UC-NRLF 
 
 THE 
 
 SECRET 
 
 BOOK 
 
 Gxplictt 
 
 EDMUND L.PEARSON 
 
THE SECRET BOOK 
 
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 HEW YORK BOSTON CHICAGO DALLAS 
 ATLANTA SAN FRANCISCO 
 
 MACMILLAN & CO., LIMITED 
 
 LONDON BOMBAY CALCUTTA 
 MELBOURNE 
 
 THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD. 
 
 TORONTO 
 
The 
 
 SECRET BOOK 
 
 BY 
 
 EDMUND LESTER PEARSON 
 
 AUTHOR OF " THE VOYAGE OF THE HOPPERGRASS 
 "THE OLD LIBRARIAN S ALMANACK"; ETC. 
 
 NVm fork 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 1914 
 
 All rights reserved 
 
SCHOOL 
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1914 
 
 BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 Set up and electrotyped. Published April, 1914. 
 
To 
 JOHN COTTON DANA, ESQ. 
 
 Sir: 
 
 To you, a lover of books, not only for their con 
 tents, but for their dress and appearance, I would 
 like to bring one written, printed, and even bound by 
 my own hands. I had best stick, however, to the 
 only one of those arts which I know. 
 
 Here is the book, then, / will not say "such 
 as it is," nor "an ill-favoured thing, but mine own," 
 nor use any of those phrases of mock-modesty. 
 It gave me pleasure to write, and, I hope, will give 
 you pleasure to read. 
 
 Moreover, it is to remind you not only of gratitude 
 felt for a word of encouragement spoken at the right 
 moment, but also of those lucky days when I chanced 
 upon The Old Librarian s Almanack, that secret 
 book of Jared Bean, which you and your Brothers 
 so ingeniously set forth in type. How some, of 
 severe and acid turn of mind, preached unto us upon 
 the s.tate of our morals! And how many others, of 
 generous temper, rejoiced and made merry with us! 
 Will you ever forget? 
 
 I am, Sir, 
 
 Your Good Friend, and 
 Obliged, Humble Servant 
 
 EDMUND LESTER PEARSON 
 NEWBURYPORT 
 February n, 1914. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I. THE SECRET BOOK i 
 
 II. RYERSON S ADVENTURES 22 
 
 III. DICKENS S SECRET BOOK 44 
 
 IV. ON PIRATES 70 
 
 V. A NUMBER or THINGS 97 
 
 VI. FORGOTTEN BOOKS 120 
 
 VII. LAURISTON 144 
 
 VIII. "BOOK-LEARNING" 150 
 
 IX. ? ? ? I7 o 
 
 X. IMMORAL BOOKS 189 
 
 XL HOWTO WRITE A "BEST-SELLER" 208 
 
 XII. OUT or THE FOG 243 
 
 INDEX 251 
 
NOTE 
 
 A large part of this book has been contributed, 
 in different form, to the Boston Evening Trans 
 cript. Some of it is printed now for the first 
 
 time. 
 
 E. L. P. 
 
THE SECRET BOOK 
 
THE SECRET BOOK 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE SECRET BOOK 
 
 I shall never again visit the library in Gower 
 Street. Never shall I sit in that dim alcove 
 where the window looked out upon the high 
 wall of the churchyard, where the fog blew 
 by like smoke, and the air smelt of primroses. 
 All those shelves upon shelves of books are 
 lost to me; all those tall folios; and the duodec 
 imos in vellum with odd designs in gold and 
 ivory upon their sides; all the heavy volumes 
 with curious silver clasps set with garnets 
 and there were hundreds whose covers I had 
 not so much as opened! I shall never read 
 again in that slim book of Louis de Villars 
 
2 THE SECRET BOOK 
 
 and never this is the bitterest regret of all 
 never find again The Secret Book of Cassius 
 Parmensis! 
 
 Those books are lost to me, now; the old 
 omnibus never passes my door, and the con 
 ductor, who had a bouquet of gentians in his 
 hand, has disappeared with the rest. 
 
 Besides, it may not be wise to go back. 
 For I murdered the old man who was there 
 infernal old prowler! I led him up into the 
 garret, and finished him, and stuffed him in 
 under the eaves, behind a chest, among dusty 
 maps and things. So it wouldn t be safe to go 
 back. 
 
 This is how it happened. When I came 
 home from Louisiana, just because I said 
 I had a headache they put me to bed, and 
 brought in that nurse with the big hands, 
 and began to give me hot milk. I hate hot 
 milk, and after I had taken sixty-five glasses 
 
THE SECRET BOOK 3 
 
 of it, I refused, firmly, to drink any more. 
 The nurse begged me to take it, and said 
 she would do anything I liked, if I would 
 drink one more glass. 
 
 "All right," I said, "you give me a first 
 folio Shakespeare, and I ll drink two more." 
 
 I thought I had her there. But I hadn t. 
 What did that viper, that snake, of a woman 
 do but go out of the room, and come back 
 again with a first folio! You can t reckon with 
 a person like that. So I drank the milk, and 
 watched her. 
 
 Then she took to growing older, and bring 
 ing a bigger thermometer for me to swallow 
 every time she came in. I am perfectly willing 
 to swallow a decent sized thermometer, but I 
 will leave it to anyone if a thing about the 
 size of a rain-spout is a Christian thermome 
 ter. And she had grown ninety-five years 
 old, and ought to have been at home, mum 
 bling by the chimney corner, and smoking a 
 
4 THE SECRET BOOK 
 
 pipe. I told her so, but she wouldn t go. 1 
 I tried to reason with her, but she was as 
 stinate as a mule. 
 
 Then it struck me that perhaps she di 
 have a chimney corner to mumble in, ar 
 asked her. She said she hadn t one, s 
 apologized (for I didn t want to hurt the 
 creature s feelings), but I said she must 
 somewhere and mumble. I put it to 
 straight: would she go somewhere and mum 
 
 She said she didn t know how to do 
 Ridiculous quibble! A person of her age 
 told her it was time to learn, and I off< 
 to pay expenses if she would take lessons 
 would foot all the bills, I said, and put 
 through a first-class Institution for Mumbl 
 
 Then she went out of the room again, 
 that decided me. I wouldn t stay until 
 came back, for she got ten or fifteen y< 
 older every time she went away, and I 
 not going to stand for that sort of thing. 
 
THE SECRET BOOK 5 
 
 was hideous to think about. Moreover, she 
 always brought a bigger thermometer with her, 
 each time she came, and I had gone my limit 
 on thermometers. I would get up and leave. 
 There would be plenty of time, for she wouldn t 
 return for at least ten years. 
 
 So I climbed out and put on some clothes. 
 Then I went down stairs, remembered I had 
 no money, and started back to get some. 
 Luckily, however, I saw a cent on the hall 
 table. I had found that cent, one day, on the 
 doorsteps, and left it on the table. So I took 
 it, and went out. 
 
 It was a dark day, rather foggy, and there 
 was a little snow on the ground. I stood at 
 the edge of the sidewalk, and pretty soon the 
 omnibus came up the street. The driver was 
 waving his whip in the air, in long, slow 
 circles over the horses backs, smiling gaily, 
 and singing: 
 
6 THE SECRET BOOK 
 
 Course I know I hadn t orter 
 Brandy n water, brandy n water 
 Oh, my! 
 
 He winked familiarly at me, and drew up 
 at the curb. I was helped into the omnibus 
 by the conductor, who had a fuzzy red beard. 
 He carried, in one hand, a bouquet of blue 
 gentians. This was a remarkable thing for a 
 conductor to do, but he was evidently a re 
 markable conductor. 
 
 "This bus only goes as far as Henrietta s 
 House," he observed. 
 
 "Oh, that s ever so much farther than I 
 want to go," I replied. And I handed him 
 my cent. It was a big cent as big as a 
 saucer and he put it into the breast pocket 
 of his coat. The top of it stuck out and I 
 could see the feathers on the Indian woman s 
 head. It struck me that it looked very much 
 like a sunflower, and the same idea must have 
 come to the conductor, too, for presently he 
 
THE SECRET BOOK 7 
 
 drew it out and put it in his button-hole, and 
 it was a sunflower. Very fine it looked against 
 his red whiskers. 
 
 Presently he rang the bell and the omnibus 
 stopped. 
 
 "This is Gower Street," he said. 
 
 "All right," I replied, "then I ll get out." 
 
 He detained me with one finger. 
 
 "In them clothes, sir?" 
 
 I looked at my clothes. I had on a suit of 
 pale blue satin, with silver embroidery as 
 modest a thing as you could wish to see. 
 
 "Certainly," I answered, with dignity, 
 "what s the matter with em?" 
 
 "Oh, very well, sir." And he rang the bell. 
 
 I ran up the library steps and pushed open 
 the big door. There was no one inside, but 
 I could see a room at the far end, behind 
 a glass partition, and I felt sure I should find 
 somebody there. I set out in that direction, 
 
8 THE SECRET BOOK 
 
 but, really, it was astounding how far I had 
 to walk. I walked and walked and then I 
 walked some more. All the time I could see 
 that room and some people sitting at the 
 tables, but it took me twenty minutes or half 
 an hour to get there. At last, however, I was 
 at the door. I crept quietly along by the 
 wall and peeked in. 
 
 It was just as I had suspected. There were 
 the Three Old Professors! 
 
 They were sitting around a big table, which 
 was piled with books, charts and manuscripts. 
 One Professor had on thick rubber spectacles, 
 and his nose was about an eighth of an inch 
 from a sheet of parchment. He was decipher 
 ing something by aid of a magnifying glass. 
 His thumbs were all over ink, and he had ink 
 on the end of his nose. The other two were 
 growling and snarling over an atlas just like 
 two hyenas over a bone. One of these had 
 such long whiskers that they were twined in 
 
THE SECRET BOOK 9 
 
 the rounds of his chair, and his hair was full 
 of cobwebs. 
 
 It made me furious to see them there. 
 Miserable old bookworms! 
 
 I drew back from the door, and wondered 
 what I should do. Then it occurred to me, 
 and I had to chuckle as I thought of it. The 
 very thing! And the only thing possible 
 the only thing that would do a bit of 
 good. 
 
 I opened the door just as softly as I could, 
 put my head into the room, and gobbled 
 like a turkey! 
 
 It was perfect! 
 
 Nothing better could have been devised. 
 
 The effect was instantaneous. And it was 
 wholly satisfactory. 
 
 The old duffer with the magnifying glass 
 jumped up, gathering every book and paper 
 within reach into his arms. Then he yelled: 
 
 "Save The Book of Fools! " 
 
io THE SECRET BOOK 
 
 And dived, head foremost, through the 
 window! 
 
 One of the others, grabbing an armful of 
 volumes, charged blindly at a door. It swung 
 softly on its hinges, and he vanished down a 
 flight of dark stairs. I could hear him going 
 down p-r-r-r-r-r-r bump! 
 
 The other simply went in a heap under the 
 table; a trap-door opened, someone reached up 
 with a hook, and hooked him neatly through, 
 and out of sight. 
 
 Wasn t that splendid? I laughed until I 
 cried. Then I thought I would go in and write 
 a poem about it, to be sung to the tune of 
 "Three Blind Mice." So I pushed open the 
 door again, and went in. 
 
 "Delighted to see you!" said the attendant, 
 hurrying up. 
 
 He was dressed all in green plush, with a 
 little brown wig and pig-tail. 
 
THE SECRET BOOK n 
 
 "You are the author of The Barley Sugar 
 Bat/ aren t you? Of course you are! De 
 lightful book delightful! I ve read it five 
 times! ... Or six. . . . Yes, I think six. 
 Come right this way the Chief Librarian is 
 waiting for you." 
 
 He led me through long corridors, past 
 dozens of hurrying attendants, to a door 
 marked "Chief Librarian s Office: Very Pri 
 vate!" 
 
 I stopped. 
 
 "You won t get me in there," I said; "I 
 know him! He ll put me through the third 
 degree. He thinks I m after a job, and he ll 
 make me feel like a crawling worm." 
 
 "Oh, very well, then. Come to the Read 
 ing Room I want you to see a little inven 
 tion we ve just installed." 
 
 He pushed open another swinging door, 
 and we stepped into a large room. 
 
 "Twenty tables, you see, and ten seats at 
 
12 THE SECRET BOOK 
 
 each. Now, here at this desk, you observe this 
 keyboard? Two hundred buttons, one for each 
 of the seats. Tables are lettered, and seats 
 are numbered. Here s a plan of the room." 
 
 "What s it for?" 
 
 "Sleep preventer. Yes, sir. Now, for in 
 stance, see that man at the far end?" 
 
 He pointed to a fat man at one of the dis 
 tant tables. The man had his head back, his 
 mouth open, and he was snoring vigorously. 
 
 "Just refer to the plan. Locate the table, 
 it s K, you see. Now the seat, next to the 
 end, on the farther side. This is it, No. 4. 
 Now, here you have the button K 4. Just 
 press it, and watch the man." 
 
 I pressed the button. Instantly the man 
 shot into the air with a howl. Then he 
 hastily began to examine the seat of the chair 
 in which he had been sitting. 
 
 The attendant in green plush laughed 
 quietly. 
 
THE SECRET BOOK 13 
 
 "He won t find it," he said. "A very tiny 
 needle, sterilized. It will do him no harm, 
 and lots of good. We find the invention 
 entirely satisfactory, entirely." 
 
 Then he turned to me. 
 
 "You wish to visit the Lost Alcove, of 
 course? Right this way!" 
 
 He opened another door and pushed me 
 through. I stumbled against a flight of 
 stairs and raised a choking cloud of dust. 
 The place was dark and very unpleasant. 
 
 "Here," I said, "I don t want to go up 
 these stairs. Where s a light?" 
 
 I fumbled for the door. But it was locked, 
 and the man in green plush had vanished. 
 
 There was nothing to do but climb the 
 stairs. They were creaky and rickety, and 
 they smelt of centuries of dust and desertion. 
 Things scurried about on them, and things 
 fluttered and cheeped overhead. I did not 
 like it, and I was glad to reach the landing. 
 
14 THE SECRET BOOK 
 
 There was a glimmer here, from a light over 
 a tall door. I turned the knob, and pushed the 
 door open. Another long passage, but it was 
 lighted by a window at the end. Here the 
 passage turned a corner, and for the rest of 
 its length opened into alcoves on either side. 
 Most of them were in almost absolute dark 
 ness I could barely make out books upon 
 the shelves. 
 
 A man was standing before the window in 
 the farthest alcove. At least, so I thought, 
 but when I got there I found it was only a 
 bust upon a pedestal a bust of some absurd, 
 fat-faced English monarch. The window was 
 covered with dust, and the air stuffy. I 
 raised the sash and thereby got more light, 
 and some air fit to breathe. A winter day s 
 fog blew past the window, but I could see the 
 wall of a churchyard, and smell primroses 
 as if it were early spring. 
 
 Then I turned to the books. At the very 
 
THE SECRET BOOK 15 
 
 first glimpse I could have shouted in delight. 
 Shelf after shelf, row after row, tier after tier, 
 of the most fascinating books imaginable. 
 The first my eye fell upon was Cardinal Za- 
 doni s long lost work upon the Eleusinian 
 Mysteries. There was the treatise of Father 
 Guiffard, who visited ancient Mexico five 
 years before the coming of Cortez. There 
 were the lost poems of Henri d Abbenant, 
 and a perfectly devilish (I use the word in its 
 literal meaning) little book on the Witches 
 Sabbath, dating from the fourteenth century. 
 The only other copy known to have existed 
 in our times came into possession of Walter 
 Scott, and was solemnly burned by his own 
 hands. 
 
 Thinking it over, since that day, I have 
 come to the conclusion that there could not 
 have been less than two thousand books in 
 that alcove. All the little ones were on the 
 top shelves; the elephant folios rested upon 
 
16 THE SECRET BOOK 
 
 the floor. The books were arranged by size, 
 as in the imperial library at St. Petersburg 
 (and my own library at home) and a very 
 sensible arrangement it is, too. 
 
 There were books for which any biblio 
 phile would cheerfully have given his heart s 
 blood hundreds of them. I was in a perfect 
 tremble; I didn t know where to begin. 
 
 Suddenly I saw between a treatise on 
 metheglin, and a preposterous work on uni 
 corns by an Austrian archbishop The Secret 
 Book, Liber Crypticus, of Cassius Parmensis! 
 
 I need not describe my sensations, at that 
 moment, to any lover of rare books. 
 
 Cassius Parmensis, not to be confused with 
 the "lean and hungry" Cassius, who was 
 quite another person, seems, nevertheless, to 
 have been one of the conspirators against 
 Caesar. He was murdered in Athens, by 
 order of Octavian. Of his so-called Secret 
 Book, or Book of the Satyrs, there is no 
 
THE SECRET BOOK 17 
 
 certain knowledge until it was printed (from 
 a manuscript contemporary with the author) 
 in Venice, about 1510 or 1511. It fell in 
 stantly under the ban of the Church, the 
 Congregation of the Index seized the entire 
 edition and burned it. They burned the un 
 fortunate printer, as well. 
 
 I said: the entire edition. All but one 
 copy. That was stolen by a monk, and it 
 escaped destruction. The book disappeared, 
 though the monk was caught, and presently 
 strangled, so it is told, by the authorities 
 whom he had defied. 
 
 Once more, only, does it appear in a space 
 of nearly three hundred years; and as usual, 
 it is attended with tragedy and bloodshed. 
 On a night in August, 1553, thieves ransacked 
 the library of Diane de Poictiers, and stole 
 from it The Secret Book. No one knows 
 how it came into the possession of Diane. 
 Two of the robbers were killed, another, 
 
l8 THE SECRET BOOK 
 
 it is supposed, made his escape with the 
 precious volume. 
 
 For more than two centuries and a half 
 there is absolutely no mention of Cassius s 
 work. A few bibliographers must have 
 known of its existence, one or two of them, 
 Frenchmen or Italians, make guarded refer 
 ences to it. 
 
 Then, sometime in the 1840*8 (not later 
 than 1844, thinks Dr. Boehm) an English 
 traveller and antiquary, named Sedling, 
 walked into a shop in Madras, and pur 
 chased The Secret Book, for about two 
 shillings! 
 
 Where it had been, what its history, who 
 had owned it, how it had made its way to 
 the East, how all knowledge of it had been 
 hidden during this long space of time, no 
 one can tell. Sedling incautiously wrote to 
 one or two friends in England of his dis 
 covery, sailed for home a few months later, 
 
THE SECRET BOOK 19 
 
 landed in London and disappeared. With 
 him vanished The Secret Book. 
 
 And now it confronted me upon a shelf 
 in this dim and dusty alcove. I put out my 
 hand toward it, when there occurred the 
 unfortunate business of that accursed old 
 meddling ninny of a custodian, or whatever 
 he was. 
 
 I heard him shuffling in the corridor and 
 looked out to see what was the trouble. 
 He was coming down some twisty stairs 
 with a duster! That infuriated me from the 
 beginning. 
 
 I sat down, and began to read the first 
 book that came handy. It was the poems of 
 Louis de Villars; I would do nothing to let 
 the old man know that The Secret Book was 
 there: it was impossible that he knew it 
 already. 
 
 Finally he came into the alcove and leaned 
 over my shoulder leaned over my shoulder 
 
20 THE SECRET BOOK 
 
 as I sat reading the divine lyrics of Louis 
 de Villars! Leaned over my shoulder and 
 pointed out stanzas and quoted poetry 
 poetry that he had written the old pest! 
 Then he went out and pretty soon he came 
 back again and interrupted me once more. 
 
 This went on at intervals for an hour or so. 
 
 I warned him; I warned him twice. 
 
 Then he came back and said he was going 
 to lock up the alcove and go back to his 
 room in the garret, and that I must get out. 
 I was ready for him then, and I asked him to 
 let me see where he lived up there. He 
 agreed, and I followed him up the twisty 
 stairs. 
 
 I did it with a knife a paper-knife. I 
 had found it in one of the books, and it was 
 really an old dagger, very sharp and very 
 effective. It was positively the first time I 
 had ever murdered anyone anyone of im- 
 
THE SECRET BOOK 21 
 
 portance, that is. It wasn t hard at all. He 
 kicked a little, but not much. 
 
 But then came the tragedy. When I 
 started down the twisty stairs again I 
 couldn t find the alcove. The stairs turned, 
 and suddenly brought me right out on the 
 street. I tried to get back and ran into a 
 blank wall. I hammered at this with my 
 fists, and 
 
 "Do you want anything?" 
 
 It was that nurse again she was only 
 about eighty-five now but still objection 
 able. I simply turned over and refused to 
 speak to her. It was the only dignified 
 thing to do. But if I can ever get that 
 paper-knife again it was a good stout one, 
 with gilded dragons on the hilt. 
 
 Then let her bring up the subject of hot 
 milk! 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 RYERSON S ADVENTURES 
 
 Lauriston was the only one to put any 
 faith in my account of The Secret Book, 
 and my sight of it. But that was to be 
 expected. It was Lauriston who gravely 
 proposed to call our Club "The Hell-Fire 
 Club" in imitation of those bygone institu 
 tions of the blatantly wicked. 
 
 Not that he had any especial fondness for 
 such a name, or for the customs of such 
 clubs. (By the way, what were the customs 
 of Hell-Fire clubs? We wrangled about it 
 for an entire evening, and no one seemed to 
 have any definite information, except that 
 there was a vague impression that they used 
 to drink burning brandy. This struck every- 
 
 22 
 
RYERSON S ADVENTURES 23 
 
 one as a futile amusement, and the dis 
 cussion languished.) But it was exactly 
 like Lauriston to make the suggestion. The 
 antiquarian flavor of the name appealed to 
 him. In demeanor he was the mildest of 
 men, capable of having a spree on Apolli- 
 naris and crackers. From such as these 
 come always the most lurid suggestions. 
 
 But he did not join in the derision with 
 which most of the half-dozen who were at the 
 Club that night rewarded my tale of The 
 Secret Book. I had given them a short 
 account of what is told at greater length in 
 the preceding chapter. It was the first 
 meeting for me in seven or eight weeks. But 
 I was out again now, the nurse was packed 
 off, and the tyranny of hot milk was past. 
 
 "Don t you think/ asked Lauriston, after 
 the jeers had ceased, "don t you think that 
 perhaps this means that The Secret Book 
 is really going to appear again?" 
 
24 THE SECRET BOOK 
 
 He takes dreams and visions rather seri 
 ously, and admits his belief in second 
 sight. 
 
 "Do you mean to say," began Forbes in 
 his withering manner, "that you believe there 
 really is a Secret Book, and " 
 
 "Certainly," said Lauriston. 
 
 "Oh, that is all true enough," I assured 
 him. 
 
 "What! About Cassius Thingumbob, and" 
 
 "Absolutely. Look him up, if you don t 
 believe it," said I. 
 
 "Oh, certainly," put in Sayles, the libra 
 rian, "there is some mention of it in one of 
 Isaac Disraeli s books, Curiosities of Liter 
 ature/ I think. Andrew Lang speaks of it, 
 and so does Peter Van Der Hoover." 
 
 "Well," said Forbes, "I thought it was 
 simply another one of his infernal hoaxes." 
 
 And he wagged his head at me. 
 
 "But, say!" he burst out again, "what 
 
RYERSON S ADVENTURES 25 
 
 about all that rot about murdering the man, 
 and so on?" 
 
