I

some little blue Rollo books, on which the siftings of generatio

cond-hand trade," said Roger; "bu

gs, squatted on the doorstep with an air of being a party to the conversation. Morning pedestrians on Gissing Street passed by, wondering who the bookseller's engaging assistan

armfuls of books w

d down by the shop, I haven't had a chance to scout round, buy up libraries, make bids on collections that are being sold, and all

d I'm not a very deep reader, but at any rate Dad has taught me a respect for good books. He gets so mad because when my fr

d is literature that is unfairly and intentionally flavoured with vanilla. Confectionery soon disgusts the palate, whether you find it in Marcus Aurelius or Doctor Crane. There's an odd aspect of the

inging to the subject on which she was informed. The undiscerning have called this habit of mind irre

called That's Me All Over Mable, and the newsstand clerk

which is said to be as good as the original. Now you can hardly imagine a Philadelphia flapper writing an effective companion to Bacon's Essays. But never mind, if the stuff's amusing, it has its place. The human yearning for innocent pastime is a pathetic thing, come to think about it. It shows what a desperately

orable moment!"

rious, rare, receptive mood when they are clay in the artist's hand-and Lord! what miserable substitutes for joy and sorrow are put over on them! Day after day I see people streaming into theatres and movies, and I know that more than half the

husks. She remembered how greatly she had enjoyed a Dorothy Gish film a few evenings before. "But," sh

ment is! Laughter and prayer are the two noblest habits of man; they mark us off from the brutes. To laugh at

ther deep, but she had the tenacious

doesn't seem cheap to the person who

ed as a fresh ide

cheap to you, but it's the best god he know

d 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 be scorned. A carelessness of life and beauty marks the glutton, the idler, 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 bookshop during the past horrible years. Walt Whitman wrote a little poem during the Civil War-Year that trembled and reeled beneath me, said Walt, Must I

d. The German military men weren't idlers, but they were gluttons and fools to the nth power. Look a

hirk in a quiet bookshop when so many men were suffering and dying through no fault of their own? I tried to get into an ambul

n. "Don't you suppose that a great many girls, who couldn't do anything rea

I think that truly noble simpleton Henry Ford may have felt when he organized his peace voyage-that I would do anything, however stupid, to stop it all. In a world where everyone was so wise and cynical and c

n about bolsheviks, but she had se

s a bolshevik," s

rationed by the governments. I taught myself to disbelieve half of what I read in the papers. I saw the world clawing itself to shreds in blind rage. I saw hardly any one brave enough to face the brutalizing absurdity as it really was, and describe it. I saw the glutton, the idler, and the fool applauding, while b

s heel, and his blue eyes shone wi

will be a long time coming. When you tear up all the fibres of civilization it's a slow job to knit things together again. You see those children going down the street to school? Peace lies in their hands. When they are taught in school that war is the most

ong, long way from the slimy duckboards of the trenches. It's funny how we hate to face realities. I knew a commuter

ger watched some belated ur

who didn't pledge every effort of his waking lif

s well as very terrible. I've known lots of men who went over, knowing well what they were

orld? They had been educated to believe so, for a generation. That's the terrible hypnotism of war, the brute mass-impulse, the pride and national spirit, the instinctive simplicity of men that makes them worship what is their own above everything else. I've thrilled and shouted with patriotic pride, like everyone. Music and flags and men marching in step have bewitched me, as they do all of us. A

eller's anguished harangue. She surmised sagely that he was cleansing his bosom of much perilous stu

loving your co

'll catch cold out here. I want to sh

ke the lead in making a new era possible. She has sacrificed least for war, she should be ready to sacrif

dity," said Titania. "We HAD to beat Germa

hat she can be punished in an orderly way. We shall have to feed her and admit her to commerce so that she can pay her indemnities-we shall have to police her cities to prevent revolution from burning her up-and the upshot of it all will be tha

n play as useful a part as any man in rebuilding the world's sanity. When I was fretting over what I could do to

ory mixed wit

fever and let

worth-while life is. I never realized the greatness of the human spirit, the indomitable grandeur of man's mind, until I read Milton's Areopagitica. To read that great outburst of splendid anger ennobles the meanest of us simply because we belong to the same species of animal as Milton. Books are the immor

ay, because you can blow up a man with gunpowder in half a second, while it may take twenty years to blow him up with a book. But the gunpowder destroys itself along with its victim, while a book can keep on exploding for centuries. There's Hardy's Dynasts for example. When you read that book you can feel it blowing up your

ruth. Here's that book Men in War, written I believe by a Hungarian officer, with its noble dedication "To Friend and Foe." Here are some of the French books-books in which the clear, passionate intellect of that race, with its savage irony, burns like a flame. Romain Rolland's Au-Dessus de la Melee, written in exile in Switzerland; Barbusse's terrible Le Feu; Duhamel's bitter Civilization; Bourget's strangely fascinating novel The Meaning of Death. And the noble books that have come out of England: A Student in Arms; The Tree of Heaven; Why Men Fight, by Bertrand Russell-I'm hoping he'll write one on Why Men Are Imprisoned: you know he was loc

ania. "Haven't they written anythin

d Roger, relighting his pipe. He pulled out a copy of Professor Latimer's Progress.

ht find a great many who think that war is evil. But if you were t

mer, where he points out the philosophical value of dishwashing. Some of Latimer's talk is so much in common with my ideas tha

's monologue might have continued, but at t

for I don't know how long. What are you doing, giving the poor child a C

said, "I was only laying down a few of the p

lin, in a blue check apron and with plump arms floury to the elbow, gave her

lls back on those highly idealized sentiments. He knows that next to being a parson, h

re Miss Titania," said Roger, smiling, so

about Professor Latimer who wrote The Handle of Europe, and all sorts of things.

hey're scarce in the early mornin

nd my lethargicness is my conception of the bookstore as a power-house, a radiating place for truth and beauty. I insist books are not absolutely dead things: they are as lively as th

uch of Bernard Sh

a queer old book that's been chasing me for years: The Life and Opinions of John Buncle, Esq., it's called. I've tried to escape it, but every now and then it sticks up its head somewhere. 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. Words can't describe the cunning of some books. You'll think you've shaken them off your trail, and then one day some innocent-looking customer will pop in and begin to talk, and you'll know he's a

ts me at every turn, bullying me. And I know lots of people who are simply terrorized by H. G. Wells. Every

n stampeded into subscribing to the

kshop, what's your special inter

the shelf." He ran back to the den to get it, and just then the bell clanged at t