income, and I, the humblest of the bookman tribe, following in the
rear, trembling like a skiff in the wake of an ocean liner. "There,"
he said, with his thumbs in the armholes of his waistcoat, "what do
you think of that?" And THAT was without question a very large and
ornate and costly mahogany bookcase with glass doors. Before I saw
the doors I had no doubt about my host, but they were a seal upon my
faith, for although a bookman is obliged to have one bit of glass in
his garden for certain rare plants from Russia and Morocco, to say
nothing of the gold and white vellum lily upon which the air must not
be allowed to blow, especially when charged with gas and rich in
dust, yet he hates this conservatory, just as much as he loves its
contents. His contentment is to have the flowers laid out in open
beds, where he can pluck a blossom at will. As often as one sees the
books behind doors, and most of all when the doors are locked, then
he knows that the owner is not their lover, who keeps tryst with them
in the evening hours when the work of the day is done, but their
jailer, who has bought them in the market-place for gold, and holds
them in this foreign place by force. It has seemed to me as if
certain old friends looked out from their prison with appealing
glance, and one has been tempted to break the glass and let, for
instance, Elia go free. It would be like the emancipation of a
slave. Elia was not, good luck for him, within this particular
prison, and I was brought back from every temptation to break the
laws of property by my chairman, who was still pursuing his
catechism. "What," was question two, "do you think I paid for THAT?"
It was a hopeless catechism, for I had never possessed anything like
THAT, and none of my friends had in their homes anything like THAT,
and in my wildest moments I had never asked the price of such a thing
as THAT. As it loomed up before me in its speckless respectability
and insolence of solid wealth my English sense of reverence for money