 Forbes is a bibliographer, with a fine, 
 literal mind. The Lord pity him if a bunco 
 man ever gets his clutches on him! 
 
 "As to that," I replied, "I claim the 
 privileges of this Club. Anything said here 
 is in confidence. Of course, you won t tell 
 the police?" 
 
 He grunted, and reached for his tobacco 
 pouch. Ryerson shuffled some papers. 
 
 " Shall I begin?" he asked. 
 
 " You may fire, when ready ," remarked 
 Sayles, who was the host. 
 
 RYERSON S ADVENTURES 
 
 The desk was not very high later in 
 vestigation has shown it to be about five feet. 
 It ran along one side of the library room 
 like a counter. But its height was sufficient 
 to conceal me from sight of the librarian, 
 
26 THE SECRET BOOK 
 
 who only became aware of my presence 
 when he heard my voice. 
 
 "I want to get a book," I said. 
 
 Then the librarian leaned over the desk 
 and peered down at me. 
 
 "You!" he exclaimed. 
 
 There did not seem to be any especially 
 appropriate reply to this remark, so I did 
 not make any. The librarian continued his 
 inspection of me. Finally he said: 
 
 "What is your name?" 
 
 I told him. Then he smiled a little and 
 inquired if I were sixteen years old. No; I 
 was not. As near as I could reckon, I was 
 not even half that age. 
 
 "But you can t have a card to take out 
 books until you are sixteen." 
 
 He might as well have said "until you be 
 come Emperor of China." One event seemed 
 no more remote than the other. 
 
 "But Rob Currier takes out books," I 
 
RYERSON S ADVENTURES 27 
 
 urged, "and he isn t sixteen. He takes em 
 out on his brother s card." 
 
 "Oh, well, that s different," he replied; 
 "has your brother, or someone in your fam 
 ily got a card, and will he let you use it?" 
 
 "Yes, sir. My brother." 
 
 "What is his name?" 
 
 I mentioned the name of that influential 
 magnate, and added as a clincher 
 
 "He s seventeen." 
 
 The librarian hunted up my brother s 
 card, took a book down from the shelf, 
 stamped the card, and handed the book 
 over to me. This was going rather too fast. 
 I had an idea about some books I wanted 
 to read. I hesitated, and began to stammer. 
 
 "But I wanted to get" 
 
 "That s a very good book for you to 
 read," said the librarian, "and now run 
 along with it. When you have read that 
 perhaps you can have another." He em- 
 
28 THE SECRET BOOK 
 
 phasized "perhaps" as though there were 
 grave doubts about it. 
 
 I ran or rather, walked away with the 
 book. When I was out on the street I looked 
 at it. I have not seen the book since that 
 time, but I recall the appearance of the 
 title page. It had a number of small pictures 
 upon it. One of them showed a man in knee 
 breeches (and very fat calves) flying a kite 
 in the face of a dangerous thunderstorm. 
 Another represented a man seated under a 
 tree receiving a bump upon the head from 
 a small watermelon, which (the artist evi 
 dently intended us to believe) had just 
 detached itself from the tree. In another, 
 an offensively pious looking youth was look 
 ing at a teakettle. My subsequent scientific 
 researches have led me to think that these 
 persons were Benjamin Franklin, Sir Isaac 
 Newton and James Watt. The book as 
 I found out later, when I got home and tried 
 
RYERSON S ADVENTURES 29 
 
 to read it was full of information. It was 
 probably of that brand known as "useful" 
 information. 
 
 There is a familiar form of advertisement 
 which represents a woman in a shop trying 
 to buy Jones s Imperial Soap. The shop 
 keeper a man of craft and guile and in 
 finite cunning is urging upon her various 
 other brands. He says that they are "just 
 as good." They do not look so in the picture. 
 They have a poisonous appearance. Their 
 very wrappers suggest that there is no health 
 in them. The shop-keeper you can see it 
 by his face, and by his side- whiskers is a 
 snake. But he cannot fool the woman. She 
 is a noble soul. How dear she must be to the 
 heart of Jones, the Imperial Soap man! 
 She firmly insists upon the Imperial. "No," 
 says she, "there is no other brand as good. 
 I will have Jones s Imperial!" 
 
 This advertisement always recurs to me 
 
30 THE SECRET BOOK 
 
 when I think of that first experience in the 
 library, or when I hear of similar events in 
 other libraries. If I had only possessed the 
 determination of that woman the whole 
 course of my life might have been changed. 
 For it was a momentous event. From that 
 one book I imbibed a deep and abiding 
 detestation of the so-called instructive books. 
 They immediately became classified in my 
 mind with cod-liver oil and all the other 
 abominations which are "good" for you. 
 
 If I had not had this book crowded upon 
 me at a critical period I might be a useful 
 and ingenious member of society today 
 the proprietor of an automobile garage, 
 perhaps, growing richer and richer on my 
 ill-gotten gains. I might have found out, 
 all by myself and with great enthusiasm 
 why sparks came out the end of the kite, 
 why the pseudo-watermelon dropped down 
 instead of up (though a universe in which 
 
RYERSON S ADVENTURES 31 
 
 things drop up has always seemed to me 
 an impossible sort of place) and why the 
 teakettle bubbled the way it did. More 
 than that, I might have acquired all sorts 
 of handicraft and scientific ability. In 
 stead of fluttering helplessly about, making 
 sympathetic and futile remarks, when there 
 is something the matter with an automobile 
 in which I am being treated to a ride, I 
 might be able to act in an energetic and 
 virile fashion. I might be able to do as do 
 the more gifted owners of these machines; 
 put on a disreputable coat and disappear 
 underneath the car with a look of determi 
 nation and a monkey wrench, remain there 
 for half an hour swearing vilely, and finally 
 emerge, lost to all semblance of humanity, 
 remarking that we shall all have to walk 
 to the nearest town and find someone who 
 will tell us what is the matter with the 
 d d thing. I might be able to build, 
 
32 THE SECRET BOOK 
 
 with infinite labor and patience, an outfit 
 of electric bells for my house, at about 
 three times the cost of having someone else 
 do it for me. I might be able to put a wire 
 less telegraph on the top of my house and, 
 at some crucial moment, mess everything up 
 in such a fashion as to drive the regular 
 operators into insanity. 
 
 Unfortunately, I learned to do none of 
 these things. The mere fact that the libra 
 rian gave me a book of useful information 
 at the moment when to read a story was my 
 especial desire, seemed to kill any fondness 
 which might have developed for useful books. 
 
 There were other books in that library. 
 Story books, fiction books good books, as 
 I came to call them, in contra-distinction 
 to the instructive books. But it was often 
 hard to get at them. Useful information 
 and morals are always lurking between the 
 
RYERSON S ADVENTURES 33 
 
 covers of books, eager to spring upon the 
 unsuspecting youth. There is a class of 
 authors who take an unholy delight in luring 
 their readers on and on into the paths of 
 innocent joy, only to pounce upon them at 
 the end, with a sermon or a treatise. This 
 sort of perfidy, this outrageous bad faith 
 filled me with rage and exasperation. It was 
 totally unfair, I thought it was obtaining 
 your attention under false pretences. 
 
 You are glad to read about Frank and 
 Billy and how they reached the Osatch River, 
 closely pursued by a band of savage Chippe- 
 was. But how are they to communicate 
 with Old Pete, the rough and ready guide, 
 who is in the fort on the other bank? They 
 had better shout, you think, or swim across, 
 or you are even willing to venture into the 
 domain of science so far as to allow them 
 to do a bit of heliographing with the pocket 
 mirror, which Frank always carries. But no; 
 
34 THE SECRET BOOK 
 
 the scientific author is not going to let you 
 off like that. He wants to make it clear 
 that he has passed Physics B, and inciden 
 tally to give you some instruction and please 
 your parents, who otherwise might think 
 that it was a sinful waste of money to buy 
 such a godless book. So something like this 
 follows (while the Chippewas remain in the 
 wings). 
 
 "X square plus two AB," remarked Frank. 
 
 "Four times the coefficient of Z," returned 
 Billy, promptly. 
 
 "If this staff," said Frank (they always 
 have a "staff" in these books) "casts a 
 shadow equal to X, what will the shadow 
 of that tall sycamore equal?" 
 
 "Pi R square," replied Billy. 
 
 This answer seems to throw light on the 
 whole difficulty, and they proceed to con 
 struct an electric telegraph, then and there. 
 There is a lot of merry talk about ohms and 
 
RYERSON S ADVENTURES 35 
 
 amperes and volts, and Frank playfully re 
 minds Billy of how he made a mistake of 
 two decimals when they worked it all out 
 before under the instruction of Mr. Dewsnap. 
 They discover, or manufacture, batteries out 
 of nothing in particular; Frank luckily has a 
 pocketful of ohms, and they come across a 
 nest of wild amperes in a hollow oak. But 
 long before they got the work finished my 
 sympathy had entirely shifted. From de 
 siring them to escape I had become more 
 than anxious for the Chippewas to appear on 
 the scene. I wished I might have been 
 their chief. Had I stood in his moccasins 
 for half an hour, two scalps would have 
 dangled from my belt, and I could have 
 named their owners. 
 
 At this point Sayles begged leave to avail 
 himself of another of the privileges of the 
 Club, that is to interrupt. 
 
36 THE SECRET BOOK 
 
 "I am not going to have librarians plas 
 tered with all this abuse about their supposed 
 passion for useful information/ said he. 
 "We suffer from it in others, far more than 
 we are subject to it ourselves. I have made 
 some notes about a recent experience of 
 mine, and I was going to read them at the 
 next meeting. But I think they fit in here, 
 and if Ryerson doesn t mind ?" 
 
 "Go ahead," said Ryerson, "I have prac 
 tically finished, anyway." 
 
 Sayles went to his desk and got a paper, 
 from which he read what follows. 
 
 A man entered the library one day last 
 week, and walked rapidly up to my desk. 
 
 "Do you know," he asked, "what was the 
 aggregate public debt of the United States 
 on the first day of November last?" 
 
 "I am sure I do not," I replied, "but I 
 can find out in a minute." And I reached 
 
RYERSON S ADVENTURES 37 
 
 for a book on a shelf nearby. The man 
 stopped me. 
 
 "You needn t look it up," he said. "I 
 can tell you right now. It was two bil 
 lion, eight hundred and thirty-one million, 
 three hundred and thirty thousand, three 
 hundred and five dollars and sixty-six 
 cents." 
 
 There was a silence. Then the man said: 
 "What do you think of that?" 
 "Beyond a vague hope that I shall not 
 be called upon to pay it," I remarked, "I 
 must admit that the statement leaves me 
 perfectly calm. I trust that I am a patriot, 
 and if this vast obligation must be met, 
 I am willing to advance the sixty-six cents 
 though I believe that upon a pro rata system 
 that would be rather more than I should 
 be expected " 
 
 "That is not what I mean," he interrupted. 
 "What do you think of the information?" 
 
38 THE SECRET BOOK 
 
 I had been wondering what was his object 
 in putting a question, when he was so glib 
 with the answer. Librarians meet all sorts 
 and conditions of men, but it had flashed 
 through my mind that the man might be 
 working up an article for a muck-raking 
 magazine on "The Shocking Ignorance of 
 Our Librarians." It seemed hard that he 
 should light on me. But I return to our 
 conversation. 
 
 "The information seems good," said I, "and 
 important if true." 
 
 "Do you wish to verify it?" he asked. 
 
 "Not at all," I replied, hastily; "I am 
 content, for the present, with your unsup 
 ported statement." 
 
 "Well, then," he continued, "can you 
 tell me the name of the high chief ruler of 
 the Independent Order of Rechabites?" 
 
 "Again," I admitted, "you find me un 
 prepared. This volume, however " and I 
 
RYERSON S ADVENTURES 39 
 
 stretched my hand toward a book, but he 
 stayed me with a gesture. 
 
 "There is no need to look in it. Joseph 
 C. Eller is the man." 
 
 "And I have no doubt," I returned, as 
 heartily as possible, "that he fills that re 
 sponsible position satisfactorily." 
 
 "Here is a third one," said the man, 
 pointing his finger directly at my thorax; 
 "what was the score in the football game 
 between Lehigh and Ursinus last fall?" 
 
 "Lehigh and Ursinus," I mused. "I 
 seem to have missed that one. Now if you 
 had said between Pennsylvania State and 
 St. Bona venture, or even Swarthmore and 
 Hiram College, I might have obliged you. 
 But" 
 
 "It was five to nothing in favor of Lehigh," 
 said the man. 
 
 "Ah, yes; so it was, so it was." 
 
 "Now here, is another " 
 
40 THE SECRET BOOK 
 
 But I was getting tired of this onesided 
 business. 
 
 "Suppose you let me come into the game," 
 I suggested; "I don t see why you should 
 do all the questioning. Do you know what 
 were the total earnings of the L. S. & M. S. 
 last year? What is the State flower of 
 Arkansas? Who is the heir to the duchy of 
 St. Albans? What is the percentage of 
 deaf-mutes in Oregon? How many steam 
 laundries are there in Nicaragua?" 
 
 "Do you really want to know the answer 
 to those questions?" he asked. "Because 
 if you do, I haven t the slightest doubt that 
 they can be found in this " 
 
 And he reached into his coat-tail pocket 
 and produced a small, fat book. 
 
 "Are you a book-agent?" said I, in an 
 awful voice, hurriedly searching in my desk 
 for a small bottle of vitriol which we keep 
 there for such occasions. 
 
RYERSON S ADVENTURES 41 
 
 "No, no," said he. "Sell? Why, I 
 wouldn t sell this book for love nor money. " 
 
 "I shall offer you neither," I replied. 
 
 "Why, this is just the most handy book 
 I ever saw in my life. Look The Handy 
 Book of Useful Information Containing Fif 
 teen Million Absolutely Indispensable Facts 
 for the Busy Man Together with All That 
 Anyone Needs to Know About Every Thing 
 That Ever Happened on Land or Sea In 
 cluding a Complete Encyclopedia and Dic 
 tionary of All Languages, Cook Book, Bio 
 graphical Dictionary and Family Medicine 
 Recipes, Embracing the " 
 
 "Stop," I said, "I will not purchase it." 
 And I pressed the electric bell six times, 
 which signifies "Release the blood-hounds." 
 
 "I m not trying to sell it. Honest, I 
 ain t. I just bought it, down the street 
 there. I ve been looking for something like 
 this for years and years. See " and the 
 
42 THE SECRET BOOK 
 
 wretched man pointed to the page with a 
 grimy thumb "see, it tells the exact height 
 of all the principal volcanos, and the last 
 dying words of the mothers of all the Presi 
 dents down to Garfield. You can find out 
 from this table when Easter will come in 1988 
 and the precise statistics of the angora goat 
 industry in Montenegro. Here is the amount 
 spent for benzine in New York city during 
 1911 and the vote for the Prohibitionist 
 candidate in Anne Arundel County, Mary 
 land, at the last election. See, " 
 
 " Unfortunate being," I said, "have you 
 any real work or occupation?" 
 
 "Sure I have. I m the captain of a tug 
 boat." 
 
 "Then go back to your tugboat. Go back 
 to that highly honorable and interesting 
 profession. Leave this damnable publication 
 with me. I will see that it is cast into the 
 furnace. Already the horrible desire for what 
 
RYERSON S ADVENTURES 43 
 
 is known as useful information is sapping 
 your vitals. It will go on and on. Here " 
 and I plucked the book from his fevered 
 grasp, "and here, Amos," said I to the 
 janitor, who entered at that moment, "take 
 this poor man, gently, and lead him to the 
 street. Hand him over to the patrolmen, 
 and tell them to take him home. He will 
 be all right, if you don t excite him. Yes, 
 perfectly sober, but a sad, sad case. Don t 
 let him stop on the way. Lead him past 
 the book-store on the corner quickly. There 
 that s right careful, now, There." 
 
CHAPTER III 
 DICKENS S SECRET BOOK 
 
 "Perhaps/ remarked Ryerson, mildly, "I 
 may go on, now." 
 
 A week had elapsed, and this was another 
 meeting of the Club. 
 
 "Go right ahead," said Tilden, heartily; 
 "you won t disturb us a bit." 
 
 Tilden and Lenox were playing piquet in 
 a corner. 
 
 "But I," plaintively exclaimed Bronson, 
 "have prepared a paper for this evening." 
 
 "That s right," said Sayles, who was the 
 secretary, "it was Bronson s evening." 
 
 Ryerson made a satirical salaam, and folded 
 up his papers. 
 
 "Say no more," said he, "I withdraw." 
 
 44 
 
DICKENS S SECRET BOOK 45 
 
 "Of course," Bronson continued, "I would 
 n t" 
 
 "Don t apologize. It will only make 
 matters worse. I am already offended be 
 yond repair." 
 
 Pretending to be in a huff, he commenced 
 to poke the fire. 
 
 "Last winter," began Bronson again, "I 
 read The Mystery of Edwin Drood for the 
 first time. How many of you have read 
 it?" 
 
 Only three out of the eight of us had done 
 so. 
 
 "That s the usual proportion. You fight 
 shy of it because it isn t finished, I suppose. 
 I had always let it alone for that reason, 
 but I find that I had missed a great deal 
 of fun. Of course, I became an advocate 
 of one of the theories as to its solution 
 everyone does and I have put it into the 
 guise of a Sherlock Holmes story. Every- 
 
46 THE SECRET BOOK 
 
 body feels free to get gay with Sherlock, 
 so I needn t apologize. Here it is." 
 So saying, Bronson read 
 
 SHERLOCK HOLMES AND THE DROOD MYSTERY 
 
 Watson, " said Sherlock Holmes, beaming 
 at me across the breakfast table, "can you 
 decipher character from handwriting?" 
 
 He held an envelope toward me as he 
 spoke. I took the envelope and glanced 
 at the superscription. It was addressed to 
 Holmes at our lodging in Baker Street. 
 I tried to remember something of an arti 
 cle I had read on the subject of handwriting. 
 
 "The writer of this," I said, "was a modest 
 self-effacing person, and one of wide knowl 
 edge, and considerable ability. He " 
 
 Excellent, Watson, excellent ! Really, 
 you outdo yourself. Your reading is quite 
 Watsonian, in fact. I fear, however, you 
 are a bit astray as to his modesty, knowl- 
 
DICKENS S SECRET BOOK 47 
 
 edge, and so on. As a matter of fact, this 
 letter is from Mr. Thomas Sapsea." 
 
 "The famous Mayor of Cloisterham?" 
 
 "Quite so. And for pomposity, egregious 
 conceit coupled with downright ignorance, 
 he has not his peer in England. So you 
 did not score a bull s-eye there, my dear 
 fellow." 
 
 "But what does he want of you?" I 
 asked, willing to change the subject. "He 
 isn t going to engage you to solve the mys 
 tery of Edwin Drood?" 
 
 "That is precisely what he is doing. He 
 is all at sea in the matter. Come, what 
 do you say to a run down to Cloisterham? 
 We can look into this matter to oblige the 
 mayor, and take a ramble through the 
 cathedral. I m told they have some very 
 fine gargoyles." 
 
 An hour later, we were seated in a train 
 for Cloisterham. Holmes had been looking 
 
48 THE SECRET BOOK 
 
 through the morning papers. Now he threw 
 them aside, and turned to me. 
 
 "Have you followed this Drood case?" he 
 asked. 
 
 I replied that I had read many of the 
 accounts and some of the speculations on 
 the subject. 
 
 "I have not followed it as attentively as 
 I should have liked," he returned; "the 
 recent little affair of Colonel Raspopoff and 
 the czarina s rubies has occupied me thor 
 oughly of late. Suppose you go over the 
 chief facts it will help clear my mind." 
 
 "The facts are these," I said. "Edwin 
 Drood, a young engineer about to leave for 
 Egypt, had two attractions in Cloisterham. 
 One was his affianced wife a young school 
 girl, named Miss Rosa Bud. The other was 
 his devoted uncle and guardian, Mr. John 
 Jasper. The latter is choir-master of the 
 cathedral. There were, it seems, two clouds 
 
DICKENS S SECRET BOOK 49 
 
 over his happiness. One of these was the 
 fact that his betrothal to Miss Bud an ar 
 rangement made by their respective par 
 ents while Edwin and Rosa were small chil 
 dren was not wholly to the liking of either 
 of the principals. They had, indeed, come to 
 an agreement, only a few days before Edwin 
 Drood s disappearance, to terminate the en 
 gagement. They parted, it is believed, on 
 friendly, if not affectionate terms. 
 
 "The other difficulty lay in the presence, in 
 Cloisterham, of one Neville Landless a young 
 student from Ceylon. Landless has, it seems, 
 a strain of Oriental blood in his nature he 
 is of dark complexion and fiery temper. Actual 
 quarrels had occurred between the two, with 
 some violence on Landless s part. To restore 
 them to friendship, however, Mr. Jasper, the 
 uncle of Edwin, arranged for a dinner in his 
 rooms on Christmas Eve, at which they were 
 to be the only guests. The dinner took place, 
 
50 THE SECRET BOOK 
 
 everything passed off amicably, and the two 
 left, together, late in the evening, to walk 
 to the river, and view the great storm which 
 was raging. After that they parted accord 
 ing to Landless and Drood has never been 
 seen again. His uncle raised the alarm next 
 morning, Landless was detained, and ques 
 tioned, while a thorough search was made 
 for the body of Drood. Beyond the discovery 
 of his watch and pin in the weir, nothing has 
 been found. Landless had to be released for 
 lack of evidence, but the feeling in Cloister- 
 ham was so strong against him that he had 
 to leave. He is thought to be in London." 
 
 "H m," remarked Holmes, "who found the 
 watch and pin?" 
 
 "A Mr. Crisparkle, minor canon of the 
 cathedral. Landless was living in his house, 
 and reading with him. I may add that 
 Landless has a sister Miss Helena who has 
 also come to London." 
 
DICKENS S SECRET BOOK 51 
 
 "H m," said Holmes. "Well, here we are 
 at Cloisterham. We can now pursue our in 
 vestigations on the spot. We will go to see 
 Mr. Sapsea, the mayor." 
 
 Mr. Sapsea proved to be exactly the pom 
 pous Tory jackass that Holmes had de 
 scribed. He had never been out of Cloister- 
 ham, and his firm conviction of the hopeless 
 inferiority of all the world outside England 
 was so thoroughly provincial that I suspected 
 him of some connection with the "Saturday 
 Review." He was strong in his belief that 
 young Neville Landless had murdered Drood 
 and thrown his body into the river. And his 
 strongest reason for this belief lay in the com 
 plexion of Landless. 
 
 "It is un-English, Mr. Holmes," said he, "it s 
 un-English and & when I see a face that is un- 
 English, 1 know what to suspect of that face." 
 
 "Quite so," said Holmes; "I suppose that 
 everything was done to find the body?" 
 
52 THE SECRET BOOK 
 
 "Everything, Mr. Holmes, everything that 
 my er knowledge of the world could pos 
 sibly suggest. Mr. Jasper was unwearied in 
 his efforts. In fact he was worn out by his 
 exertions." 
 
 "No doubt his grief at the disappearance 
 of his nephew had something to do with that, 
 as well." 
 
 "No doubt of it at all." 
 "Landless, I hear, is in London?" 
 "So I understand, sir, so I understand. 
 But Mr. Crisparkle, his former tutor, has 
 given me in my capacity as magistrate 
 assurances that he can be produced at any 
 moment. At present he can be found by 
 applying to Mr. Grewgious, at Staple Inn. 
 Mr. Grewgious is a guardian of the young 
 lady to whom Edwin Drood was betrothed." 
 Holmes made a note of Mr. Grewgious s 
 name and address on his shirt-cuff. We 
 then rose to depart. 
 
