The Corn Cob Club[1]


[1] The latter half of this chapter may be omitted by all readers
who are not booksellers.


The Haunted Bookshop was a delightful place, especially of an evening,
when its drowsy alcoves were kindled with the brightness of lamps
shining on the rows of volumes. Many a passer-by would stumble down
the steps from the street in sheer curiosity; others, familiar visitors,
dropped in with the same comfortable emotion that a man feels on
entering his club. Roger's custom was to sit at his desk in the rear,
puffing his pipe and reading; though if any customer started
a conversation, the little man was quick and eager to carry it on.
The lion of talk lay only sleeping in him; it was not hard to goad
it up.

It may be remarked that all bookshops that are open in the evening
are busy in the after-supper hours. Is it that the true book-lovers
are nocturnal gentry, only venturing forth when darkness and silence
and the gleam of hooded lights irresistibly suggest reading?
Certainly night-time has a mystic affinity for literature,
and it is strange that the Esquimaux have created no great books.
Surely, for most of us, an arctic night would be insupportable
without O. Henry and Stevenson. Or, as Roger Mifflin remarked during
a passing enthusiasm for Ambrose Bierce, the true noctes ambrosianae
are the noctes ambrose bierceianae.

But Roger was prompt in closing Parnassus at ten o'clock. At that hour