opportunities, as most New York men do, and so I thought you would be
glad of a lesson or two."

"I shall be very glad of it indeed. I don't know what our opportunities
are, but if most New York men are like me I imagine a great many of
them are in the same fix. We have very little time for the study of the
literature of any country."

"And perhaps very little inclination."

"Well, you know, Miss Earle, there is some excuse for a busy man. Don't
you think there is?"

"I don't think there is very much. Who in America is a busier man than
Mr. Gladstone? Yet he reads nearly everything, and is familiar with
almost any subject you can mention."

"Oh, Gladstone! Well, he is a man of a million. But you take the average
New York man. He is worried in business, and kept on the keen jump all
the year round. Then he has a vacation, say for a couple of weeks or a
month, in summer, and he goes off into the woods with his fishing kit,
or canoeing outfit, or his amateur photographic set, or whatever the
tools of his particular fad may be. He goes to a book-store and buys up
a lot of paper-covered novels. There is no use of buying an expensive
book, because he would spoil it before he gets back, and he would
be sure to leave it in some shanty. So he takes those paper-covered
abominations, and you will find torn copies of them scattered all
through the Adirondacks, and down the St. Lawrence, and everywhere else
that tourists congregate. I always tell the book-store man to give me
the worst lot of trash he has got, and he does. Now, what is that book