DICKENS S SECRET BOOK 53 
 
 "I see," said the mayor, "that you are 
 thinking of paying a call on this un-English 
 person in London. That is where you will 
 find a solution of the mystery, I can assure 
 you." 
 
 "It is probable that I shall have occasion 
 to run up to London this evening," said 
 Holmes, "though I believe that Dr. Watson 
 and I will stroll about Cloisterham a bit, 
 first. I want to inspect your gargoyles." 
 
 When we were outside, Holmes s earliest 
 remark was, "But I think we had better 
 have a little chat with Mr. John Jasper." 
 
 We were directed to Mr. Jasper s rooms, 
 in the gatehouse, by a singularly obnoxious 
 boy, whom we found in the street, flinging 
 stones at the passers-by. 
 
 "That s Jarsper s, " said he, pointing for 
 an instant toward the arch, and then pro 
 ceeding with his malevolent pastime. 
 
 "Thanks," said Holmes, shortly, giving 
 
54 THE SECRET BOOK 
 
 the imp sixpence, "here s something for you. 
 And here," he continued, reversing the boy 
 over his knee, and giving him a sound spank 
 ing, "here is something else for you." 
 
 On inquiry it appeared that Mr. Jasper 
 was at home. He would see us, said the land 
 lady, but she added that "the poor gentleman 
 was not well." 
 
 "Indeed?" said Holmes. "What s the mat 
 ter?" 
 
 "He do be in a sort of daze, I think." 
 
 "Well, well, this gentleman is a doctor 
 perhaps he can prescribe." 
 
 And with that we went up to Mr. Jasper s 
 room. That gentleman had recovered, ap 
 parently, from his daze, for we heard him 
 chanting choir music, as we stood outside 
 the door. Holmes, whose love for music 
 is very keen, was enraptured, and insisted 
 on standing for several moments, while the 
 low and sweet tones of the choir-master s 
 
DICKENS S SECRET BOOK 55 
 
 voice, accompanied by the notes of a piano, 
 floated out to us. At last we knocked and 
 the singer admitted us. 
 
 Mr. Jasper was a dark-whiskered gentle 
 man who dwelt in a gloomy sort of room. 
 He had, himself, a gloomy and reserved 
 manner. Holmes introduced us both, and 
 informed Mr. Jasper that he was in Clois- 
 terham at the request of the mayor, Mr. 
 Sapsea, to look up some points in connection 
 with the disappearance of Edwin Drood. 
 
 "Meaning his murder?" inquired Mr. 
 Jasper. 
 
 "The word I used," said Holmes, "was 
 disappearance." 
 
 "The word I used," returned the other, 
 "was murder. But I must beg to be excused 
 from all discussion of the death of my dear 
 boy. I have taken a vow to discuss it with 
 no one, until the assassin is brought to jus 
 tice." 
 
56 THE SECRET BOOK 
 
 "I hope," said Holmes, "that if there is 
 an assassin, I may have the good fortune " 
 
 "I hope so, too. Meanwhile " and Mr. 
 Jasper moved toward the door, as if to usher 
 us out. Holmes tried to question him about 
 the events of Christmas Eve, prior to the young 
 man s disappearance, but Mr. Jasper said 
 that he had made his statement before the 
 mayor, and had nothing to add. 
 
 "Surely," said Holmes, "I have seen you 
 before, Mr. Jasper?" 
 
 Mr. Jasper thought not. 
 
 "I feel almost positive," said my friend; 
 "in London, now you come to London at 
 times, I take it?" 
 
 Perhaps. But he had never had the pleas 
 ure of meeting Mr. Holmes. He was quite 
 sure. Quite. 
 
 We departed, and as we strolled down the 
 High Street, Holmes asked me if I would 
 object to spending the night in Cloisterham. 
 
DICKENS S SECRET BOOK 57 
 
 "I shall rejoin you tomorrow/ 7 he added. 
 
 "But are you going away?" 
 
 "Yes, to London. I am going to follow 
 Mr. Sapsea s advice," he added with a 
 smile. 
 
 "I thought you wanted to see the gar 
 goyles," I objected. 
 
 "So I did. And do you know, my dear 
 fellow, I believe I have seen one of the most 
 interesting of them all." 
 
 Holmes s remark was entirely enigmatic 
 to me, and while I was still puzzling over 
 it, he waved his hand and entered the omnibus 
 for the station. Left thus alone in Cloister- 
 ham, I went to the Crozier, where I secured 
 a room for the night. In passing the gate 
 house I noticed a curious looking man with 
 his hat in his hand, looking attentively at 
 Mr. Jasper s window. He had, I observed, 
 white hair, which streamed in the wind. Later 
 in the afternoon, having dropped in at the 
 
58 THE SECRET BOOK 
 
 cathedral to hear the vesper service, I saw 
 the same man. He was watching the choir 
 master, Mr. Jasper, with profound scrutiny. 
 This made me uneasy. How did I know but 
 what another plot, like that which had been 
 hatched against the nephew, was on foot 
 against the uncle? Seated in the bar at the 
 Crozier, after dinner, I found him again. He 
 willingly entered into conversation with me, 
 and announced himself as one Mr. Datchery 
 "an idle buffer, living on his means." He 
 was interested in the Drood case and very 
 willing to talk about it. I drew him out as 
 much as I could, and then retired to my 
 room to think it over. 
 
 That he wore a disguise seemed clear to 
 me. His hair looked like a wig. If he was 
 in disguise, who could he be? I thought 
 over all the persons in any way connected 
 with the case, when suddenly the name of 
 Miss Helena Landless occurred to me. In- 
 
DICKENS S SECRET BOOK 59 
 
 stantly I was convinced that it must be she. 
 The very improbability of the idea fascinated 
 me from the start. What more unlikely than 
 that a young Ceylonese girl should pass her 
 self off for an elderly English man, sitting in 
 bars and drinking elderly English drinks? 
 The improbable is usually true, I remem 
 bered. Then I recalled that I had heard 
 that Miss Landless, as a child, used to dress 
 up as a boy. I was now positive about the 
 matter. 
 
 I was on hand to meet Holmes when he 
 returned the next day. He had two men 
 with him and he introduced them as Mr. 
 Tartar and Mr. Neville Landless. I looked 
 with interest at the suspected man, and then 
 tried to have speech with Holmes. But he 
 drew me apart. 
 
 "These gentlemen," said he, "are going at 
 once to Mr. Crisparkle s. They will remain 
 there until tonight, when I expect to have 
 
60 THE SECRET BOOK 
 
 need of them. You and I will return to your 
 hotel." 
 
 On the way I told him about Mr. Datch- 
 ery, and my suspicions about that person. 
 He listened eagerly, and said that he must 
 have speech with Datchery without delay. 
 When I told him of my belief that Datchery 
 was the sister of Landless, in disguise, Holmes 
 clapped me on the back, and exclaimed: 
 
 "Excellent, Watson, excellent! Quite in your 
 old vein!" 
 
 I flushed with pride at this high praise 
 from the great detective. He left me at the 
 Crozier, while he went forth to find Datchery, 
 and also, he said, to have a word with Mr. 
 Jasper. I supposed that he was about to 
 warn the choir-master of the fact that he was 
 watched. 
 
 Holmes returned to the inn in capital 
 spirits. 
 
 "We shall have our work cut out for us, 
 
DICKENS S SECRET BOOK 61 
 
 tonight, Watson," said he, "and perhaps 
 we will have another look at the gargoyles." 
 
 During dinner he would talk of nothing 
 except bee-keeping. He conversed on this 
 topic, indeed, until long after we had finished 
 our meal, and while we sat smoking in the 
 bar. About eleven, an ancient man, called 
 Durdles, came in, looking for Mister Holmes. 
 
 "Mr. Jarsper he s a-comin j down the stair, 
 sir," said he. 
 
 "Good!" exclaimed Holmes, "come, Watson, 
 we must make haste. This may be a serious 
 business. Now, Durdles!" 
 
 The man called Durdles led us rapidly, 
 and by back ways, to the churchyard. Here 
 he showed us where we could stand, hidden 
 behind a wall, and overlooking the tombs and 
 gravestones. I could not imagine the object 
 of this nocturnal visit. Holmes gave our 
 guide some money, and he made off. While 
 I stood there, looking fearfully about, I 
 
62 THE SECRET BOOK 
 
 thought I saw the figures of two men be 
 hind a tomb, at some little distance. I whis 
 pered to Holmes, but he motioned for silence. 
 "Hush!" he whispered, "Look there!" 
 I looked where he indicated, and saw an 
 other figure enter the churchyard. He carried 
 some object, which I soon guessed to be a 
 lantern, swathed in a dark wrapping. He 
 unfolded a part of this wrapping, when he 
 reached one of the tombs, and I recognized 
 by the light the dark features of Mr. Jasper. 
 What could he be doing here at this hour? 
 He commenced to fumble in his pockets, 
 and presently produced a key with which he 
 approached the door of the tomb. Soon it 
 swung open, and Mr. Jasper seemed about 
 to step inside. But he paused for an instant, 
 and then fell back, with a fearful scream of 
 terror. Once, twice, did that awful cry ring 
 through the silent churchyard. At its second 
 repetition a man stepped from the tomb. 
 
DICKENS S SECRET BOOK 63 
 
 Then Jasper turned, and ran frantically 
 toward the cathedral. 
 
 The two men whom I had previously no 
 ticed sprang from behind a monument and 
 pursued him. 
 
 "Quick!" said Holmes, "after him!" 
 
 We both ran in the same direction as fast 
 as we could. Hindered by the darkness and 
 by our unfamiliarity with the ground, however, 
 we made poor progress. The fleeing choir 
 master and his two strange pursuers had 
 already vanished into the gloom of the cathe 
 dral. When at last we entered the building 
 the sound of hurrying footsteps far above 
 us was all we could hear. Then, as we paused, 
 for an instant at fault, there came another 
 dreadful cry, and then silence. 
 
 Men with lights burst into the cathedral 
 and led us up the staircase toward the tower. 
 The twisting ascent was a long business, and 
 I knew from Holmes s face that he dreaded 
 
64 THE SECRET BOOK 
 
 what we might find at the top. When we 
 reached the top there lay the choir-master, 
 Jasper, overpowered and bound by Mr. 
 Tartar. The latter, then, had been one of 
 the men I had seen behind the monument. 
 
 "Where is Neville? " said Holmes quickly. 
 
 Tartar shook his head and pointed below. 
 
 "This man," said he, indicating Jasper, 
 "fought with him, and now I fear he really 
 has a murder to answer for." 
 
 One of the men in the group which had 
 followed us to the top stepped forward and 
 looked down toward Jasper. It was the man 
 whom we had seen step out of the tomb. 
 I started when I saw that except for the wig 
 and a few changes in his costume it was the 
 same man who had called himself "Datchery." 
 
 Jasper gazed up at him and his face was 
 distorted with fear. 
 
 "Ned! Ned!" he cried, and hid his face on 
 the stone floor. 
 
DICKENS S SECRET BOOK 65 
 
 "Yes, yer may hide yer face," said old 
 Durdles, trembling with rage, "yer thought 
 yer had murdered him, murdered Mr. Edwin 
 Drood, yer own nephew. Yer hocussed him 
 with liquor fixed with pizen, same s yer tried 
 to hocus Durdles, an tried to burn him up 
 with quicklime in the tomb. But Durdles 
 found him, Durdles did." 
 
 He advanced and would have ground the 
 head of the prostrate choir-master under his 
 heel, if some men had not held him back. 
 
 "Of course," said Holmes to me on the 
 train back to London next morning, "no 
 one in Cloisterham thought of suspecting the 
 eminently respectable Mr. Jasper. They 
 started with the presumption of his innocence. 
 He was a possible object of suspicion to me 
 from the first. This was because he was one 
 of the two men who last saw Edwin Drood. 
 When we had our interview with him Jasper, 
 
66 THE SECRET BOOK 
 
 I mean I recognized him as the frequenter 
 of a disreputable opium den near the docks. 
 You may remember that I have had oc 
 casion to look into such places in one other 
 little problem we studied together. He was, 
 then, leading a double life. That was as far 
 as I had gone when I returned to London last 
 night. But while there I had a talk with 
 Mr. Grewgious, as well as with poor young 
 Landless and his sister. From them I learned 
 that Jasper was in love with his nephew s 
 betrothed, and had, indeed, been persecuting 
 her with his attentions, both before and after 
 Edwin s disappearance. From Mr. Grew- 
 gious s manner I became convinced that he, 
 at any rate, viewed Jasper with profound 
 suspicion. But he was a lawyer, and very 
 cautious; he evidently had no certain proof. 
 Other hints which were dropped led me to 
 suspect that he was not mourning the death of 
 young Drood. 
 
DICKENS S SECRET BOOK 67 
 
 "This was a curious thing the whole 
 crux to the mystery lay in it. I sat up all 
 night, Watson, and consumed about four 
 ounces of tobacco. It needed some thinking. 
 Why, if Jasper had plotted murder, had he 
 failed to carry it out? The opium, the 
 opium, Watson you know, yourself, that a 
 confirmed opium-smoker is apt to fail, is 
 almost sure to fail, in any great enterprise. 
 He tries to nerve himself before the deed, 
 and ten to one he merely stupefies himself, 
 and the plot miscarries. This morning I 
 saw Mr. Grewgious again, and charged him 
 in so many words with keeping secret the 
 fact that Drood was alive. He admitted it, 
 and told me that Drood was hi Cloisterham 
 masquerading as Datchery." 
 
 "But why should he do that?" I asked, 
 "why did he let Neville rest under suspicion 
 of murder?" 
 
 "Because he had no certain proof of Jasper s 
 
68 THE SECRET BOOK 
 
 guilt," said Holmes, a and he was trying to 
 collect evidence against him. He was himself 
 drugged when the attempt was made upon his 
 life, he was rescued on that occasion by Durdles, 
 and his disappearance was connived at by 
 Mr. Grewgious. The lawyer further told me 
 of the ring which Edwin Drood carried with 
 him, and which the would-be murderer over 
 looked when he took the watch and pin. 
 Then, it was only necessary for me to drop 
 a hint to Jasper about the ring. That sent 
 him back to the tomb, into which he supposed 
 he had flung Brood s body to be consumed by 
 quicklime. There he found the living, and 
 not the dead Edwin Drood, as you saw. But 
 the opium was really the clew to the whole 
 thing I went to see the old hag who keeps 
 the den he frequented, and learned from her 
 that he babbled endlessly about the murder 
 in his dreams. He had arrived at a point 
 where he could not distinguish between the 
 
DICKENS S SECRET BOOK 69 
 
 real attempt at murder and a vision. He 
 acted as in a vision when he tried to commit 
 the deed, and so it failed. 
 
 "As for your theory about Miss Landless 
 being Datchery well, my dear fellow, I am 
 glad for the sake of that proper, clerical 
 gentleman, Mr. Crisparkle, that his intended 
 wife has not been masquerading in trousers 
 at the Cloisterham inns. Poor Landless I 
 shall never forgive myself for his death. His 
 murderer will meet the fate he richly deserves, 
 without a doubt. 
 
 "And now, Watson, we were discussing 
 bees. Have you ever heard of planting 
 buckwheat near the hives? I am told that 
 they do wonderfully on buckwheat." 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 ON PIRATES 
 
 Most of us had listened to Bronson s paper 
 with some interest. Toward the end, even 
 the piquet players stopped their game to listen. 
 When it was finished, Lenox said: 
 
 "Well, I ve never read Edwin Drood, 
 but I must say that you ve made a pretty 
 fair imitation of a Sherlock Holmes story." 
 
 "Yes," Sayles agreed, "you got the machin 
 ery of Sherlock and Watson all right, anyhow. 
 Is that really your theory of the outcome of 
 the novel?" 
 
 Bronson smiled. 
 
 "It s the one I believe in, sometimes. It 
 was Richard A. Proctor s theory, of course. 
 
 He believed that Drood was not really killed, 
 
 70 
 
ON PIRATES 71 
 
 and that he returned in disguise as Datchery 
 to watch his uncle. Andrew Lang held the 
 same opinion, and so have some of the other 
 critics. On the opposing side you have Mr. 
 Cuming Walters and Sir Robertson Nicoll. 
 They are sure that Edwin Drood was mur 
 dered, and that Datchery was Helena Land 
 less." 
 
 "The Helena Landless theory evidently 
 doesn t appeal to you, since you put it into 
 the mouth of Watson, the good old donkey!" 
 
 "No, it doesn t. It fascinates those who 
 get the bee in their bonnet, however." 
 
 "I was glad to see one thing," said Sayles, 
 "and that was that you had Holmes wallop 
 that obnoxious boy, Deputy, I think he s 
 called? I hated him . . . But I don t think 
 I agree with you that Drood survived. I ve 
 read some of the comments on the book, 
 .read them at the time of that mock trial in 
 London, and it seems to me that the evidence 
 
72 THE SECRET BOOK 
 
 is too strong that Dickens meant the murder 
 to succeed. He told so many people that 
 Drood was dead. Proctor and Lang held, I 
 believe, that it would make a better story to 
 have Edwin turn up alive at the end." 
 
 "That s where they were wrong," observed 
 Crerar, the short-story writer. "Undoubtedly 
 Dickens intended his readers to puzzle over 
 the question if Edwin was really dead, but 
 it s a mistake to suppose that it wouldn t 
 have been a perfectly good tale of mystery 
 with Edwin safely murdered. Anyone less 
 an artist than Dickens all apologies to you, 
 Bronson might have needed that climax of 
 the unmasking of Datchery and the return of 
 the missing Edwin. But Dickens would have 
 managed well enough without it." 
 
 "That was a corking good idea to send 
 Sherlock Holmes after the criminal," said 
 Tilden; "did you invent that, Bronson?" 
 
 "Not altogether, I m afraid," replied Bron- 
 
ON PIRATES 73 
 
 son, filling his pipe. "Andrew Lang did 
 something like that in a magazine, Longman s 
 I think. But he just had Watson and Sher 
 lock talk it over in their rooms, they didn t 
 go out on the trail." 
 
 "What s the use of it all?" broke in Forbes, 
 from his corner, where he had been reading 
 the "Deutsche Rundschau" all the evening. 
 "What good is it, anyway? Dickens is dead; 
 no one knows how he would have finished 
 the story; he might have done it anyway 
 he wanted; what s the use gassing about 
 it?" 
 
 This nice, thick, wet blanket stifled the 
 conversation effectively. There was a pause 
 for half a minute. At the end of that time 
 Sayles, who was fooling with a chafing dish, 
 upset some blazing alcohol, and created a 
 diversion. When it had been put out, the beer 
 was brought in, and Sayles announced that 
 the Welsh Rabbit was ripe. (Yes, Rabbit, 
 
74 THE SECRET BOOK 
 
 not Rarebit, some of the dictionaries, and 
 most of the cook-books to the contrary, 
 notwithstanding.) 
 
 Half an hour later the Rabbit had gone the 
 way of his forefathers, and streams of blue 
 smoke began to rise from pipes and cigars. 
 Lenox, who had spent a couple of months in 
 Arizona, and had been cursed, ever since, 
 with the idea that he could roll his own 
 cigarettes, commenced the painful operation. 
 With a sheaf of cigarette papers and a little 
 sack of tobacco he entered upon a series of 
 gyrations in which both his hands, and even 
 his teeth were employed. After several 
 anxious moments he produced an amorphous 
 object, one end of which he put between his 
 lips. He lighted it, and took three puffs. 
 At the third it burst, scattering his clothes 
 with sparks and grains of tobacco. He ex 
 tinguished the conflagration, and brushed up 
 
ON PIRATES 75 
 
 the wreck. Then, with a sigh of relief, he took 
 out his pipe. He was always cheery, always 
 hopeful, during this performance. I had 
 watched him at it for over two years. 
 
 "In spite of old Groucho, here," said Crerar, 
 pointing to Forbes, "there is a fascination in 
 unfinished books, in lost and half-forgotten 
 books, and in secret books, generally," he 
 added, with a smile. 
 
 "I wish," said Newberry, "I could see again 
 a book I used to get from the Sunday School 
 library, at home. I suppose that I used to 
 read it three times a year, from the time I 
 was, say, eight, till I was fourteen. It was 
 called Perseverance Island. " 
 
 "Ah!" exclaimed Ryerson, "ah! and I 
 might even go so far as to add: aha! Here 
 is where I come in. That is the very book 
 I was going to mention next in my paper. 
 Shall I read it?" 
 
 And he began to polish his eye-glasses. 
 
76 THE SECRET BOOK 
 
 "Yes, do read it," said someone, "and get 
 it over with." 
 
 Ryerson sat down under a lamp. 
 
 "I was moved to these reflections the other 
 day, after four or five hours of research work. 
 I was pondering upon happier days, when 
 libraries did not mean slavery to me." 
 
 Ryerson is a genealogical scout, he finds 
 ancestors, and digs up family trees for those 
 who are rich enough, or foolish enough, to 
 want them. 
 
 ON PIRATES 
 
 There was a book called "Perseverance 
 Island," written by a man with an honest 
 Scotch name Donald or Douglas Fraser, 
 or something like that. It was a good book 
 I have no fault to find with it, and I read 
 it many times. But it often turns up now 
 adays, in lists of reading for children, and I 
 smile when I see it recommended as likely 
 
ON PIRATES 77 
 
 "to teach manly self-reliance and the art of 
 doing things for yourself. " The hero had that 
 art all right. Cast on an uninhabited island, 
 he not only solved all the ordinary problems 
 of food, clothing, and shelter, but proceeded 
 to heights of inventive genius far beyond 
 anything yet achieved by men in the centres 
 of civilization with all appliances and means 
 to boot. Discovering gold mines was a mere 
 bagatelle to him, while such trifles as sub 
 marine boats and flying machines were tossed 
 off casually in his idle moments. You won 
 dered how such a wizard had remained un 
 known at home why he had never risen 
 above the position of first mate on a sailing 
 vessel. The haunts of men seemed to have 
 cramped him; he needed a desert island to 
 bring him out. 
 
 I read the book more than once, and 
 how much manly self-reliance it taught me 
 I cannot say. It certainly led to no submarine 
 
78 THE SECRET BOOK 
 
 boats nor gold mines. I can only remember 
 one definite result and that was very likely 
 unintended by the author. There was a 
 fascinating chapter or two about pirates not 
 live pirates, but pirates long dead, who had 
 once infested the island. One of them had 
 left his skeleton behind him, and the hero 
 stumbled over it one day, while out for a 
 ramble. The pirate had left a manuscript 
 (on parchment, of course) as well as his 
 bones, and this manuscript told where the 
 treasure ship had sunk. Bearings of the spot 
 were given by means of a deep groove cut in 
 the window sill by the dying buccaneer. This 
 impressed me not a little, and I must have con 
 ceived the notion that there was an insepa 
 rable connection between grooves in window 
 sills and sunken treasure, for I presently 
 carved a deep gash in the frame of my bed 
 room window. All efforts to uncover any 
 piratical loot by means of this mark proved 
 
ON PIRATES 79 
 
 of no avail, and it was perhaps a hopeless 
 attempt from the first, since the window 
 looked out upon the grounds of the Second 
 Presbyterian Church. There were conse 
 quences to the cutting of the groove, however 
 consequences far too terrible to recall. I had 
 again to realize that sympathy with pirates 
 and their methods was long dead, and that 
 romance had vanished out of the world, save 
 as it dwelt between the covers of books in 
 libraries. 
 
