MEREDITH--I think Mifflin's right. You know the kind of place
our shop is: a regular Fifth Avenue store, all plate glass front
and marble columns glowing in the indirect lighting like a birchwood
at full moon. We sell hundreds of dollars' worth of bunkum every day
because people ask for it; but I tell you we do it with reluctance.
It's rather the custom in our shop to scoff at the book-buying
public and call them boobs, but they really want good books--
the poor souls don't know how to get them. Still, Jerry has a certain
grain of truth to his credit. I get ten times more satisfaction
in selling a copy of Newton's The Amenities of Book-Collecting
than I do in selling a copy of--well, Tarzan; but it's poor
business to impose your own private tastes on your customers.
All you can do is to hint them along tactfully, when you get a chance,
toward the stuff that counts.

QUINCY--You remind me of something that happened in our book
department the other day. A flapper came in and said she had
forgotten the name of the book she wanted, but it was something about
a young man who had been brought up by the monks. I was stumped.
I tried her with The Cloister and the Hearth and Monastery Bells
and Legends of the Monastic Orders and so on, but her face was blank.
Then one of the salesgirls overheard us talking, and she guessed it
right off the bat. Of course it was Tarzan.

MIFFLIN--You poor simp, there was your chance to introduce her
to Mowgli and the bandar-log.

QUINCY--True--I didn't think of it.

MIFFLIN--I'd like to get you fellows' ideas about advertising.