I find it very sedative after the incessant excitement and speculation
of the shop."

"I should have thought," said Gilbert, "that life in a bookshop
would be delightfully tranquil."

"Far from it. Living in a bookshop is like living in a warehouse
of explosives. Those shelves are ranked with the most furious
combustibles in the world--the brains of men. I can spend
a rainy afternoon reading, and my mind works itself up to such
a passion and anxiety over mortal problems as almost unmans me.
It is terribly nerve-racking. Surround a man with Carlyle,
Emerson, Thoreau, Chesterton, Shaw, Nietzsche, and George Ade--
would you wonder at his getting excited? What would happen
to a cat if she had to live in a room tapestried with catnip?
She would go crazy!"

"Truly, I had never thought of that phase of bookselling,"
said the young man. "How is it, though, that libraries are shrines
of such austere calm? If books are as provocative as you suggest,
one would expect every librarian to utter the shrill screams of
a hierophant, to clash ecstatic castanets in his silent alcoves!"

"Ah, my boy, you forget the card index! Librarians invented that
soothing device for the febrifuge of their souls, just as I fall
back upon the rites of the kitchen. Librarians would all go mad,
those capable of concentrated thought, if they did not have the cool
and healing card index as medicament! Some more of the eggs?"

"Thank you," said Gilbert. "Who was the butler whose name was