 Pirates! What a blessed word it is, when you 
 come to think of it. How few were their 
 victims and how brief the sufferings they 
 inflicted, compared with the numbers of their 
 beneficiaries, and the amount of joy which 
 the latter have received. For authors and 
 readers have been unearthing pirate gold for 
 two centuries and are like to do it till there 
 is no more making of books. How many 
 times was I transported from the dim alcoves 
 
8o THE SECRET BOOK 
 
 of that library to some heaving quarter-deck 
 (which is the quarter-deck, anyhow?) where 
 I nervously paced, glancing back from time 
 to time through my glass toward a low, 
 rakish, black craft which was rapidly over 
 hauling us. And I knew that soon it would 
 be alongside, the grappling irons would be 
 attached, and the villainous looking crew 
 swarming over our bulwarks. But I knew 
 that when the last throat was slit, the last 
 passenger gone overboard via the famous 
 plank route, the last raucous cry of "Heave 
 J em to the sharks!" had died away why, 
 then I should be back again in the library, 
 safe and sound. 
 
 Nowadays I am all for law and order; 
 I do not want to see wickedness prosper. I 
 hope to see all embezzlers and swindlers and 
 people who violate the Sherman Anti-Trust 
 Act (or do not violate it whichever it is 
 that is culpable) put away behind prison 
 
ON PIRATES 8l 
 
 walls, where they belong. But the severest 
 indictment which can be brought against all 
 this modern sin, which is so mean and sordid, 
 is that it is also devoid of any artistic merit 
 or romantic interest. How can you get up 
 admiration for a couple of men who come 
 together in an office somewhere and agree to 
 commit violence upon the Sherman Anti- 
 Trust Act? On second thoughts, I wouldn t 
 even dignify such persons by putting them in 
 jail. They ought to be consigned to a poor- 
 house an institution for paupers of imagina 
 tion, persons impoverished in intellect. If 
 they would meet in a cave, by the dark of 
 the moon, take a terrible oath on a couple 
 of crossed and bloody daggers, and then sally 
 forth to do things to the Anti-Trust Act, 
 you might have some respect for them. Or if 
 they would even put on a red sash, and nerve 
 themselves for the deed by drinking a couple 
 of pannikins of rum and gunpowder (like one 
 
82 THE SECRET BOOK 
 
 of my favorite heroes) I would still admit 
 them to my list of acquaintances. But 
 wickedness conducted by telephone and sin 
 carried on by parcels post pah! What do 
 we want with this we who have known men 
 who could gallop over Hounslow Heath with 
 a brace of pistols and hold up a king s mes 
 senger, or the very Duke of York himself! 
 Or men who scoured the Spanish Main till 
 there was scarcely a doubloon which dared 
 show its head from St. Kitts to the Dry 
 Tortugas. 
 
 There was an alcove in that library de 
 voted to books about Africa. Other conti 
 nents may have been represented I do not 
 know I speak of Africa and golden joys. 
 A placard bore some cabalistic letters AG or 
 QR, or something else in a forgotten scheme 
 of classification which librarians would regard 
 with mirth today. Inside were the books, 
 
ON PIRATES 83 
 
 a great deal of dust, and a small, wooden 
 footstool. Here were all I required, and 
 soon I was made free of the place, for the 
 librarian found that it was less trouble to 
 let me do as I liked than to try to keep up 
 the hedges. Those bookshelves and that foot 
 stool were as good as a caravan of camels 
 they led straight to the oases of the Sahara 
 and the reedy swamps about Lake Tangan 
 yika. In no time at all I knew the exact 
 difference between the Fourth and Fifth 
 Cataracts of the Nile and though I have 
 forgotten it since, I was fully aware of the 
 best way to get into the good graces of the 
 Hottentots, the Pygmies, and the Zulus. 
 
 It is terrible to think, but if I were cast 
 amongst any of those people now, my situa 
 tion might be very embarrassing all be 
 cause I have not kept up my earlier studies. 
 
 A dozen dusty bookshelves such simple 
 apparatus as that led direct to the gloomy 
 
84 THE SECRET BOOK 
 
 jungle, where my "bearers" were constantly 
 slipping into the interstices between the 
 enormous tree-roots (you know the ways of 
 the banyan, I am sure or is it the upas?) 
 and disappearing into the miasmatic swamp 
 beneath. Or else they were getting snatched 
 up bodily into the branches by the gigantic 
 pythons who lurked overhead and did all 
 they could to make the place one of shudder 
 ing horror, blood-chilling but delicious. On a 
 rainy Saturday afternoon, when I could get 
 to the library early, I have been known to 
 lose as many as five bearers by means of these 
 pythons, between two and half past four 
 o clock. 
 
 Peevish old gentlemen, who sometimes came 
 poking into the alcove, seemed unaware of 
 its enchantment. They grumbled a little 
 about the arrangement of the books, cast a 
 suspicious eye at me, and went out. They 
 never knew that it was a region of simooms, 
 
ON PIRATES 85 
 
 of strange and terrible storms that would bury 
 you in sand unless you knew (as I did) pre 
 cisely how to behave in the face of these 
 dangers. They were ignorant of the fact that 
 a cloud of hostile Bedouins were hovering on 
 the edge of the desert, less than five miles 
 away, and that what they saw out the window 
 and took to be the wood-shed, back of Mr. 
 Dodge s house, was really a deceptive mirage, 
 representing an oasis, three palm trees and a 
 troop of camels. How should they discover 
 that there was a route had they but the 
 eyes to see it right up to the secret places 
 of Ophir yes, even to the Mountains of the 
 Moon! 
 
 And the animals well, the animals fairly 
 swarmed in that narrow space. It was wonder 
 ful how they could get in. I can hear them 
 still the elephants trumpeting, the lions 
 roaring, the jackals snarling, the hippopota 
 muses grunting or doing whatever it is that 
 
86 THE SECRET BOOK 
 
 hippopotamuses do. And more than those, 
 beasts with curious names, gemsboks, wilde- 
 beestes, hartebeestes, gnus, and the nilghai 
 I can only let in one of him, for I really do 
 not know his plural. The nilghai will have to 
 remain in celibacy. 
 
 As I look back upon this menagerie I can 
 see outlandish creatures tapirs, kangaroos, 
 cassowaries, narwhals, tigers, wombats, tou 
 cans, dugongs, and what not. Surely these 
 are out of place in the African jungle! I can 
 only account for their presence by supposing 
 that they boiled over, as it were, from neigh 
 boring alcoves. The classification in libraries 
 was a more haphazard thing in those high and 
 far-off times. It was no impossible thing 
 for you to meet a polar bear on an ice-cake, 
 floating serenely across Lake Victoria Nyanza, 
 while a flock of sulphur-crested cockatoos 
 might at any moment perch on the top of 
 your snow-hut, on the shores of Baffin s Bay. 
 
ON PIRATES 87 
 
 Of course you had to keep your head, with 
 all these animals about. Otherwise you 
 might find a lion nibbling your right arm, as 
 once happened to Livingstone. Or you would 
 get in a tight place, with three gorillas ad 
 vancing upon you at once, beating their 
 chests until the sound reverberated horribly 
 throughout the forests. (Paul du Chaillu, I 
 think.) But if you kept out of the long, 
 thick jungle-grass when there were rhinoc 
 eroses around, and remembered not to try 
 to run from an ostrich but to lie passive on the 
 sand, then you would get home to supper at 
 six o clock all right. For so long as you deal 
 with your rhinoceros in the open he can 
 never get a chance to impale you on his 
 horn; while if you lie down before the on 
 coming ostrich, instead of trying to beat him 
 in a foot-race, he will merely sit on you for two 
 or three hours and then go away. This is a 
 little humiliating and rather stifling, and you 
 
88 THE SECRET BOOK 
 
 must restrain your natural desire to tweak 
 out any of those long feathers but it is 
 better than being kicked to pieces. 
 
 The African section was not the whole of 
 the library. It had many other attractions 
 indeed, it was a fortunate building through 
 out. Really to enjoy books, to be familiar 
 and not afraid in their presence, we are told, 
 a boy must tumble about in his father s 
 library from an early age. But inasmuch as 
 to tumble about in my father s library, or in 
 that of the father of any boy whom I knew, 
 would have meant to roll around on the 
 narrow shelves of a single bookcase why, 
 the public library was a lucky possession for 
 us. We hear much of these private libraries 
 in books, that is, but how many of them have 
 any of us seen? You, who hear this, how 
 many of your friends own a whole thousand 
 volumes? Can you not count them on the 
 
ON PIRATES 89 
 
 fingers of one hand? It is needless to say 
 that I am not addressing any members of 
 the criminally rich class, though even they, 
 we hear, are becoming diffident about the 
 possession of any volumes at all, and are 
 building "bookless" libraries. 
 
 To be quite respectable, in our town, you 
 had a black walnut bookcase in the parlor, 
 and it sheltered perhaps a couple of hundred 
 books. But these, like as not, were the gifts 
 which friends had inflicted on members of the 
 family, or subscription volumes, bought to 
 help out some worthy person. It was very 
 kind of your father to assist Miss Lightbody 
 to the extent of purchasing the Rev. Dr. 
 Digger s "Explorations in the Holy Land" 
 ($2.50 in boards, or $4 full morocco), or the 
 "Life of Adoniram Judson" (quarto, Family 
 Edition, $6), but the usefulness of the act 
 ended with Miss Lightbody. Its benefit on 
 one human boy, aged, say, about ten years, 
 
90 THE SECRET BOOK 
 
 was impossible to discover. Of a certainty 
 that boy got his full share of books of a more 
 interesting type at Christmas, but as these 
 were invariably devoured from cover to cover, 
 not later than the evening of Dec. 28th, of 
 the same year, and as there had not been 
 enough Christmases in his experience for him 
 to accumulate a vast number of books, there 
 were still reasons why he had to draw upon 
 the common collection of the town. Some of 
 his own private stock, moreover, had been 
 given him five or six years earlier, and he now 
 turned from them in loathing. They were 
 distressingly juvenile. Some of them were 
 the "Pansy" books I forget exactly what 
 that implies, but I can recall the scornful 
 tone in which the title came to be pronounced. 
 
 So we all went to the public library. And 
 in that we were happy happier than we 
 knew. It makes me pity the boys to whom 
 
ON PIRATES 91 
 
 the word means a cold, white building, 
 shining inside with brass railings and turn 
 stiles, equipped with the last word in a correct 
 "juvenile" department, presided over by those 
 whose sweetly scientific ministrations are 
 efficient but irksome. This was an old and 
 dignified structure, shaded by trees, and even 
 possessing a bit of well-kept lawn. Ivy 
 covered the bricks and almost came in at the 
 windows. Here though I may be mistaken 
 in thinking that it had any effect on us 
 once lived the proprietor of many acres, the 
 possessor of servants and horses, the owner of 
 plate and cellars of wine, and of ships that 
 sailed the seas. Here, in the room where 
 ponderous volumes now cover the tables, 
 he had his captains to dinner, and they sam 
 pled the Madeira and sherry which these cap 
 tains had fetched home with them, and 
 drank success to privateering voyages. Prob 
 ably they got very merry over it all, in the 
 
92 THE SECRET BOOK 
 
 regular Pepysian fashion I hope they did, 
 at any rate. It helps make the encyclopaedias 
 less dry to believe it. 
 
 And here, on one great occasion, the master 
 of all this, with his wig well powdered, and his 
 calves silk-stockinged, and his buckles shining 
 to the last degree, stood at the main entrance 
 to welcome the President, who happened also 
 to be George Washington. And there must 
 have been much excitement among the serv 
 ants, and there was a great to-do outside, and 
 there were "fireworks and rockets" (as the 
 President observed in his diary) and militia 
 companies which paraded, and ambitious 
 young gentlemen who presented addresses. 
 Finally the rockets ceased and the militia 
 companies went home (in irregular formation, 
 it may be fancied) and they politely requested 
 the President to go to bed, in order to please 
 the historical societies of the future, and he 
 agreed to do so. Then they picked out a room 
 
ON PIRATES 93 
 
 which would be convenient to point out to 
 sight-seers, and the President did go to bed 
 there, and the head which we see on the 
 postage stamps was laid to rest on a pillow, 
 and the head wore a night-cap, I fear, after 
 the manner of that period. 
 
 I was much upon blue water in those days. 
 The real blue water has a tendency to make 
 me sea-sick, but put me in a library, and a 
 sailor s life was the life for me, yo-ho, yo-ho, 
 yo-ho. Nor was the smell of powder long 
 absent from my nostrils, for I spent most of 
 my time assisting in the capture of English 
 frigates. I knew the thrill of the moment 
 when the enemy s top-sails were sighted, and 
 the suspense lest she might prove to be a 
 seventy-four. (We never carried over thirty- 
 eight guns or forty-four at the most, so you 
 can see that a seventy-four would have been 
 very embarrassing.) Then there was the long 
 
94 THE SECRET BOOK 
 
 chase. I knew exactly when to yaw and let 
 fly a couple of bow-chasers. I say that I 
 knew when to do it, and that is true (it is 
 about one page and a half after you have 
 first sighted your enemy) but what it is to 
 "yaw" and how you do it, are things that 
 stump me even to this moment. It is a good 
 satisfying word and that is all I need to know. 
 If ever in actual life I need to make a frigate 
 yaw, preparatory to letting fly a couple of 
 bow-chasers, doubtless there will be someone 
 around who can tell me the way to go about 
 it. 
 
 Before long you are hotly engaged. You 
 have set an ensign at each masthead, and 
 by clever seamanship come up on her weather 
 quarter. The firing is hot, the sweet smell of 
 the powder smoke is in your nostrils. They 
 are fighting bravely, but they have something 
 to learn about gunnery. They fire when their 
 ship is on the crest of the wave so that their 
 
ON PIRATES 95 
 
 shots pass harmless through your rigging. 
 But your men wait until you are in the trough, 
 and hull her every time. In seven minutes 
 by your watch down comes her main-mast, 
 and you forge slowly ahead. You prepare 
 to cross her bows, and rake her from stem 
 to stern. But she has had enough, and her 
 flag is lowered in token of surrender. You 
 send a boat and learn that she is His Britannic 
 Majesty s ship "Macedonian." Her captain 
 comes aboard, wounded, poor fellow, and 
 offers his sword, which you magnanimously 
 refuse to accept. "I could not think, sir, 
 of depriving you of a weapon which you have 
 wielded so gallantly today!" Or is this better: 
 "Keep your sword, captain, since you have 
 used it so well, no man has a better claim 
 to it than yourself." You practise these; to 
 see which one you like best, while he is coming 
 in the boat. Then after the ceremony is 
 over, you invite him to dinner with you in 
 
96 THE SECRET BOOK 
 
 the cabin, while a prize-crew is put aboard 
 the captured vessel. They find on her some 
 Yankee prisoners the officers and men of 
 the privateer "Mary Ann," who are naturally 
 pleased to be released. 
 
 Dear me, dear me it seems as if I could 
 have managed that sea-fight pretty well all 
 but the yawing. I should have especially 
 enjoyed that scene with the British captain. 
 And here I am in a stuffy old library and 
 the North Atlantic breezes have all died away. 
 They blew so merrily but a moment ago the 
 yards creaked, and the bos n s whistle piped. 
 And now here comes the janitor to tell me 
 the library is closing and I must go home. 
 I have a mind to order him in irons, and put 
 him in the brig for ten days, on bread and 
 water. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 A NUMBER OF THINGS 
 
 On an evening in the following week the 
 Club met in Newberry s flat. Only four or 
 five of us were there, Lenox and Tilden had 
 gone to a hockey game, while Forbes was 
 attending a first night of the latest disease- 
 drama "The Children s Teeth." 
 
 Ryerson began to accuse Newberry of acute 
 anglomania, on account of a London "Times" 
 which was lying on the table. 
 
 "I read the Times/" said Newberry, 
 "for two things: detective stories and humor." 
 
 "Humor? Ever try the City Directory, 
 some rippin things in that!" remarked 
 Bronson, mimicking Newberry s pronunciation. 
 
 "Yes, humor. And detective stories, the 
 
 97 
 
98 THE SECRET BOOK 
 
 reports of robberies and murder trials. Did 
 you follow the theft of the pearl necklace in 
 the Times ? Twas a great sight more 
 exciting than anything our yellow journals 
 can do, they give everything away, in their 
 big, shrieking headlines. There s something 
 about the sober, matter-of-fact, third-person, 
 British journalese that makes the reports of 
 trials all the more thrilling. Witness: the 
 case of that English army officer tried for 
 murder in India last summer. And then, 
 do you ever follow the Cuckoo Controversy?" 
 
 "The what?" 
 
 "The annual Cuckoo Controversy. It is 
 one of the chief sporting events of Great 
 Britain. It is as old as the Oxford- Cambridge 
 boat race, if not older. As long ago as when 
 Hichens wrote The Green Carnation he 
 made one of his characters remark that the 
 season was approaching when elderly gentle 
 men think they have heard the cuckoo sing- 
 
A NUMBER OF THINGS 99 
 
 ing near Esher, and write to the Times 
 about it." 
 
 "What/sit all about?" 
 
 "The point to be settled is: who is the first 
 person in the British Isles to hear or see a 
 cuckoo in the spring. The Times and a 
 number of other papers devote columns to it, 
 every year. It s a better game than golf; 
 there s no age limit. Ladies and gentlemen 
 in bath-chairs rush into the contest. Here s 
 something I ve written about it for the Ga 
 zette, if you care to hear it. It s all genuine, 
 the copies of the l Times I took these letters 
 from are all here, if you wish to verify it." 
 
 Newberry is a special writer on the "Ga 
 zette." We told him to go ahead. He snapped 
 on an electric drop-light, and read his article. 
 
 "LOUD SINGS CUCKOO!" 
 
 Like us, they have been having a mild 
 winter in England, and their spring is coming 
 
100 THE SECRET BOOK 
 
 much faster than ours. The annual Cuckoo 
 . Controversy has been raging for a number of 
 weeks. Mr. R. Lydekker drew first blood. 
 He heard the cuckoo as early as February 4th 
 and he let the "Times" know about it the 
 same day. He was gardening, it seems, at 
 Harpenden Lodge, Herts, when he heard a 
 faint note which led him to say to his under- 
 gardener, "Was that the cuckoo?" (Note 
 that it was only the under-gardener. The 
 presence of the head-gardener might have 
 added an air of greater authority to the oc 
 casion, but the gentleman is careful in his 
 statements. He is the first cuckoo-hearer of 
 the season, and can afford to take his triumph 
 sedately, as Tennyson s Maud took her 
 lover s kiss.) 
 
 Almost immediately afterwards, both Mr. 
 Lydekker and his under-gardener heard the 
 full double note of the cuckoo, repeated 
 either two or three times. They were not 
 
A NUMBER OF THINGS 101 
 
 sure which. The time was 3.40 and the 
 bird seemed to be about a quarter of a mile 
 away. "There is not the slightest doubt," 
 says Mr. Lydekker, "that the song was 
 that of a cuckoo." 
 
 The "Times s" cuckoo-editor is sceptical, 
 calm, but sceptical. He merely quotes Yar- 
 rell s "British Birds" to the effect that all 
 cuckoos prior to March must be treated with 
 suspicion if not incredulity. And Harting s 
 "Handbook," he reminds the happy pro 
 prietor of Harpenden Lodge, says there is 
 no authentic record of the arrival of the cuckoo 
 earlier than April 6. 
 
 But it is too late; the fat is in the fire, 
 and from all parts of the King s domains the 
 cuckoo specialists come flocking. The expert 
 on the "Times" regretfully realizes that 
 his long winter s nap is at an end; he must 
 sharpen his quill and get ready for the busy 
 season. 
 
102 THE SECRET BOOK 
 
 The first is Mr. Richard Edgecumbe of 
 Edgbarrow, Crowthorne. He turns over some 
 old family papers, and discovers a letter 
 written in 1834 by the Duke of Rutland. The 
 Duke does not mention the cuckoo of 1834 
 directly, but he muses (in a letter to Frances, 
 Lady Shelley) on the mildness of that winter. 
 On February ist, he writes, "we trod upon a 
 carpet of primroses." Mr. Edgecumbe leaves 
 the readers of the "Times" to understand that 
 the Duke moved, so to speak, in the midst 
 of a perfect swarm of cuckoos. Mr. H. Myer, 
 writing from Eaton Gardens, Hove, suggests 
 that Mr. Lydekker s cuckoo is one that has 
 not migrated, and therefore, one that does 
 not count. On three separate occasions, says 
 Mr. Myer, he saw a young one, late last 
 December, in Hove Park. 
 
 Then conies the Duchess of Bedford. She 
 is a withering cynic on the subject of Febru 
 ary cuckoos. People hear them, she points 
 
A NUMBER OF THINGS 103 
 
 out, but never see them. The duchess takes 
 no stock whatever in the song heard at Har- 
 penden. But Mr. Louis Byrde, in another 
 letter, is willing to grant Mr. Lydekker s 
 cuckoo. Wherefore? Because he saw one 
 himself, between Hatherleigh and Okehamp- 
 ton, and on February 3! That advantage 
 of one day (as great a space as all eternity 
 to your true cuckoo observer) is what, we 
 may imagine, makes him so lenient with 
 Mr. Lydekker s bird. 
 
 Now, into the fray plunges the Rev. J. M. S. 
 Brooke. He stoutly defends the original state 
 ment, and he brings Morris s "British Birds" 
 (p. 47, vol. II) to vouch for the fact that the 
 cuckoo was both seen and heard at Malvern, 
 on the i2th of January, 1851. We may imag 
 ine that made the Duchess of Bedford and 
 Mr. Myer feel absolutely crushed. 
 
 But a few days later back comes Mr. Ly- 
 dekker into the columns of the "Times." He 
 
104 THE SECRET BOOK 
 
 is not trailing clouds of glory, either, he is 
 in sackcloth and ashes. His letter begins in 
 the dismal phraseology of one of General 
 Buller s despatches from South Africa. "I 
 regret to say," he writes, "that I have been 
 completely deceived in the matter of the 
 supposed cuckoo of February 4th. The note 
 was uttered by a bricklayer s laborer at work 
 on a house in the neighborhood ... I have 
 interviewed the man, who tells me that he is 
 able to draw cuckoos from considerable dis 
 tances by the exactness of his imitation of their 
 notes, which he produces without the aid of 
 any instrument." 
 
 Truly, it will be a sad spring for Mr. Ly- 
 dekker. Next year he will greet those liquid 
 notes in the lines of Wordsworth: 
 
 blithe new-comer! I have heard, 
 
 1 hear thee and rejoice: 
 
 O Cuckoo! shall I call thee bird, 
 Or but a wandering Voice? 
 
A NUMBER OF THINGS 105 
 
 Thrice welcome, darling of the Spring! 
 
 Even yet thou art to me 
 
 No bird, but an invisible thing, 
 
 A voice, a mystery. 
 
 "If Forbes were here," said Sayles, when 
 Newberry had finished, "he would want to 
 know what good this sort of thing does." 
 
 "It is rather hard to see," observed Bronson. 
 "Where do all these cuckoo enthusiasts come 
 from? Why do they have nothing else to do 
 than write letters to the "Times ?" 
 
 "Oh," said Newberry, "it simply means 
 the presence of a leisure class, such as is 
 always to be found in an old country. Why, 
 it isn t unknown here. There are people 
 who wrangle with each other over similar 
 questions in some of the New York and Bos 
 ton papers. It s a good thing. They re as 
 valuable to the community as the tired busi 
 ness man class, and they don t have nervous 
 prostration so quick." 
 
io6 THE SECRET BOOK 
 
 Ryerson, who was wandering about the 
 room, stopped at Newberry s desk, and looked 
 at the type-writer. 
 
 "What s this?" he asked, " Salad Days? 
 Your early love affairs, Newberry?" 
 
 "No," said Newberry, "I took dinner 
 with the Osterhouts, last night." 
 
 "Anything I can do for you?" inquired 
 Dr. Senn. 
 
 Everyone smiled. Mrs. Osterhout s dinners 
 are famous. Some of her cook s creations are 
 so elaborate that it seems a pity to eat them. 
 They ought to be preserved in a museum. 
 
 "I m all right," replied Newberry. "Very 
 nice dinner, and it gave me an idea for an 
 editorial." 
 
 "May I read it?" asked Ryerson, who had 
 already gone half through it. 
 
 "Read it aloud," said Dr. Senn. 
 
 Ryerson took the paper out of the machine 
 and read: 
 
A NUMBER OF THINGS 107 
 OUR SALAD DAYS 
 
 Nothing better illustrates our national ex 
 pansion than the development, from humbler 
 beginnings, of the salad which garnishes the 
 dinner table. Consider the simple the shrink 
 ing salad of our boyhood. Lettuce alone 
 composed it, and it was dressed we avert 
 our eyes from the supercilious gaze of the 
 younger generation it was dressed with sugar 
 and vinegar! Especially fortunate persons 
 sometimes added a tomato. For the most 
 part, however, we had lettuce (with that 
 dressing which we blush to mention) or noth 
 ing at all. There were, of course, those prepa 
 rations in which chopped meat of some kind 
 chicken or lobster played a conspicuous part. 
 But then, as now, such dishes went far to con 
 stitute a luncheon or a supper. They were 
 seldom offered as a separate course at 
 dinner. 
 
io8 THE SECRET BOOK 
 
 Then came the middle period the advance 
 from the ruder forms, when simplicity and 
 good taste were nevertheless observed. The 
 art of mixing oil and vinegar became widely 
 known in this country. It was no longer 
 possible for the man from the city, looking 
 about the dinner table in a country hotel, and 
 inquiring for "the oil," to be asked by the 
 waitress if he meant kerosene. As olive oil 
 advanced upon the stage, sugar shyly re 
 tired from the scene. There were good salads 
 in those days! Honest lettuce and tomatoes, 
 celery, or perchance chicory or cress, with a 
 dressing of oil and vinegar, salt and pepper. 
 The purpose of the salad was understood: it 
 was a green oasis between the heavier courses 
 and the sweets. A skilfully tempered acidity 
 was its prevailing note. Those were the days 
 of the salad s best period the Ionian days, 
 before Persian luxury and barbarity had come 
 to despoil the tender dish. 
 
A NUMBER OF THINGS 109 
 
 But what risks are run by the diner-out 
 of today! Look at the salad of the pres 
 ent period, merciful powers! who can de 
 scribe it? Strange things have crept into it; 
 sweet fruits infest it; jams, jellies and com 
 fits are poured out upon it. Cheeses not 
 improper visitants upon its outskirts have 
 advanced into the heart of it; nuts and other 
 foreign substances turn up in unexpected 
 corners. Whipped cream (0 temporal O 
 mores!) lies thick upon it; each new hostess 
 seems to be seeking some "lucent syrup 
 tinct with cinnamon," by which to disguise 
 the once innocent preparation. Many salads 
 of today need only a fountain of pink lemon 
 ade playing above them, and a couple of 
 artificial swans floating upon their surface to 
 represent, in miniature, a children s Fourth 
 of July picnic. Truly, thou salad of the twen 
 tieth century, thy name is Flamboyance! 
 
 In the days of Sidney Smith it was said 
 
HO THE SECRET BOOK 
 
 that the salad would " tempt the dying 
 anchorite to eat," 
 
 Back to the world he d turn his fleeting soul, 
 And plunge his fingers in the salad bowl! 
 
 Today it would be a brave man who would 
 plunge his fingers in the salad bowl. He would 
 be afraid of getting bitten. 
 
 "Now," said Newberry, at the conclusion 
 of the reading, "I ve furnished these two 
 elegant extracts from my writings, letting 
 you hear them in advance of the readers 
 of the l Gazette, 7 too. This is not a one- 
 man band. Someone else do something, or 
 Bronson will be reciting Casey at the Bat. 
 I can see the look coming over his face." 
 
 "Nothing of the sort!" exclaimed Bronson, 
 "I wouldn t do it now if you asked me." 
 
 "Besides," Newberry continued, in a peev 1 
 ish voice, "I ve got to provide the food and 
 drink tonight, and the tobacco, and some- 
 
A NUMBER OF THINGS in 
 
 body s smoked almost all of that box of very 
 expensive Zumurud cigarettes." 
 
 "Lenox/ 7 said Sayles, "ought to have read 
 a paper tonight, but he s gone to the hockey 
 game. I cut these two things from a library 
 paper, and I ll offer them, to fill up the gap." 
 
 "The first," he went on, "seems to have 
 been occasioned by the announcement that 
 a young lady librarian, somewhere or other, 
 had the greatest number of readers of serious 
 books of any librarian in the State. Another 
 librarian is moved thus to address the lady. 
 
 THE PASSIONATE LIBRARIAN TO HIS LOVE 
 
 Come live with me and be my love, 
 And we will dwell oh, far above 
 The silly multitude who feed 
 On novels, and who fiction read. 
 
 For all day long we ll sit and pore 
 Upon the very dryest lore; 
 Some ancient gray-beard shall dispense us 
 The latest volumes of the Census. 
 
112 THE SECRET BOOK 
 
 And I, ah I! will hold your hand 
 And sing you songs of Samarcand 
 Then you shall softly read to me 
 From Dr. Ploetz " Epitome." 
 
 When through the fields of daisies wide 
 We stroll together, side by side, 
 I ll bind your brows with pink carnations 
 And read you from the "Wealth of Nations." 
 
 Each month I ll bring, my love to you, 
 The North American Review, 
 Nor, sweetheart, shall you ever lack 
 For Whitaker s great Almanack! 
 
 Why, Spencer, Kant, John Stuart Mill 
 They all await your word and will; 
 Let me obey your fads and whims 
 And get you Cushing s "Anonyms." 
 
 In winter when the nights are cool 
 The "Index" made by Dr. Poole 
 Shall give you joy, my dearest dove 
 So live with me and be my love! 
 
 "The other," said Sayles, "is this:" 
 
A NUMBER OF THINGS 113 
 
 A member of the New York Public Library 
 staff writes: . 
 
 "The other day a student from Columbia 
 came into the library for help on a list of 
 references in history which he was to read 
 before writing a thesis. He said, I have 
 found most of the books in the Columbia 
 library, but there is one author I can t find 
 anywhere and I have spent a good deal of 
 time looking. He has a strange name and 
 I have never heard of him as a historian, 
 but he has written a good many of the books 
 on my list; his name is Ibid." 
 
 This question of the identity of Ibid is 
 one that should be cleared up. High school 
 and college libraries are full of earnest students 
 who admit themselves amazed at the vast 
 number of his writings, and moreover at the 
 universality of the man. "The old gink," 
 we heard one sophomore complain, "seems to 
 have written a book on every subject in the 
 
H4 THE SECRET BOOK 
 
 world. They re all the time quoting him in 
 the Greek grammars, and I ve found things 
 by him on psychology, astronomy, calculus 
 and political economy. My roommate says 
 he was an associate and collaborator of Ovid 
 they got out a book of poems together, 
 by Ovid and Ibid, or Ibid and Ovid, he s not 
 sure which. I ve hunted all through that 
 card-index at the library, but they don t 
 seem to have any of his books though that 
 doesn t prove much, for I never can find 
 anything in it. I asked a man at the desk 
 if they had any of Ibid s works, and he had 
 never heard of him." 
 
 For the benefit of this sophomore and others 
 it should be said that it is a healthy sign to 
 have an interest in the works of so important 
 a writer as Ibid. He belongs to that class 
 of authors whose books are so important 
 that they are constantly referred to in foot 
 notes; a class that includes the Cit brothers, 
 
A NUMBER OF THINGS 115 
 
 Op and Loc, the Roman poetess Vide Supra, 
 that nondescript personage Infra, and the 
 Italian poet Ante, whom we are frequently 
 advised to see. In order to leave no doubt 
 about Ibid, we transcribe the following para 
 graph about him. It is from "The Dictionary 
 of Authors, Sacred and Profane," by Enoch 
 and Eliphalet Sneed. (Worcester, 1799). 
 
 IBID 
 
 Ibid, or Ibidimus, Marcus Alias Horten- 
 sius. Roman poet and rhetorician. Ibid is 
 supposed to have flourished about 240 B. c., 
 though in his own autobiography a work of 
 doubtful authenticity he says: "I was born 
 Aug. 17, 185 B. c." He is the author of "De 
 te, Fabula," "De et Nox" and over three 
 hundred other books. He invented the abla 
 tive absolute, for which he was rewarded by 
 the Senate with the proconsulship of Ultima 
 Verba. His military career seems to have led 
 
Ii6 THE SECRET BOOK 
 
 him also into Northern Italy, for it is recorded 
 that on one occasion, after a long siege, "-he 
 took Umbrage, and retired into hither Gaul." 
 Umbrage is, perhaps, a false reading for Um- 
 bria. The latter years of his life are clouded 
 in mystery, for he lived mostly in exile. He 
 passed his time in writing the vast number 
 of poems, which were subsequently published 
 under his pen name of "Anon." Finally he 
 seems to have trangressed the laws seriously, 
 for he was hanged in Effigy, a town in Lower 
 Egypt, on Christmas Day, 102 B. c. 
 
 "That man," said Dr. Senn, "is wrong 
 about one thing, the poems by Anon. At 
 least, he is wrong if this clipping is correct. 
 I cut it out of a paper only last week. Some 
 one had named the Twenty Worst Poets/ 
 and included Anon. The newspaper man 
 wrote this in reply." 
 
 And he read the following item. 
 
A NUMBER OF THINGS 117 
 
 In behalf of one of these unfortunate poets 
 someone ought to take up a whole bunch of 
 cudgels. He is that fireside favorite, the 
 recitationist s darling, and the elocutionist s 
 white hope Anon. May this right hand 
 forget its cunning and cuteness before it 
 fails to come to the defence of that prince of 
 poets, Anon! He is the mainstay and bread 
 winner for many an Answers-to-Correspond- 
 ents column. He laughs with the joyous 
 and mourns with those in affliction. The lyric 
 passion of Shelley, the rich beauty of Tenny 
 son, the profound thought of Browning, and 
 the ripe philosophy of Mrs. Ella Wheeler 
 Wilcox all these (and more) are included in 
 the pages of Anon. 
 
 Anon is the author of a vast number of 
 those delightful poems about the death of 
 the old jockey. These fine old fellows always 
 became seized, a few moments before their 
 dissolution, with a desire to relate to someone 
 
n8 THE SECRET BOOK 
 
 (usually known as "lad") the story of how 
 we won the Diddlesex Cup how "Rajah," 
 or some other horse, with the old jockey on his 
 back, romped in first, thereby winning the cup, 
 lifting the mortgage on the old earl s estates, 
 setting the lovely daughter of the earl free 
 from the machinations of some wily rascal, 
 and making things pleasant for everybody, 
 all around. They usually begin something 
 like this: 
 
 Come hither, lad, the lights are dim, the 
 
 shadows grow apace; 
 Come hither, and listen while I tell how 
 
 Rajah won the race; 
 I thank ee, lad your arm again a pillow 
 
 now, to bear the old man up 
 Tis six and thirty year agone since Rajah 
 
 won the cup! 
 
 They began just like that, and kept on for 
 pages and pages. Oh, they were great old 
 poems! Remembering them, shall we allow 
 
A NUMBER OF THINGS 119 
 
 any aspersions to be cast upon their author? 
 No, instead we will turn to a fine set of his 
 poems the "Complete Works of Anon," in 
 twenty-four volumes, full crushed levant, 
 with portrait and biographical sketch and 
 revel in them to our heart s content. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 FORGOTTEN BOOKS 
 
 The records of the Club seem to show that 
 the next meeting was at my house, and that 
 Lauriston read the paper. There are, in the 
 minutes, some satirical reflections upon the 
 failure of the heating apparatus, apparently 
 the night was bitter cold. 
 
 It was a farewell appearance for Lauriston. 
 His newspaper had given him an appointment 
 in its Paris bureau, one which he had anx 
 iously desired. So we all congratulated him, 
 and said we were sorry to have him go, 
 which was true. 
 
 He apologized to Ryerson for taking a leaf 
 out of his book, and writing about books 
 that he had read, and a library that he had 
 haunted, in the past. He called his paper: 
 
 120 
 
FORGOTTEN BOOKS 121 
 
 FORGOTTEN BOOKS 
 
 In one corner of the library there lived a 
 Frenchman, named Monsieur Jules Verne. 
 He was very nearly the most astonishing and 
 fascinating person in all that collection of 
 marvels. Nothing was hidden from him 
 neither the earth, nor the air, nor the waters 
 that are under the earth. He knew about 
 submarine boats years ahead of Holland; 
 he preceded Peary to the North Pole and 
 Amundsen to the South. And when he or 
 one of his characters penetrated to the apexes 
 of the earth, how he rose to the dramatic re 
 quirements of the situation! 
 
 "I held the chronometer. My heart beat 
 fast. If the disappearance of the half-disc 
 of the sun coincided with twelve o clock on 
 the chronometer, we were at the pole itself. 
 
 " Twelve! I exclaimed. 
 
 " The South Pole/ replied Captain Nemo, 
 
122 THE SECRET BOOK 
 
 in a grave voice, handing me the glass, which 
 showed the orb cut in exactly equal parts by 
 the horizon. 
 
 "I looked at the last rays crowning the 
 peak, and the shadows mounting by degrees 
 up the slope. At that moment Captain 
 Nemo, resting with his hands on my shoulder, 
 said 
 
 " I, Captain Nemo, on this 2ist day of 
 March, 1868, have reached the South Pole 
 onjihe ninetieth degree; and I take possession 
 of this part of the globe, equal to one-sixth of 
 the known continents. 
 
 " In whose name, Captain? 
 
 " In my own, sir! 
 
 "Saying which, Captain Nemo unfurled a 
 black banner, bearing an N in gold quartered 
 on its bunting. Then, turning toward the 
 orb of day, whose last rays lapped the horizon 
 of the sea, he exclaimed 
 
 " Adieu, sun! Disappear, thou radiant orb! 
 
FORGOTTEN BOOKS 123 
 
 Rest beneath this open sea, and let a night 
 of six months spread its shadows over my new 
 domains ! " 
 
 There is tall writing for you! There is 
 something to set your teeth in! Why can t 
 they discover the South Pole like that, now 
 adays? 
 
 Jules Verne left you in no doubt concern 
 ing his characters. Their nationality was 
 marked upon them. The Englishman was tall 
 and angular, with mutton-chop whiskers, 
 and all the apparatus of the typical globe 
 trotter. The Americans were so many Uncle 
 Sams temporarily minus their striped trou 
 sers, and star-spangled waistcoats. But I 
 didn t mind I liked it. What a perfect 
 iceberg of imperturbability (a long word, but 
 a necessary one) was his discoverer of the 
 North Pole one Captain Hatteras. He was 
 an Englishman, and nothing could break 
 
124 THE SECRET BOOK 
 
 down his iron determination. When it got so 
 cold that the mercury froze stiff in the bot 
 tom of the thermometer, was he dismayed? 
 Not a bit; he took that frozen lump of mercury, 
 put it in his gun, and shot a polar bear with 
 it! It was a very lucky incident, as a matter 
 of fact that drop in temperature to about 
 150 below zero, for they had just run out of 
 bullets. Only the frozen mercury saved them. 
 Nature cannot destroy a man like that. She 
 wastes time in trying to do it. If she dropped 
 him in a blazing volcano (like the one he 
 found at the North Pole) he would just toast 
 his muffins on the lava, and go right on. 
 
 There was the delightful German professor, 
 scientist and bookworm, who crawled down 
 an Icelandic crater, and penetrated to the 
 center of the earth, coming out in Sicily, 
 He was called Yocul Sneffels, or else that was 
 the name of the man who showed him the 
 way, or of the volcano by which he entered. 
 
FORGOTTEN BOOKS 125 
 
 I forgot precisely what it was the name of, 
 but the sweet music of it haunts my ears to 
 this day. It was a cloudy and dismal No 
 vember noonday, I remember, when I got my 
 clutches on that book. It had been out of 
 the library in the possession of Tommy 
 Eaton for nearly a month. There was a feud 
 in progress between Tommy s gang and my 
 eminently respectable associates, and any 
 communication between us would have been 
 out of the question. But at last, after many 
 weary days of waiting, I heard that he had 
 returned it. Between school hours I hurried 
 to the library. The cold, dusty streets, the 
 bare trees, the hideous angularity of a small 
 town at that season, and that hour of day, 
 these things were hardly noticed. They were 
 not noticed at all; was I not going to the centre 
 of the earth with Jules Verne and Mr. Sneffels 
 
 whatever his name was? 
 The Jules Verne books were on a top 
 
126 THE SECRET BOOK 
 
 shelf fat, broken-back volumes, with pages 
 torn and thumbed. But they were never 
 dusty. At that moment, only two or three 
 out of the dozen or more were on the shelf. 
 Two of them I passed over, I knew which 
 they were, and I had read them three times 
 apiece. They had been there yesterday, and 
 the day before, and the day before that. I 
 knew, for I had inspected them once at least 
 every twenty-four hours. This time my 
 desired prize was there. Inside of three 
 minutes I was hurrying home with it. The 
 librarian had stamped it, and handed it over 
 to me in a matter of fact way, as if it were 
 so much paper and ink he did not seem to 
 know that it was the key to joyous mysteries! 
 Does anyone who hears this remember 
 the beginning of that book? Does he re 
 call the slip of paper, or parchment, found 
 in the old volume? It had an inscription 
 in Runic or Tunic, or some ancient tongue, 
 
FORGOTTEN BOOKS 127 
 
 and it gave the old professor the hint for his 
 wonderful journey. What did it say? I can 
 almost recall it. "Descend into Yocul of 
 Sneffels" that is where the SnefMs business 
 comes in I remember now, "Descend into 
 Yocul of Sneffels which the shade of Some 
 thing-or-Other caresses, and you will reach the 
 Centre of the Earth. I did it." And there 
 was a phrase about "Adventurous Traveller" 
 in it, somewhere, and it was signed by "Arne 
 Saknussen," or a similar outlandish name. 
 And the professor was all for starting for 
 Iceland right away, dragging along his re 
 luctant nephew, and going down into Sneffels 
 as fast as ever he could. The finding of that 
 slip of parchment, and the deciphering of it, 
 those were great moments. They made me 
 resolve to look with the utmost care through 
 every old volume I should come across. 
 
 Well, if you recall how that book began, 
 you will understand how I felt, when I was 
 
128 THE SECRET BOOK 
 
 compelled, by an absurd household regulation, 
 to eat my dinner. And what I suffered, an 
 hour later when a detestable bell summoned 
 me to school to spend two hours in the ob 
 noxious and degrading company of Colburn s 
 Arithmetic and Simpson s Spelling Book. 
 There was only one consolation I looked 
 up Iceland in my geography, and tried to 
 decide which one of those small, furry-looking 
 objects, which represented mountains, was 
 Sneffels. It was impossible to tell; the whole 
 island was no bigger on the map than a 
 cent, not as big as one of the cents we had in 
 those far-off times. I made a pin-hole in one 
 of the mountains, however that one would 
 do, in default of evidence to the contrary. 
 
 As soon as we were released from school, 
 I hurried home, and in spite of another 
 interruption, connected with food, and the 
 fact that my hour of going to bed was also 
 a matter of arbitrary rule, the day had not 
 
FORGOTTEN BOOKS 129 
 
 ended for me before I had made the whole 
 journey with the professor, his nephew, and 
 the faithful guide. I think there was a faith 
 ful guide; there usually was one. About 7.55 
 P. M. (just in time!) we emerged once more 
 upon the surface of the earth by way of 
 Mount Etna, I believe. 
 
 They do not seem to know how to write 
 books like that today. 
 
 It is a funny thing, this making of books. 
 (I claim no originality for the remark). A 
 man with a bad digestion sits down and 
 drives his pen wearily across reams of paper; 
 some other men set type and send the result 
 far and wide. At the end of the chain you 
 have a small person three thousand miles 
 away with his eyes popping out of his head, 
 delicious chills running down his spine, too 
 scared to go to bed, too frightened to sit up, 
 yet thirsty for more and still more. 
 
 "Give me a highwayman," said R. L. 
 
130 THE SECRET BOOK 
 
 Stevenson, "and I was full to the brim; a 
 Jacobite would do, but the highwayman was 
 my favorite dish. I can still hear that merry 
 clatter of the hoofs along the moonlit lane; 
 night and the coming of day are still related 
 in my mind with the doings of John Rann or 
 Jerry Abershaw; and the words, post-chaise, 
 the great North road/ ostler/ and nag still 
 sound in my ears like poetry. One and all, 
 at least, and each with his particular fancy, 
 we read story books in childhood, not for 
 eloquence or character or thought, but for 
 some quality of the brute incident." 
 
 People remember with affection the place 
 where they met their sweethearts, or, they 
 are said, in story books, to do so. And prob 
 ably most of us recall how the stage was set 
 for our first encounter with some of our 
 loves in the form of books. It would be a 
 commonplace room in most cases, except 
 for that radiance which the story itself has 
 
FORGOTTEN BOOKS 131 
 
 shed all about. When dozens a whole 
 King Solomon s harem of the beloved have 
 been encountered within the walls of one 
 building, there is hardly anything which can 
 make the place prosaic and matter of fact 
 again. It must always shine with a light some 
 thing more than earthly. 
 
 We possessed, in those days, the secret 
 of transmuting books into magic spells. We 
 had the credulous brains, the foolish hearts, 
 which accepted preposterous incidents without 
 question. There was no "willing suspension 
 of disbelief," it was suspended for us, without 
 conscious effort on our part. 
 
 Out of the mass of books which held us 
 breathless, there remain memories of certain 
 tales, which cannot be identified. Their titles 
 and their authors vanished from our minds 
 long ago. Probably the charm which they 
 exert is all the greater on this account; they 
 
132 THE SECRET BOOK 
 
 belong in the realm of elusive, mystical 
 things, and they cannot be haled up into 
 the light of day for critical examination. 
 No ordinary ink was employed in their making; 
 they seem, in retrospect, to have been written 
 with some enchanted fluid, so that each line 
 glowed like the initials of an illuminated manu 
 script. They might be commonplace enough, 
 if someone should be so unwise as to dig them 
 out, and expose them to view. Certainly, I 
 will never hunt up my own lost loves, what 
 ever others may like to do. They shall re 
 main in that wizard-light which has surrounded 
 them for twenty years. 
 
 There is a story of a sagacious man who 
 lived in a house with a secret room. He 
 showed the half -hidden door of it to a guest. 
 
 "What is there, inside?" asked the guest. 
 
 "I m sure I don t know," replied the 
 owner. 
 
 "Do you mean to tell me you ve never 
 
FORGOTTEN BOOKS 133 
 
 been in that room?" was the astonished ques 
 tion. 
 
 "Of course I haven t," said the man; "if 
 I went in, then I should no longer have a 
 secret room." 
 
 The incident (related, perhaps, by the au 
 thor of "The Gentle Reader") would seem 
 more incredible to me if I had not known two 
 persons who had actually possessed a secret 
 apartment, and who had, through a lifetime, 
 exercised this restraint upon their curiosity, 
 in order to keep their curiosity alive. I shall 
 always admire such people, while, at the same 
 time, I fear that I have no such heroic virtue 
 myself. Sometime, while I hesitated outside 
 that door, I should have proved as frail as 
 Bluebeard s wife. What was inside? A 
 dusty skeleton? A rotting bedstead, upon 
 which lay the form of a dead girl of surpassing 
 beauty? Or, best of all, a crumbling chest 
 or trunk, which should contain the docu- 
 
134 THE SECRET BOOK 
 
 ments to clear up the whole mystery, what 
 ever that mystery might be. Some day I 
 should have been weak, and turned the knob, 
 and forced the lock. 
 
 But I will not burst in upon the secret room 
 which contains these vanished books. I do 
 not wish to know their names, least of all 
 do I wish to see them again. There might 
 prove to be dreary passages in them; they 
 might be dull or flat. Works of genius, they 
 seem, assuredly, as I look back upon them; 
 but cold-blooded inspection, today, might 
 show very little magic ink in their composi 
 tion. 
 
 One of them dealt with some lost and for 
 gotten nation, hidden in the recesses of a 
 far-off continent South America, I fancy. 
 To this strange people came the leading char 
 acters of the story a boy, and (oddly enough) 
 a girl. They were brother and sister, and I 
 
FORGOTTEN BOOKS 135 
 
 can only account for her presence by suppos 
 ing that the author of the book was a woman. 
 Few of my favorite authors put girls into their 
 stories indeed, it is a marvel how I ever got 
 beyond the introductory page of this one. 
 It is hard to understand why I did not lay 
 the volume down in disgust as soon as a 
 petticoat appeared. That was my usual 
 practice. This must have been the work 
 of some crafty writer, who hoped to appeal 
 to an audience of both sexes. 
 
 At any rate, the boy and his sister wander 
 far into the unknown, and discover this lost 
 nation, and its great capital a city of untold 
 wealth. Just what happened after that is 
 altogether vague. There was something about 
 treasure, of course (there always is, and al 
 ways should be), and then there were sur 
 prising difficulties about getting home again. 
 There was a river which ran its gloomy length, 
 not through caverns measureless to man, but 
 
136 THE SECRET BOOK 
 
 between precipitous cliffs, and it had to 
 my great delight nuggets of gold on its 
 shores. And there was some horror which 
 lurked in the vicinity was it some terrible 
 kind of wild beast, or some especially savage 
 tribe, with very unpleasant habits canni 
 balism, perhaps? I cannot remember. But I 
 know that you couldn t go after those attract 
 ive nuggets as on a mere holiday excursion. 
 You took your life in your hands, and there 
 was every likelihood of your dying in some 
 gruesome fashion. Someone did die in that 
 fashion, in the course of the story, and the 
 author described his decease with no lack of 
 ghastly details. 
 
 Another of these books was about a whaling 
 voyage. It was before the days of Mr. Bullen, 
 and it had nothing to do with Herman Mel 
 ville. It was an extraordinarily long book, 
 and an extraordinarily varied, if not unusually 
 
FORGOTTEN BOOKS 137 
 
 long, voyage. I never expected to get home 
 inside of three years, when I went a-whaling 
 in those days, and on this occasion I shipped 
 not only for three years, but for about seven 
 hundred pages, as well. When we got home, 
 we had not only the usual four hundred (or 
 is it four thousand?) barrels of oil, and the 
 customary big lump of ambergris (worth 
 $7000 alone) but some of us had been in 
 Spanish prisons, and others had wooed and 
 won Cuban ladies of marvellous beauty (there 
 were always these unbearably sentimental 
 shipmates), while others hadn t returned at 
 all, for the good and sufficient reason that 
 they had been swallowed by sharks. They 
 were glad to see us, when we came rolling into 
 our home port, with the sides of our ship gray 
 and rusty from the long voyage, and parrots 
 screaming in the rigging. Perhaps I am wrong 
 about the parrots perhaps they belong on a 
 pirate craft, or an East Indiaman. But I 
 
138 THE SECRET BOOK 
 
 don t care; it pleases me to have them on 
 the whaler, and there they shall stay. 
 
 About the last of these books, I am in the 
 greatest doubt of all. It is surrounded by a 
 perfect haze of uncertainty. The scene is 
 clear enough, but the incidents if incidents 
 there were have faded like a month s old 
 dream. Most of all I am put to it to account 
 for the presence of such a book amongst 
 my reading at that period. There was no 
 particular reason why I should not have read 
 it, only it does not seem likely that I should 
 have cared for such a story. There was noth 
 ing terrifying about the slight element of mys 
 tery that overhung it. On the contrary it 
 was all very gentle so gentle that I wonder 
 how I, who thirsted for gore in my literature, 
 could have perused it and fixed it in my 
 memory. 
 
 Only a chapter or two of it remains. That 
 
FORGOTTEN BOOKS 139 
 
 section concerns an old house, an empty 
 house, standing near the foot of a lane. The 
 lane runs down nearly to the river, and ends 
 in a deserted wharf. The house was once 
 painted a yellowish brown, a color that a 
 hundred years of wind and rain have converted 
 into a dull tint like the moss on a rock. 
 Many of the window panes have been broken, 
 some of them stuffed with rags. Small fields 
 and vacant lots surround the house there 
 is no other building near it. In the late after 
 noons of the warm autumn weather a group 
 of children play tag and hide-and-seek in these 
 fields around the house, and down to the old, 
 dilapidated wharf. 
 
 At a certain time every afternoon for 
 several days the children do not notice that 
 it is at the same hour an old gentleman 
 a tall, old man comes down the lane and 
 enters the house. He is a nice, old man; 
 tall, and a little feeble, but still erect and 
 
140 THE SECRET BOOK 
 
 soldierly. He has been a sailor, I think 
 more than that a naval officer, a captain 
 or commodore, perhaps. A little old-fashioned 
 in his dress, but more citified than actually 
 old-fashioned. The black clothes, the high 
 hat, the walking-stick, the gloves, and the 
 spotless linen seem odd to the children in 
 this little, out-of-the way seaport, more than 
 does any slight antiquity in the cut of the 
 coat, or shape of the hat. Once or twice, on 
 his afternoon visits, he nods and waves his 
 stick to the children, who regard him for 
 an instant, and then go on with their 
 game. 
 
 It is, perhaps, on his third visit, that some 
 of the curious ones some of the girls, I 
 think begin to wonder what the old gentle 
 man is doing in the deserted house. They 
 propose that they shall creep up, and peer 
 in the windows. It is twilight now, they say, 
 and they would never be seen. Others of the 
 
FORGOTTEN BOOKS 141 
 
 children do not want to do that one of them 
 has some money and has promised to buy some 
 barley sticks and treat the rest of the group. 
 They are in favor of going up the lane to 
 the store, which is half a mile distant. But 
 the girls insist on spying upon the old man, 
 so three of them, and two of the younger 
 boys, tiptoe across the vacant lot, and look 
 in at the windows. 
 
 Three minutes later they are running at 
 full speed up the lane. When the rest of 
 the children overtake them, it is hard to find 
 out just what has happened. One of the boys 
 and one girl looked in at a rear window, and 
 they saw nothing at all. Why did they run? 
 Because the others did. As for the others the 
 two girls and one boy their accounts of what 
 they saw are more or less confused. The boy 
 stoutly maintains that he saw nothing not 
 even the old gentleman but that he was 
 frightened because the room was "so empty." 
 
142 THE SECRET BOOK 
 
 The girls agree that they saw the old man in 
 the black coat, and that there was "a lovely 
 lady a lady with white hair but she was a 
 young lady, for her eyebrows were black, and 
 her cheeks were red, and she sat in a chair 
 near the fire yes, there was a fire in the 
 fire-place, and there was the old gentleman 
 leaning over her, and talking to her, and they 
 didn t know why they ran, but they were 
 both frightened all at once, and so they ran." 
 This, and much more, and much argu 
 ment especially about the lady s dress 
 which was like nothing they had ever seen; 
 and about the marvel of her white hair. The 
 story ends at this point, as far as I am con 
 cerned. I cannot place it; I cannot give its 
 sequel, if any there was. Did the old man 
 continue his visits promptly every afternoon 
 at four did he spend some time in that 
 dreary, empty room, and did there, perhaps, 
 in the manner of such stories, come a day 
 
FORGOTTEN BOOKS 143 
 
 when he went in, but came out no more? 
 Was he, perhaps, as much a figment of child 
 ish imagination as the beautiful lady by the 
 fire? I can answer none of these questions. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 LAURISTON 
 
 Lauriston was the last to go. He stayed 
 behind, while I made one final assault upon 
 the fire, to try to get the room warm. A 
 few small sticks created a blaze, but Lauriston 
 refused to draw up his chair to the fire, or, 
 indeed, to sit down at all. Nor would he 
 smoke. He seemed a little excited. 
 
 "Look here," said he, finally, "have you 
 seen this?" 
 
 It was a crumpled auction catalogue which 
 he drew from his pocket. I looked it over. 
 I had not seen it before, but there appeared 
 to be nothing unusual in it, and I said as 
 much. 
 
 "Look at lot 181," he said. 
 144 
 
LAURISTON 145 
 
 I turned to that number, it was blank. 
 Both before and after it were the ordinary 
 auction items. Number 180 was one of the 
 eternal "Tom and Jerry books; and 182 
 was a set of Hogarth prints, quite the stock 
 entries in an auction catalogue. There was 
 the number 181 and a blank space, nothing 
 more. I looked at the cover. The sale was 
 to take place in London, at the rooms of the 
 famous Messrs Atherby, about ten days hence. 
 The library to be sold, was that of the usual 
 "private gentleman." 
 
 "Well," said I, "what of it?" 
 
 "This," he returned, still in his mysterious 
 manner. 
 
 He handed me a letter. In it, the Messrs. 
 Atherby presented their compliments to Mr. 
 Lauriston, and begged to thank him for his 
 inquiry. They were forced to reply, however, 
 that they could not, at present, make known 
 the precise identity of the lot in the forth- 
 
146 THE SECRET BOOK 
 
 coming sale, about which he had been so good 
 as to inquire. They assured him, however, 
 that it was an item of the highest possible 
 interest to all book collectors. If Mr. Lauris- 
 ton should call at their rooms, during his 
 projected visit to London, they hoped to 
 apprise him of certain other details, which 
 would, they believed, explain their reticence. 
 
 "If it was anywhere than Atherby s," said 
 I, "you d think it was something which 
 would get them in trouble with the police. 
 Has someone stolen the Book of Kells, or 
 Shakespeare s copy of Ovid from the Bod 
 leian?" 
 
 "No," said Lauriston, "more than that." 
 
 "Well, for Heaven s sake, what is it?" 
 
 "It s The Secret Book." 
 
 I stopped my work on the fire. 
 
 "You don t believe that?" 
 
 "I certainly do believe it." 
 
 "But that was a dream or delirium." 
 
LAURISTON 147 
 
 "You said yourself," he insisted, "that you 
 believed in The Secret Book." 
 
 "I do/ I replied, "or, at any rate, I be 
 lieve in the legends about it. If there was such 
 a book, and it s perfectly possible that there 
 may have been, it has disappeared, long ago." 
 
 "Well, it s appeared again," he replied. 
 
 He was so much in earnest that I couldn t 
 contradict him flatly. 
 
 "Even if it should appear," I pointed out, 
 "it would never be put up at public auction. 
 Some of those scouts for the millionaires 
 would have snapped it up, long ago." 
 
 "It isn t exactly a public auction," Lauris- 
 ton went on. "It isn t advertised in any way. 
 I happen to know that these catalogues have 
 been sent to very few persons. Moreover, 
 there are methods in which the sale of that 
 particular item could be kept restricted." 
 
 "But why" I began. 
 
 "Because of the danger attending its 
 
148 THE SECRET BOOK 
 
 possession. You know its history. That 
 Englishman, Sedling, was the last one known 
 to have it. And you remember how he dis 
 appeared." 
 
 It is easy to smile at such fancies when they 
 are uttered by someone else than Lauriston. 
 
 "Do you really mean that you believe it 
 to be a a, what shall I say? A haunted 
 book?" 
 
 "Not in the sense that you mean. But 
 well there are influences at work, and, 
 interests involved, of which I have some sus 
 picion. I have a hint of the truth, at any 
 rate." 
 
 He began putting on his coat. 
 
 "Are you going to the auction?" I asked 
 him. 
 
 "I wouldn t miss it for anything in the 
 world. I shall get to London that morning." 
 
 "What particular plutocrat are you going 
 to bid for?" 
 
LAURISTON 149 
 
 "No one. It s on my own hook ... It 
 isn t a question of money. Look here," 
 he pointed his finger at me, "Atherby doesn t 
 know anything more about it than we do, 
 not so much! I don t believe they ve seen the 
 book, or heard its title. And they will not. 
 I shall deal with the owner of it." 
 
 I tried to quiz him still farther, but he 
 remained enigmatic. Then he shook hands 
 with me, and departed. 
 
 "If I get it," he turned and spoke at the 
 door, "I ll send you a post-card with Luck 
 on it." 
 
 When I was back in the library I went to 
 the window, and looked down the street. 
 I could see Lauriston s thin figure disappear 
 ing in the distance. His coat collar was turned 
 up, and his hands were shoved deep in his 
 pockets. Then he stepped into the black 
 shadows beyond the last arc-light, and van 
 ished. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 "BOOK-LEARNING " 
 
 Pratt came to the next meeting, boiling 
 with rage. Pratt teaches physics at a boy s 
 school. 
 
 "Look here," said he, "do you ever read 
 this Librarian column in the Boston Tran 
 script?" 
 
 No one answered him. Lenox and Tilden 
 were beginning one of their usual piquet 
 games; Ryerson and Sayles had been in a 
 wrangle over politics on their way to the 
 meeting, and were still glowering at each 
 other. Everyone was too much occupied to 
 pay any special attention to Pratt. 
 
 "Well," said he, "I m going to read this. 
 
 Somebody ought to answer it." 
 
 150 
 
"BOOK-LEARNING" 15-1 
 
 "Go ahead," remarked Crerar, who was 
 lying on a couch in the corner, gazing placidly 
 at the ceiling. 
 
 And Pratt read: 
 
 " BOOK-LEARNING" 
 
 "The public library is an integral part of 
 public education," I dictated. 
 
 Then I paused, and addressed Miss Sims, 
 my stenographer. 
 
 "That s rather neat, I think?" 
 
 She bit her pencil, doubtfully. 
 
 "Seems to me Fve heard it before, some 
 where," she suggested. 
 
 "I should hope so! You wouldn t have 
 me make a new and original statement at 
 a meeting of librarians, would you? That 
 would never do! Part of them would de 
 nounce me as flippant, and the rest the 
 library magazines, for instance would refer 
 condescendingly to what I said as clever/ 
 
152 THE SECRET BOOK 
 
 which means smart but shallow. The great 
 art of a library meeting speech," I con 
 tinued, "is to utter as many solemn platitudes 
 as possible with a very solemn face. It is 
 always sure to be called both scholarly 
 and sound. " 
 
 "Let us resume the dictation," said I. 
 "The librarian is an educator. As Dr. John 
 son said I refer, of course, when I speak of 
 Dr. Johnson s educators to the Johnson who 
 made the dictionary, not him who invented 
 educator crackers as Dr. Johnson said " 
 
 At this moment Edgar, the library page, 
 put his head into my office with his usual 
 delightful absence of all formality, and re 
 marked that "that feller named Beebe wants 
 to see yer." 
 
 Mr. Beebe is an earnest and admirable 
 young gentleman, a member of the Fresh 
 man class in Harvard University. He is 
 the holder of a scholarship from a Harvard 
 
" BOOK-LEARNING" 153 
 
 club of which I am a member. He frequently 
 consults me on matters pertaining to his 
 studious pursuits, and endeavors, when at 
 home, to use our public library as a substitute 
 for the University Library at Cambridge. 
 As this was Saturday afternoon, I was not 
 surprised to hear that he was at home. Also, 
 I remembered my duty toward my amanuen 
 sis. 
 
 "Miss Sims, you have already worked an 
 hour overtime. Thank you, very much, 
 I won t keep you any longer. We can finish 
 this dictation Monday afternoon, if I get a 
 chance .... Edgar, you may tell Mr. Beebe 
 to come in." 
 
 Strangely enough Miss Sims hurried out in 
 evident delight. I thought that she might 
 have begged to remain and take down the 
 rest of my rolling periods about the librarian 
 as an educator, with which I was going to 
 electrify the Buncombe County Library Club 
 
154 THE SECRET BOOK 
 
 next month. But she didn t. In less than 
 two seconds her chair was empty, and in less 
 than five more Mr. Beebe was sitting in it. 
 
 He had two books under his arm. Then 
 he had a list of four or five others for which 
 Miss Carter had been hunting. There were 
 a few other titles which we do not own at all. 
 These Mr. Beebe requested us to purchase 
 without an instant s delay. It seemed that he 
 was about to write an important thesis on 
 "The Age of Leucippos." I hope I have the 
 title of his thesis right, but I am not sure. 
 Events which have occurred since our inter 
 view have made me shaky in these matters, 
 and loosened my grip on things intellectual. 
 
 If it really was "The Age of Leucippos," 
 which Mr. Beebe was to expound, I need 
 not point out that "age" was used in the 
 sense of "epoch" or "period." It was not an 
 investigation about the number of years 
 which elapsed between the birth and death of 
 
"BOOK-LEARNING" 155 
 
 Leucippos. At least, I think not. When I 
 remember the infinitesimal topics upon which 
 I was directed to cast the searching light of 
 my intelligence, when I recall the fine points 
 which I elucidated upon forty or fifty pages 
 of large, white paper, in the golden years 
 through which Mr. Beebe is now passing 
 when I remember this, I cannot be positive. 
 Perhaps he was ransacking the libraries, and 
 burning the midnight electricity to discover 
 how old was Leucippos when he died. It 
 may be so. 
 
 At any rate, we plunged into a discussion 
 of Leucippos, and the best authorities on his 
 career. I mentioned casually, and without 
 ostentation, that his election as Archon of 
 Syracuse was really the turning point in his 
 career, and that Von Gompertz s biography 
 was generally accepted as the most reliable, 
 if not the fullest account of his life. At this, 
 Mr. Beebe looked puzzled and then pained. 
 
156 THE SECRET BOOK 
 
 He explained as gently as possible that Leu- 
 cippos had nothing to do with politics in 
 Syracuse. He was a satirical poet contempo 
 rary with Opisthenes the Younger, and a 
 member of the school of poets founded by 
 Anaximander of Oxyrhyncus. 
 
 I explained, hastily, that I must have 
 misunderstood the name; of course, I was 
 thinking of Leucippos the Argive brother 
 of the famous Hedonist, Kallikrates. But I 
 wished I had kept quiet, for Mr. Beebe in 
 stantly remarked that he was never Archon 
 of Syracuse, they didn t have any Archons in 
 that city, as a matter of fact. The man I 
 meant was probably Satrap of Bazoolium 
 during the twenty-third dynasty. 
 
 This seemed the proper place to put my 
 foot down. I have no objection to listening 
 to the wisdom which proceeds from the 
 mouths of babes and sucklings, but no man 
 can stand being corrected by a Freshman. 
 
"BOOK-LEARNING" 157 
 
 "Oh, no, I think not/ I said, and I reached 
 for an encyclopaedia. But, would you believe 
 it? That miserable Freshman was right. 
 There it was "Leucippos the Argive, Satrap 
 of Upper Bazoolium, overlord of Pharnabazos 
 of Thrace, etc." 
 
 I decided to get rid of Mr. Beebe as soon 
 as I could. So I took him out to Miss Carter 
 again, and told him to give her a list of the 
 books he needed. We would borrow them, or 
 buy them, if possible. Then I got my hat 
 and went home, in a state of considerable de 
 jection. 
 
 Jane met me with one word. 
 
 "Gloom," said she. 
 
 "Look here," I remarked, "do you consider 
 me an educated person?" 
 
 "Ye-es," she conceded, "but never pain 
 fully so." 
 
 "I have enough diplomas of one kind or 
 another," I remarked, hurling my hat into a 
 
158 THE SECRET BOOK 
 
 chair, "to paper one side of a small room. 
 I have no intention of using them for that 
 purpose, but the fact remains. I have been 
 secretary of the Buncombe County Library 
 Club. My bibliography of the Shoguns has 
 been termed in print a scholarly piece of 
 work. No one has ever looked at it, except 
 the unfortunate reviewer; it is, I am proud 
 to say, of no earthly use to anyone. That 
 is how I know it merits what the review said 
 about it. There is nothing popular about it, 
 at all. And yet, something which happened 
 this afternoon has made me question whether 
 I am really educated. It is not the first time, 
 either. Only last Wednesday a high-school 
 boy came into the library to inquire what 
 happens if you put sulphuric acid on sugar." 
 
 Jane made the sound which is the favorite 
 utterance of Indians, according to all properly 
 constructed Indian stories. She said "Ugh!" 
 Then she remarked: 
 
" BOOK-LEARNING" 159 
 
 I should think it would make a horrid 
 
 mess." 
 
 "It does, without any doubt/ I replied, 
 "but that is not the scientific way of looking 
 at it. Scientifically it results in SUG plus 
 H2S04, or SPQR or RSVP or something of 
 the sort. Nobody in the front of the library 
 knew just what it was, however, and they 
 sent him in to me." 
 
 "What did you tell him?" 
 
 "I looked in all the books about sulphuric 
 acid, and then I looked in all the books about 
 sugar. Do you know it has never, apparently, 
 occurred to any mortal soul, in the whole 
 history of the human race, to mix those two 
 things together? Never until this high-school 
 boy came along. I think that is rather im 
 pressive. " 
 
 "Did you answer his question?" 
 
 "I advised him to go home and try it 
 for himself. I told him that that is the true 
 
160 THE SECRET BOOK 
 
 scientific spirit. Take nothing for granted. 
 Test everything." 
 
 "But it might have exploded, or some 
 thing, and hurt him dreadfully, or got all 
 over his clothes, or set the house on fire." 
 
 "The real scientist cares nothing for that. 
 Suppose he did. Suppose Marconi, for in 
 stance, should have refrained from inventing 
 the wireless telegraph because he was afraid 
 it might get all over his clothes. Suppose 
 Madame Curie should have balked at the 
 invention of radium because it might get all 
 over her clothes. You and I would have gone 
 through life without any radium. Suppose " 
 
 Jane interrupted me. 
 
 "What are you hunting for?" 
 
 I was looking through the lower drawers 
 of my desk. As she spoke I pulled out a 
 bunch of catalogue cards. The rubber band 
 around them broke, and they fell in a dis 
 tressing shower on the floor. 
 
^BOOK-LEARNING" 161 
 
 "There goes the original manuscript of 
 my bibliography of the Shoguns," I said, 
 dolefully. 
 
 "I ll help you pick them up," said Jane, 
 "if you ll tell me what you are looking for. 
 I had that desk all cleared up " 
 
 "So I fancied." 
 
 "And now you re getting it all in a heap 
 again. What is it you want?" 
 
 "Those examination papers those college 
 examinations. I am going to look them over. 
 I wish to know if all my knowledge has de 
 parted. I intend to discover if I am an 
 educated person or not." 
 
 "Oh, those!" she exclaimed, "they re in 
 here. Why didn t you tell me before? Here 
 they are ... Gracious!" 
 
 "What s the matter?" 
 
 "Who s Phig Phig Phigaleia?" 
 
 "I never heard of her or it. What does 
 it say about him?" 
 
162 THE SECRET BOOK 
 
 "You must have heard it. You answered 
 a question about her. Here it is: The temple 
 of Phigaleia. When, by what architect, and 
 to what divinity was it erected? Describe or 
 draw its plan, and show where its principal 
 sculptural decoration was placed. Could you 
 do that now?" 
 
 "I could not. Perhaps I took another 
 question." 
 
 "Well, here s the next one. Describe the 
 so-called Harpy Tomb, stating where it stood 
 and its approximate date. Can you do that?" 
 
 I parried the question. 
 
 "I like the use of the phrase so-called 
 in that," said I. "Someone was thinking of 
 possible libel suits. No one likes to hear his 
 relatives described as harpies, even after they 
 are dead." 
 
 Jane continued inexorably. 
 
 " Define briefly the following terms, " 
 she read, and then interrupted herself to 
 
BOOK-LEARNING" 163 
 
 say: "The word briefly 7 is in italics oh, 
 dear, I can t pronounce these words." 
 
 I took the paper and looked at it. They 
 might have spared the italics. My definitions 
 would not have been lengthy. The terms 
 were "(a) abacus, (b) cella, (c) hypostyle, 
 (d) mastaba, (e) megaron, (f) pronaos, (g) 
 xoanon." 
 
 "Can you define em?" asked Jane. 
 
 "An abacus," I remarked with dignity, 
 "is a kind of counting machine to teach 
 arithmetic to children. I ve often seen pic 
 tures of them on the first page of dictionaries. 
 They come next after aardvark, which is 
 a kind of animal with a long snout, like an 
 ant-eater." 
 
 "I don t see what they have got to do with 
 an exam, in ancient art," said Jane; "what s 
 an x-o-a-n-o-n? " said she, spelling it out. 
 
 I did not intend to be bullied by Jane. 
 
 "The xoanon," I replied, "was the inner 
 
164 THE SECRET BOOK 
 
 sanctum, or robing-room of the Egyptian 
 priests. It was placed just back of the peri 
 cardium." 
 
 "What s the" 
 
 But I had had enough of ancient art. I 
 suggested that we try some other subject. 
 Jane took up another paper, and chose a 
 question by shutting her eyes, and jabbing 
 at it with her finger. 
 
 " What is Saint-Simon s opinion of Dan- 
 geau s Journal? In what respects do his own 
 Memoires differ from Dangeau s work?" 3 
 
 "I never answered that question!" 
 
 "Yes, you did. You must have. It says 
 at the top: Omit six of the questions, except 
 10, 19 and 24, and this is 10. You ve marked 
 it." 
 
 I leaned back and closed my eyes. 
 
 "Saint-Simon was a cynic. Therefore he 
 probably had a low opinion of Whatsisname s 
 Journal. He probably roasted it. He " 
 
"BOOK-LEARNING" 165 
 
 "Wasn t there a name for that kind of 
 answer?" said Jane. 
 
 "Yes," I admitted, sheepishly, "it was 
 called drooling." 
 
 "I don t believe you know anything about 
 it at all." 
 
 "I don t. I am as innocent of all knowl 
 edge of Dangeau as the proverbial babe 
 unborn. Yet I must have known him once 
 I passed the exam." 
 
 "Let s try another paper. . . . Here s one 
 it doesn t look like a question, though. It 
 just says: The place of polyandry and exog 
 amy in the evolution of the family. " 
 
 "To think," I reflected, "that I had tre 
 mendous questions like that batted up to me 
 when I was only " I made a calculation 
 "only nineteen and a half. ... As for 
 polyandry, it is a highly popular and fashion 
 able custom even to this day. It is the foun 
 dation of Mr. Robert W. Chambers s fortune. 
 
i66 THE SECRET BOOK 
 
 I don t recall what it had to do with the 
 evolution of the family, however. As for 
 that other thing exogamy I committed that 
 when I married you." 
 
 Jane looked alarmed. 
 
 "Simply that I married a resident of an 
 other place, that s all. There is no social 
 stigma connected with it." 
 
 "What," asked Jane, "is the Elberfeld 
 System?" 
 
 "Give it up. Try another paper." 
 
 "Six coins, each of radius a, are placed 
 close together on a table so that their centres 
 are at the vertices of a regular hexagon. Find 
 the perimeter and the " 
 
 "Pass on," I said, "swiftly!" 
 
 "Here s another paper: During war be 
 tween States A and B, a ship is captured by a 
 cruiser of A. The ship belongs to X, a citizen 
 of A residing in B, and the cargo, consisting 
 of coffee, to Y, a citizen of B residing in a 
 
BOOK-LEARNING" 167 
 
 neutral State, C. Three-fourths of the cargo 
 was grown on a plantation belonging to Y, 
 in State B- " 
 
 "I have a slight headache. I won t tackle 
 that one." 
 
 "Can you ( describe the physical, physi 
 ological, and psychological processes which 
 follow each other in the air, in the ear (es 
 pecially in the cochlea), in the nervous system 
 and in consciousness when we hear four 
 simultaneous tuning-fork tones of 400, 500, 
 600, and 800 vibrations?" 
 
 I moaned slightly, and Jane shuffled the 
 papers, turning from one to another. 
 
 " Does Mill believe there is an unearned 
 increment? Does Hadley? Can you discuss 
 the religious ideas of the seventeenth century 
 as revealed by Pascal and by Bossuet? Can 
 you describe the northern boundary of Mary 
 land and trace its history to 1775? Can you 
 give a summary of the facts concerning Bacon s 
 
168 THE SECRET BOOK 
 
 relations with Coke? Would you like to com 
 pare the Lady of Shalott with Elaine of Asto- 
 lat? What do you think of Penn s attitude 
 on the southern boundary of Pennsylvania? 
 What do you know about the Royal Marriage 
 Act of 1772? Is society an organism? Can 
 you show that every universal proposition 
 involves a negation?" 
 
 "Cease," I remarked. "I cannot, and do 
 not." 
 
 "But you did know all this once." 
 "It has vanished, and I am a mere igno 
 ramus. This here eddication business is no 
 use. Why should I even try to talk gram 
 ma tical-like any more? I won t, nohow." 
 
 But before the moon had risen that even 
 ing I did two things. First, I notified the 
 officials of the Buncombe County Library 
 Club that I would be unable to speak on 
 education to them. I would merely read a 
 
"BOOK-LEARNING" 169 
 
 paper on Christopher Marlowe. Then I 
 found in the wastebasket, where I had 
 scornfully cast it the day before an adver 
 tisement of a prominent correspondence school. 
 There was a sheet of paper with a list of all 
 the subjects they teach three hundred or 
 more of them. They were arranged in order 
 of the alphabet with a little space opposite 
 each subject, so you could check that branch 
 of learning in which you wish to become pro 
 ficient. I checked every one of them, from 
 archery down to zoroastrianism, and sent it 
 to them with a remittance. 
 
 "There!" said Pratt, putting down the 
 paper, "what do you think of that sort of 
 thing?" 
 
 He was pale with indignation. 
 
 "Sayles," remarked Crerar, "if you don t stir 
 that Rabbit faster, she ll be all full of lumps." 
 
 Other answer was there none. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 "Librarians," began Sayles, at the next 
 meeting, "do not have to wander far abroad 
 for secret and mystic books. They have hun 
 dreds of them, close at hand." 
 
 "What are they?" someone asked. 
 
 "Common and ordinary books," he replied. 
 "They re made secret and mysterious by the 
 people who want them but won t say so; 
 by the people who desire to find out some 
 trifling fact or other, but refuse to tell the 
 librarian what that fact is. Listen and you 
 shall hear. The touching little drama which I 
 am going to read is not only founded on fact, 
 it is fact, for at least six storeys above the 
 
 ground. If Bronson will cease playing The 
 
 170 
 
Maiden s Prayer on that discordant piano, 
 thanks." 
 
 The scene is the reference and reading room 
 of the Public Library. The reference libra 
 rian, Mr. Fernald, is at the desk. Thirty or 
 forty readers at the tables. There enters a 
 confused looking man, with the collar of his 
 overcoat turned up. He gazes around him 
 with unfocussed eyes, and finally makes for 
 Professor Sears, who is engaged on his great 
 work "The Moons of Mercury," behind two 
 enormous heaps of books. The man gives 
 the professor a slight jab in the armpit with 
 his thumb, and then addresses him. 
 
 The Man: Are you the feller? 
 
 The Professor: Hrrumph-yik? (He utters 
 this in the tones of a hyena, which is not 
 exactly angry merely surprised and irritated.) 
 
 The Man: Say, you re the feller, ain t yer? 
 
 (The professor rapidly traverses forty-seven 
 
172 THE SECRET BOOK 
 
 million miles of space, and lands abruptly in 
 the Public Library.) 
 
 The Professor: No, sir, I am not the feller. 
 What do you want? 
 
 The Man: She (pointing over his shoulder 
 with his thumb) told me I d see a feller in 
 here who d tell me bout these books, an I 
 
 The Professor: You want to see that young 
 man at the desk. 
 
 The Man: Oh! 
 
 (The professor slides quickly back again 
 across the interplanetary distances, and leaves 
 the man staring at Fernald. Finally he ad 
 vances to the desk.) 
 
 The Man: Say, are you the feller? 
 
 (Mr. Fernald, being a paid public servant 
 has not Professor Sears privilege of denying 
 that he is the feller. He evades the question, 
 however, by asking in what he feels is a bar 
 gain-counter manner, the question: "Is there 
 something I can do for you?") 
 
??? i 73 
 
 The Man: Why, say she (business with 
 thumb) told me I d find a feller here who d tell 
 me bout some book in here (he pauses). 
 
 Fernald (encouragingly): Yes, what book 
 is it? 
 
 The Man: Why (he looks around the room) 
 Gee! you got a lot of em here, ain t yer? 
 
 Fernald: About two thousand. 
 
 The Man: Is that so? Two thousand! 
 Gosh! (He pauses again, overcome by the 
 stupendous idea. Then a smile begins to 
 play over his features. A delicious joke has 
 occurred to him. He pokes Fernald in the 
 ribs, roguishly, and delivers himself of the 
 jeu d esprit.) 
 
 The Man: An say, I s pose you ve read 
 em all, hey? (He throws back his head 
 and guffaws at the originality of this side- 
 splitter. Mr. Fernald does his best to smile, 
 but it must be confessed that he makes a poor 
 attempt. Eleven hundred repetitions of this 
 
174 THE SECRET BOOK 
 
 jest in the past three years have somewhat 
 dulled, for him, the keen edge of its 
 wit.) 
 
 Fernald: No; I haven t read all of them. 
 
 The Man: No? Oh, I guess you have. (He 
 seems to have decided to regard Fernald as 
 a marvel of erudition. He chooses to believe 
 that Fernald, in denying that he has perused 
 the hundred and sixty volumes of "Notes and 
 Queries," the hundred and thirty volumes of 
 "War of the Rebellion Records," and the 
 twelve encyclopaedias which form a small 
 fraction of the books in the room, is merely 
 affecting undue modesty.) 
 
 The Man: I guess you have. Say this 
 is bout all the books you ve got in the liberry, 
 ain t it? 
 
 Mr. Fernald: Oh, no. There are nearly two 
 hundred thousand in the stack. 
 
 (The Man s expression, if he put it into 
 words, would be: "You tell that to the 
 
??? i 7 5 
 
 marines!" The corners of his mouth stretch, 
 and he wags his head. He concludes, however, 
 that it is only the pardonable exaggeration of 
 a loyal employee the sort of estimate that 
 one expects from a campaign manager be 
 fore election.) 
 
 Fernald: There is some book you want? 
 
 The Man: Oh, yes. Say, I s pose you ve 
 got all kinds of J em here? 
 
 Fernald: Reference books, mostly. Cy 
 clopaedias and dictionaries, you know, and 
 all that sort. All the fiction and general 
 literature are out there in the delivery room, 
 or rather, in the stack just above it. 
 
 (The Man looks at Fernald in a manner 
 that shows the latter that he has been in 
 dulging in too technical language that such 
 terms as "reference books/ "fiction," "general 
 literature" convey no more meaning to his 
 interlocutor than would 1 1 neo-Platonism, 
 "abracadabra," and "feudal suzerain." He 
 
176 THE SECRET BOOK 
 
 resolves to be less technical; also to find out, 
 if possible, what the Man wants.) 
 
 Fernald: What book do you want to see? 
 
 The Man (at last exposing his secret) : Well 
 why why I don t know exactly. 
 
 Fernald (realizing that he is in for a course 
 of Sherlockery) : Is there something you wish 
 to find out? Some question you want an 
 swered? 
 
 The Man: Well yes there is. 
 
 Fernald (trying the frontal attack, like 
 General Buller) : What is it? 
 
 The Man: Er um er why, yer know, 
 I hate to put you to all this trouble, yer 
 know. 
 
 Fernald: No trouble at all it s what I m 
 here for. 
 
 The Man: Is that so? You just set here 
 an let folks ask yer questions? 
 
 (Fernald indicates that that describes part 
 of his duty.) 
 
??? i 77 
 
 The Man: Why, say, that s great. 
 
 (Another pause.) 
 
 Fernald: Now, if you ll tell me just what 
 you want to find 
 
 The Man: I tell yer, young feller, you jes 
 give me one o these here books, an maybe 
 I ll run right across it, first thing. (He waves 
 his hand towards three volumes on geology 
 which happen to be lying on the desk.) 
 
 Fernald: Those are about geology is that 
 what you want? 
 
 The Man: Huh? No, no jes let me take 
 a dictionary, if you ve got one. 
 
 (The Library is in possession of one of 
 
 these rare works, and Fernald leads the man 
 to it. He hoists it upon a table, and sits 
 down. Fernald returns to the desk, for a 
 lady has entered the room, and stands waiting 
 for the librarian.) 
 
 The Lady: Is this Mr. Fernald? Oh, 
 how do you do? I am Mrs. Smith, you 
 
178 THE SECRET BOOK 
 
 know, Mrs. Pomfret Smith. My husband 
 has just been elected a trustee of the library, 
 you know? Yes. Dear me! This room looks 
 so changed since Mr. Akers was here, I do 
 miss him so much. He just knew everything 
 oh, he was lovely. He used to help me so 
 much about er, about the books, you know. 
 But, well (she sighs) perhaps you can do it. 
 First (she raises one finger impressively) have 
 you got any plays by Menelik? 
 
 Fernald (making the correction as unob 
 trusively as possible): Maeterlinck? Oh, yes; 
 not in this room, though. "The Blue Bird," 
 "Pelleas," and so on, those are what you 
 want? 
 
 Mrs. Smith: No Menelik. (She is very 
 firm about it.) 
 
 Fernald: Maeterlinck is the playwright, 
 I think. Menelik is the Emperor of Abys 
 sinia, isn t he? Or he was until he died. 
 
 Mrs. Smith: That is the one I mean 
 
??? 179 
 
 Menelik. He was Emperor of Abyssinia 
 I know him he used to wear a thing like 
 a beanpot on his head. 
 
 Fernald: I don t believe we have any plays 
 by him. I never heard that he wrote 
 any. 
 
 (Mrs. Smith smiles pleasantly, as one who 
 should say, "Live and learn, young man, live 
 and learn.") 
 
 Mrs. Smith: Oh, I m sure he did, for Mrs. 
 Crumpet told me I must be sure and bring 
 Menelik s plays to the next meeting of the 
 Twenty-Minute Culture Club. She would 
 never make a mistake about that. And I ve 
 seen a picture of Menelik in the Ladies Home 
 Journal, with an appreciation of him by Mr. 
 Bok. He had on the beanpot thing in the 
 picture Menelik did, I mean not Mr. Bok, 
 of course. 
 
 Fernald: Well, I will look in the catalogue 
 but I am quite sure there is nothing of the 
 
i8o THE SECRET BOOK 
 
 sort. (He goes through the form of looking, 
 remembering that although there are some men 
 so wise that they can say what books do exist, 
 there is none who can be sure what books do 
 not exist. If someone insisted on having 
 a book on old blue china by Jack the Ripper, 
 past experience has taught him the wisdom 
 of having a look in the catalogue before com 
 mitting himself finally.) 
 
 Fernald: We have some books about the 
 Emperor Menelik and his country but noth 
 ing else. Are you sure it is not Maeterlinck? 
 Let me send for some of his plays, and you 
 can look at them, and see if they re what 
 you wish. 
 
 Mrs. Smith: Oh, no, you must be mis 
 taken! Why, my husband s brother-in-law 
 was the first man to take a sewing machine 
 to the court of the Emperor Menelik. I ve 
 heard my husband tell about it a great many 
 times. He is now Ambassador to Vienna, you 
 
know. By the way, how much does an am 
 bassador get? 
 
 (Fernald consults a book, and informs her 
 about the salary of the Ambassador to Austria.) 
 
 Mrs. Smith (looking over his shoulder): 
 Why, that says Silas P. Bagsworthy! 
 
 Fernald: Yes; he s Ambassador in Vienna 
 isn t that your brother-in-law? 
 
 Mrs. Smith: Certainly not his name is 
 William Slump. But that book must be 
 wrong. I m sure he is an Ambassador. 
 
 Fernald: Let me see, here s the index. 
 Slump yes page 1604 yes he is consul 
 at Porto Lorenzo, and he draws a salary of 
 $1800 a year. 
 
 Mrs. Smith: What? Why, I ve been telling 
 everybody he is an Ambassador. Oh, that 
 book must be wrong! I certainly shall continue 
 to say that he is the Ambassador I wouldn t 
 trust that book for an instant. I never heard 
 of Porto Whatsitsname. 
 
182 THE SECRET BOOK 
 
 Fernald (smiling): This is the Government 
 register. 
 
 Mrs. Smith: Oh! well got out by some 
 political opponent, I suppose. But you 
 haven t got me the plays by Menelik. 
 
 Fernald: I don t believe I can I assure 
 you that there are no such plays. 
 
 Mrs. Smith: Very well, I shall have to 
 go back and ask Mrs. Crumpet about it 
 again. But I do wish Mr. Akers were here! 
 (Exit.) 
 
 The Man (staggering to the desk with 
 the dictionary in his arms): Say, young feller, 
 let me have another o these here dictionaries, 
 will yer? It ain t in this one. 
 
 Fernald: If you d tell me just what you 
 are hunting for, I might save you a lot of 
 trouble. 
 
 The Man: Oh! I ll have it in half a shake 
 I pretty near found it in that one. (He 
 
??? i8 3 
 
 gets another dictionary and retires with 
 it.) 
 
 A Little Girl (aged nine) : Mister, please let 
 me see the American Journal of Ar of Archy 
 of Archy olollollol ogy, will you, please? 
 
 Fernald: The American Journal of Archae 
 ology? What on earth do you want with that? 
 You wouldn t like it. Why don t you go 
 over to the children s room and ask Miss 
 Larkin to give you something to read? 
 
 The Little Girl: I have been over there; 
 she said I was to come over here and you d 
 gimme the American Journal of Archyolololol- 
 
 Fernald (hastily): What do you want it 
 for? 
 
 The Girl: My teacher in school said we was 
 to all read a piece in it. 
 
 (Fernald knowing something of the wonders 
 of modern education, gets the magazine, and 
 looks it over.) 
 
 The Girl: That s the piece. (It is called 
 
184 THE SECRET BOOK 
 
 "Some Post Dravidian Moraines in Xitixipitil," 
 by Dr. Max Schlippenschlapper. He looks 
 to see if there are any words in it which he 
 can understand, but finds none. The little 
 girl takes the magazine and holds it open in 
 front of her, while she sits at a desk, for the 
 next half hour. Occasionally she turns a 
 page.) 
 
 The Man: Say, I can t find it in this, 
 neither. (He is plainly irritated now quite 
 vexed with Fernald for wasting his time in this 
 fashion.) 
 
 Fernald: Why don t you tell me what it is? 
 Perhaps you re looking in the wrong book. 
 
 The Man: Well, this is it. (He looks over 
 his shoulder to make sure that he is not over 
 heard. Observing no eavesdroppers, he con 
 tinues in a whisper) Why, yer see, there were 
 two or three of us fellers last night got talkin 
 bout John D. Rockefeller, an we wondered 
 what his middle name is. What does D. 
 
stand for is it David or Daniel or what? 
 D ye know? 
 
 Fernald: No; but this book does. (He 
 picks up a fat, red-covered volume from his 
 desk, and in five seconds the man is in pos 
 session of the priceless information for which 
 he has been hunting for three-quarters of an 
 hour.) 
 
 The Man: Say, it didn t take you long, did 
 it? Say, I wish I d put it right up to you 
 in the first place. 
 
 Fernald: So do I. 
 
 Professor Sears slowly advances. 
 
 Professor Sears: Now, I m going. Don t 
 let anyone disturb those books on the table, 
 and I want you to keep these at the desk for 
 me. I ll be back again to-morrow. I have 
 been waiting thirty minutes thirty minutes 
 by my watch to get a dictionary to look 
 up a derivation, but that person has had 
 
i86 THE SECRET BOOK 
 
 them all to himself. No, sir, I cannot wait 
 now I have to keep an engagement. 
 
 Mrs. Pomfret Smith (suddenly entering): 
 Why now, it is Maeterlinck s plays I wanted 
 after all; Mrs. Crumpet I met her just down 
 the street says so. I just knew it was Maeter 
 linck all the time. I do wish I could have got 
 them the first time then I wouldn t have had 
 to make two trips. You ll get them for me 
 right away, won t you, Mr. Fernald? 
 
 "Speaking of reference librarians," said 
 Tilden, "I cut this out of a paper the other 
 day. It is called: 
 
 THE REFERENCE LIBRARIAN 
 
 At times behind a desk he sits, 
 At times about the room he flits, 
 
 "I think I recognize it," remarked Lenox, 
 with a smile, "I wrote it myself." 
 
??? 187 
 
 "You did what?" said Sayles. "/ wrote 
 that!" 
 
 "Gentlemen, gentlemen! Let us have no 
 bloodshed," observed Tilden. "Ryerson, do 
 you know who wrote it?" 
 
 "Certainly," said Ryerson, "I did. But 
 I am not stuck up about it. It s a mere 
 trifle. Read it, if you like, Tilden." 
 
 Tilden began again. 
 
 THE REFERENCE LIBRARIAN 
 
 At times behind a desk he sits, 
 At times about the room he flits, 
 Folks interrupt his perfect ease 
 By asking questions such as these: 
 "How tall was prehistoric man?" 
 "How old, I pray, was Sister Ann?" 
 "What should one do if cats have fits?" 
 "What woman first invented mitts?" 
 "Who said To labor is to pray?" 
 "How much did Daniel Lambert weigh?" 
 "Don t you admire E. P. Roe?" 
 "What is the fare to Kokomo?" 
 
i88 THE SECRET BOOK 
 
 "Have you a life of Sairy Gamp?" 
 "Can you lend me a postage stamp?" 
 "Have you the rhymes of Edward Lear?" 
 "What wages do they give you here?" 
 "What dictionary is the best?" 
 "Did Brummel wear a satin vest?" 
 "How do you spell anaemic/ please?" 
 "What is a Gorgonzola cheese?" 
 "Who ferried souls across the Styx?" 
 "What is the square of 96?" 
 "Are oysters good to eat in March?" 
 "Are green bananas full of starch?" 
 "Where is that book I used to see?" 
 "I guess you don t remember me?" 
 "Haf you Der Hohenzollernspiel? " 
 "Where shall I put this apple peel?" 
 "Ou est, m sieu, la grande Larousse?" 
 "Dos you say two-spot/ or the deuce ?" 
 "Come, find my book, why make a row?" 
 "A red one, can t you find it now?" 
 "Please, which is right: to lend or loan ?" 
 "Say, mister, where s the telephone?" 
 "How do you use this catalogue?" 
 "Oh, hear that noise! Is that my dog?" 
 "Have you a book called Shapes of Fear ?" 
 "You mind if I leave Baby here?" 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 IMMORAL BOOKS 
 
 "That," remarked Crerar, "gives you the 
 librarian s view of the public. It " 
 
 "View of some of the public," Sayles in 
 terrupted. 
 
 "Well, some of them, then. Here is a view 
 of some librarians, and other people." 
 
 And he read: 
 
 IMMORAL BOOKS 
 
 It is not just to deride the feeling of gloom 
 which overhung the Public Library of Podgett. 
 It was genuine, sincere, profound. One of its 
 brighter lights had been dimmed, so they 
 thought; one of its spotless lambs had griev 
 ously wandered. 
 
 189 
 
THE SECRET BOOK 
 
 Miss Larkin knew the worst as soon as her 
 assistant, Miss Hanway, appeared in the 
 librarian s private room. 
 
 "Is he ?" she began. 
 
 "Yes," said the assistant, choking a little, 
 "I saw him putting it in his pocket as I 
 came into the room. He s in there now, 
 reading Beautiful Joe s Paradise/ but I m 
 afraid it s only pretence. . . . He was show 
 ing it to Arthur Bryant," she added, her 
 voice sinking to a whisper. 
 
 Miss Larkin rose. There was a glitter in 
 her eye, such as might have been seen in 
 Cromwell s on the morning of Pride s 
 Purge. 
 
 "Come with me," she said. 
 
 Miss Hanway followed her to the chil 
 dren s reading room. It was a dull, rainy 
 day during the Christmas vacation, and the 
 room was more than half full of readers. 
 Well-behaved little girls were demurely read- 
 
IMMORAL BOOKS 191 
 
 ing Miss Alcott s and other admirable books 
 at the various tables. A few boys were 
 scattered here and there. One of them, in 
 the act of hurling some projectile at another 
 boy in a distant corner, sank back into his 
 seat, as the two ladies entered, and hurriedly 
 became engrossed in a copy of Poole s Index. 
 Two other very small boys, who were in a 
 genuine state of giggles over a "Brownie" 
 book, subsided, and tried to keep their laugh 
 ter inside. 
 
 Miss Larkin went rapidly to a table where 
 there sat two boys. One of them was fat and 
 good-natured in appearance, though his hair 
 was considerably disordered, and his coat 
 collar was turned up. The other was quiet, 
 pale, and furtive. He bent his eyes on his 
 book, while the fat boy looked up with a 
 genial smile. He was chewing gum. 
 
 "Horace," said the librarian, "I want you 
 to give me what you have in your pocket." 
 
192 THE SECRET BOOK 
 
 Her voice was kindly, but it hinted at a 
 considerable amount of determination. 
 
 "Me?" said Horace, with a widening and 
 ever pleasant smile. 
 
 "Yes. And be quick!" 
 
 Horace reached into his pocket and drew 
 forth a small image of a man, cunningly con 
 structed out of several potatoes. One of them 
 that representing the head had been partly 
 peeled to allow eyes, nose and mouth to be 
 drawn on its surface with ink. He proffered 
 this interesting creation to Miss Larkin. 
 
 She, however, disdained it. 
 
 "That is not what I mean," said she, 
 keeping her hand outstretched. 
 
 Horace tried again. This time he produced 
 a tiny corked bottle, which held a solution 
 of gum arabic for what purpose intended it 
 passeth the mind of man to declare. Miss 
 Larkin refused the bottle and still stood 
 with waiting hand. Horace fished out a 
 
IMMORAL BOOKS [93 
 
 cent, flattened by a railroad train which had 
 run over it, two empty cartridges, a colored 
 picture of Christy Mathewson, a very soiled 
 handkerchief, a chocolate mouse, battered 
 and much the worse for wear, six sunflower 
 seeds, a large rubber band, a harmonica, a 
 knife, two brass keys, a Belgian coin of the 
 value of ten centimes, the dial of a watch 
 without the rest of it, an object which seemed 
 to be a dried bat s wing, a large button on 
 a string, a small mirror, a strip of slippery 
 elm, a ball made out of tin foil, three wizened 
 chestnuts, and about a yard of copper wire. 
 
 This really admirable collection, which must 
 have represented the patient industry of 
 months, and which needed only classification 
 and labels to form the nucleus of a museum 
 far more entertaining than the average one, 
 was laid out upon the table for Miss Larkin s 
 inspection. But she remained unsatisfied; 
 her features did not relax. 
 
IQ4 THE SECRET BOOK 
 
 "He put it in his inside coat pocket," 
 whispered Miss Hanway. 
 
 "Your inside pocket!" said the librarian, 
 pointing one finger at Horace s chest. 
 
 He plunged one hand into that pocket 
 and brought out a white mouse. The mouse 
 had evidently been awakened from a nap, 
 and was somewhat annoyed. Miss Larkin 
 did not flinch; fear of mice was no part of her 
 character. 
 
 "Put that mouse back in your pocket, 
 Horace, and don t ever bring him here again. 
 It s cruel to carry them about in your pocket." 
 
 "No m, it isn t, really. He likes to be in 
 there." 
 
 "You must remember what I said. This 
 is no place to bring mice. Now, where is 
 that book you showed to Arthur? I want 
 you to give it to me immediately." 
 
 Horace, at last showing some signs of alarm, 
 reached around and from a pocket in the rear 
 
IMMORAL BOOKS 195 
 
 drew a crumpled, paper-covered book. It 
 had a gaudy cover, in colors. 
 
 "Here!" commanded the librarian, snap 
 ping her fingers. 
 
 Horace handed it to her. She took it, 
 gingerly, between the tips of her thumb 
 and forefinger, as though it were the decaying 
 carcass of some poisonous reptile which a high 
 sense of public spirit commanded her to re 
 move before it spread contagion upon her 
 fellow mortals. 
 
 "Horace, I shall have to let your aunt 
 know about this!" 
 
 "I don t care," said the thoroughly fright 
 ened Horace with a sullen attempt at bravado. 
 
 He cared a great deal. He left the library 
 with a heart of lead, and wandered in gloom. 
 He wondered if there were ever a being so sin 
 ful, so miserable as himself. He met Tommy 
 Cheney and Mike O Brien two notorious 
 outlaws and with them went and "ran 
 
196 THE SECRET BOOK 
 
 benders" on Davenport s Pond, and got one 
 leg wet to the knee. What did it matter? 
 
 He did not go home at noon to dinner. 
 He was afraid to face his aunt, and her 
 sister-in-law, Mrs. Buntin. He was afraid 
 not to go home, but he was more afraid to 
 go than to stay away. Tommy and he went 
 down to Mr. Fowler s grocery and while one 
 of them engaged the clerk in pleasant con 
 verse, the other "swiped" eight prunes and a 
 soda-cracker and on these they dined. 
 
 Had he been familiar with the tragedy of 
 "Macbeth" he would have muttered to him 
 self: 
 
 I am in blood 
 
 Stept in so far, that, should I wade no more, 
 Returning were as tedious as go o er. 
 
 But he did not know "Macbeth" and so the 
 consolation of a literary allusion was denied 
 him. 
 
IMMORAL BOOKS 197 
 
 The afternoon was a little brightened by 
 the pleasure of spending three hours sliding 
 down Bassett s Hill on Tommy Cheney s 
 double-runner, in company with the owner, 
 Mike O Brien, and two other boys. But he 
 knew that the dread hour of reckoning was 
 only deferred. At half-past five the world 
 was in darkness, and he went home, devoutly 
 wishing he were dead. 
 
 His aunt met him in awful silence. Mrs. 
 Buntin sat by the evening lamp, reading the 
 newspaper. She looked upon Horace as the 
 priests of Moloch might have looked upon 
 some especially inviting infant victim. He had 
 been in the house only a minute or two when 
 his aunt began to weep. This was worse than 
 ten thousand punishments. He did not expect 
 a licking; his aunt usually spared the rod. 
 But he knew that she did not let his misdeeds 
 pass without some penalty. Instant relega- 
 
igS THE SECRET BOOK 
 
 tion to bed, without supper, was, so he thought, 
 the probable first step in her scheme of ret 
 ribution. That it would be only a first 
 step, he felt convinced. This crime, with 
 which his soul was seared, was so much deadlier 
 than all the rest of his misdemeanors put to 
 gether that he could not fancy any punish 
 ment terrible enough to suit it. Bed for the 
 rest of the vacation; perhaps for the rest of 
 his natural life; and nevermore any suppers, 
 or any other meals, so long as his frame should 
 endure it would be something like that, 
 he had thought. But this sobbing of his 
 aunt was even worse. 
 
 She sank into a chair. 
 
 "Oh, Horace!" she moaned, "oh, Horace! 
 Reading dime novels!" 
 
 Even Mrs. Buntin began to sniff a little. 
 
 Horace s aunt was, in many respects, a 
 highly sensible woman. Everyone knows 
 
IMMORAL BOOKS 199 
 
 a dozen women exactly like her. Her own 
 
 reading consisted of (i) the local daily paper; 
 
 B 
 (2) the Congregationalist Observer; (3) Mrs. 
 
 Barclay s novels. On many subjects she had 
 strong opinions, and these were, naturally; 
 the subjects on which she knew nothing what 
 soever. Certain things she took for granted; 
 accepted ready-made the ideas of other persons. 
 She uttered the dread words "reading dime 
 novels" in precisely the same tones in which 
 she would have said " embezzling trust funds, 
 smoking opium, and murdering widows and 
 orphans!" Had she not read in the paper 
 that very day of a man who, standing upon 
 the gallows somewhere or other, remarked 
 that he had been started upon his down 
 ward career by dime novels? Already she 
 thought she saw Horace s neck enclosed in 
 the noose. Of how many boys did she read, 
 every week, who ran away to fight Indians, 
 impelled by this same kind of literary poison? 
 
200 THE SECRET BOOK 
 
 As she had never in her life read nor even 
 seen a dime novel until this day she firmly 
 believed that they openly advocated murder 
 and running away from home. That they are 
 frequently merely vapid and cheap, filled with 
 the same kind of windy morality and slush as 
 the works of her own favorite novelist, and 
 that the canons against which they offend 
 are those of art rather than ethics, never for 
 an instant occurred to her. That some of 
 them are perfectly good stories, differing only 
 from the so-called "respectable" novels in 
 price and in having paper instead of board 
 covers, was a thing of which she never could 
 have been convinced so strong are inherited 
 ideas. 
 
 She believed that Horace had set foot upon 
 the road to hell, and so, naturally enough, 
 she wept. 
 
 Horace, weeping, too, was presently packed 
 
IMMORAL BOOKS 201 
 
 off to bed. His aunt and Mrs. Buntin set out 
 to consider his parlous condition. Miss Lar- 
 kin s letter lay before them. It said: 
 
 Dear Madam I am very sorry to say 
 that I found Horace reading a Dime Novel 
 today. I thought of course, that you ought 
 to know about it. I send you the Novel, 
 with this letter, and with it I am also send 
 ing a thoroughly good and safe story for 
 boys, highly recommended for boys who wish 
 exciting tales. This one is by no means 
 dangerous. I hope that you will induce him 
 to read it, instead of the other. 
 Sincerely yours, 
 
 Letitia Larkin. 
 
 A package was open upon the table; it 
 contained two books. Mrs. Buntin poked 
 at them with her scissors. 
 
 "Which of em do you suppose is the dune 
 novel?" she whispered. 
 
 "I don t know, I m sure." 
 
 She put on her spectacles. 
 
202 THE SECRET BOOK 
 
 "Let s see. This is Luck and Pluck. 
 Uncle Sam s Sam, or Working for the Govern 
 ment. " 
 
 She exhibited the frontispiece, which showed 
 several men rescuing a man from a snowbank 
 in which he seemed to be frozen. 
 
 "And this is Treasure Island. " 
 
 This had a picture of men fighting behind 
 a stockade. 
 
 "Oh dear, I m afraid this is It. ... 
 Hat tie, did you ever read a dime novel?" 
 
 "Land sakes! What makes you ask such a 
 question?" 
 
 "Well, I didn t know but you had, some 
 where. We ll have to look it over. . . . 
 Mercy on us! Listen to this!" 
 
 She had opened "Treasure Island" at 
 random, and now she read aloud: " One 
 more step, Mr. Hands, said I, and I ll blow 
 your brains out! Dead men don t bite, you 
 know, I added, with a chuckle. . . . Back 
 
IMMORAL BOOKS 203 
 
 went his right hand over his shoulder. Some 
 thing sung like an arrow through the air; I 
 felt a blow and then a sharp pang, and there 
 I was pinned by the shoulder to the mast . . . 
 both my pistols went off with a choked 
 cry the cockswain loosed his grasp upon the 
 shrouds and plunged head first into the 
 water. " 
 
 "Lizzie Coker, don t you read me another 
 word of that book! I shaVt sleep a wink 
 tonight if you do! How people can write 
 such things fightin and murderin ! It s 
 awful!" 
 
 "Ain t it terrible? What will we do with it? " 
 
 "Put it right into the kitchen fire this 
 instant. That s what I d do with it." 
 
 Horace s aunt seemed to think the advice 
 good. She took Stevenson s novel in the fire 
 tongs and carried it to its destruction. When 
 she returned Mrs. Buntin was looking at 
 "Luck and Pluck." 
 
204 THE SECRET BOOK 
 
 "Listen to this," said she, "and see if this 
 isn t real nice!" 
 She read aloud: 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 SEEKING A DANGEROUS ASSIGNMENT 
 
 One bright afternoon in September a hand 
 some, bright-faced youth of about eighteen 
 years entered the building in which the 
 Bureau of Ethnology has its quarters, in Wash 
 ington, D. C., and made his way to the office 
 of the chief of the Bureau. 
 
 The chief was not in, but one of the em 
 ployees said he would be in soon, so the youth 
 sat down to await the man s coming. 
 
 Not more than fifteen minutes had elapsed 
 when the head of the Bureau appeared, and 
 as soon as he had taken his seat at his desk, 
 the youth arose, and approaching, hat in 
 hand, said: 
 
IMMORAL BOOKS 205 
 
 "I beg your pardon, but are you Mr. Wil 
 son, the chief of the Bureau of Ethnology?" 
 
 The man, who was a handsome, alert- 
 looking gentleman, looked up, and gave the 
 youth a quick, searching look. 
 
 "Yes, I am Mr. Wilson," he replied, pleas 
 antly. "What can I do for you?" 
 
 The youth took a paper from his pocket, 
 and tapping it with his finger, said: 
 
 "I see you have inserted an advertisement 
 in the paper, stating that you wish to secure 
 the services of a man to go to Alaska and 
 spend a winter north of the Arctic Circle." 
 
 "Yes," he said; "I do want a man who will 
 do this. What of it?" 
 
 "This I wish to apply for the place." 
 
 The youth spoke in a cool, matter-of-fact 
 tone. 
 
 "You?" 
 
 The chief s tone was one of surprise. 
 
 "Yes, I." 
 
206 THE SECRET BOOK 
 
 The youth straightened up, threw his head 
 back, at the same time meeting the gaze 
 of the man unflinchingly. 
 
 The chief did not say anything for al 
 most half a minute, during which time he did 
 not take his eyes off the youth s face, and then 
 he said, in a kindly tone: 
 
 "But I advertised for a man, my boy." 
 
 The youth s face colored slightly, but he 
 answered in a firm, manly tone: 
 
 "I may not be a man in years, sir, but I 
 believe that I am a man in most other re 
 spects. For instance, I am strong, healthy, 
 and am, I think, endowed with good com 
 mon sense, and I believe that I could do what 
 you wish done as well as a man twice my age." 
 
 Mrs. Coker interrupted the reading to say: 
 "Now ain t that nice? That boy is so po 
 lite; and that about the Bureau of What- 
 youcallit sounds real instructive!" 
 
IMMORAL BOOKS 207 
 
 Next morning Miss Larkin received a note 
 from Horace s aunt. It informed her that 
 she had burned up that "horrid Treasure 
 Island book," but that she was ever so much 
 obliged to her for the other, which seemed 
 to be a truly moral story. Miss Larkin and 
 her assistant went into executive session over 
 this news, and so far they have refused to 
 make any statement for the press. 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 How TO WRITE A "BEST-SELLER" 
 
 The night the Club met at Bronson s I was 
 the last to arrive. As I came in, two or three 
 of the men hailed me with a question about 
 Lauriston. Had I heard from him? Where 
 was he? 
 
 Now, I had had two messages from Lauris 
 ton. One a post-card written the day after 
 his arrival in London said, merely: "Sale 
 postponed. Have hopes." Then I had 
 heard nothing for two or three weeks, until 
 this morning. Then came a letter, "Luck 
 tomorrow, sure." That was all there was in 
 it. I knew he was still on his absurd quest 
 of The Secret Book, and somehow I felt un 
 easy about him. 
 
 208 
 
WRITING A "BEST-SELLER" 209 
 
 I told the other men that Lauriston was 
 probably in Paris by this time, and that 
 the last I had heard of him was from London. 
 Then I sat down to listen to the paper which 
 Lenox was preparing to read. 
 
 "These are a few handy hints," said he, 
 glancing at Crerar, "on how to be a novelist." 
 
 HOW TO WRITE A "BEST-SELLER" 
 
 That famous novelist, Arthur Douglas 
 MacCarty, has electrified the Ezra Beesly 
 Free Public Library by his visits. The li 
 brarians are all agog over the presence of the 
 celebrated man. His greatest success, "The 
 Mystery of the Purple Limousine," has been 
 at the head of the list of best-sellers for nine 
 months. It is to be followed by "Your 
 Money or Your Wife!" One of the librarians, 
 Miss Van Seckel, has made some interesting 
 discoveries about him. She writes: 
 
 "He is six feet tall like his heroes but 
 
2io THE SECRET BOOK 
 
 I was disappointed in his red hair, and to 
 notice that he wears black sneaks. The 
 first day I saw him he went into a small 
 study, near the room in which I work. A 
 conversation soon began, and I wondered 
 with whom he was talking. Then I thought 
 he was talking to himself, and I said: How 
 interesting! But it soon dawned upon me 
 that he was communing with the charac 
 ters in his books, either those in his past 
 novels, or in the one he is writing now, I don t 
 know which. He has written forty-six novels, 
 according to Who s Who/ and we have thirty- 
 one of them in the library. Some of the others 
 aren t considered proper. This is what I 
 heard. 
 
 "Why, good morning, Colonel. I m pleased 
 to see you!" 
 
 "Suh, I am overwhelmed with the honah, 
 suh! Yo servant, suh!" 
 
WRITING A "BEST-SELLER" 211 
 
 "Very hot today, Colonel." 
 
 "The heat, suh, is sholy ve y enervating 
 suh! We have nothin like this in Wilkes 
 Caounty, Geo gah, suh. The finest climate 
 in the world, suh!" 
 
 "So I have heard you remark. How have 
 you been spending your time, Colonel, since 
 the publication of The Southland s Fairest 
 Daughter ? If I recollect correctly you were 
 killed in that book, at about the twenty- 
 second chapter." 
 
 "No, suh. At Gettysburg, suh. Leadin 
 the famous charge, suh vice Gen ral Pickett, 
 suh, temporarily displaced, for the purposes 
 of yo book." 
 
 "Oh, yes. Well, Colonel er " 
 
 "Yancey, suh. I am one of the famous 
 Yanceys, suh. My family pride, suh " 
 
 "Is simply inconceivable. Like Pooh-Bah s. 
 I remember." 
 
 "Ve y true, suh. Well, suh, since that 
 
212 THE SECRET BOOK 
 
 regrettable event, I have been pahssin the 
 time as a gentleman should, suh. Sittin 
 on the po ch absorbin juleps and watchin 
 the niggahs at wo k in the fields of cotton, 
 suh. My niggahs are the happiest and most 
 contented in the universe, suh." 
 
 "So they are. They gather about the house 
 at sundown, I believe, and sing plantation 
 melodies." 
 
 "Ev ry evening suh. From seven-thirty 
 to eight o clock." 
 
 "Well, I don t see why yours is not a 
 pretty comfortable existence." 
 
 "Barrin tw r o things, suh, it is ve y toll 
 able. Those two, however, are exceedin 
 hahd to bear, suh." 
 
 "Let me see what are they? The defeat 
 of the Southern cause?" 
 
 "Not that, suh. That only happened once, 
 suh. The ones to which I refer, suh, are 
 chronic, suh. They are first, suh, the con- 
 
WRITING A "BEST-SELLER" 213 
 
 stantly recurrin mortgage on my estates, 
 suh, and the morbid habit of my daughters 
 marryin damned Yankee officers, suh!" 
 "Yes, yes, I recollect. It must be trying." 
 "It is hell, suh. Fo ty-five times, I have 
 lifted that mortgage, only to be saddled 
 with it once more, by gentlemen of yo pro 
 fession, suh. I have pahted with the family 
 jewels, suh; I have sold my mother s diamond 
 necklace, suh; I have been relieved of my 
 difficulties through my old niggah Ben dis- 
 coverin the gold-plate buried at the time 
 of the Revolution by my grandfather; I have 
 sold oil lands to a Yankee, suh; and I have 
 reached the bottomless pit of degradation, 
 suh, by goin to wo k myself, suh, in New 
 Yo k, suh! There is no method under the can 
 opy of heaven, suh, that I have not employed 
 to lift that doggoned mortgage, suh! I am 
 proud to say that it has nevah been fo closed, 
 suh. Not once, suh. Sometimes, the officers 
 
214 THE SECRET BOOK 
 
 of the co t have been at my ve y do , suh, 
 but I have always found some way to baffle 
 these houn s of the law! But my invention 
 is flagging suh, and if any of you novelist 
 gentlemen sees fit to place another mort 
 gage on Yancey Hall, I cain t say what may 
 happen, suh!" 
 
 "Well, well, I" 
 
 "That s only paht of my woes, suh. The 
 other is even mo distressin yet, suh. I refer 
 to the outrageous predilection of my daughters 
 for Yankee officers, suh. No less than eighty- 
 seven of these young ladies, every one of them 
 the apple of my eye, suh, and every one of 
 them the most beautiful girl in the whole 
 South, suh, the land of beautiful women, suh 
 no less than eighty-seven of my daughters 
 have fallen in love with one of the invadin 
 ahmy, suh, with one of the Northern vandals, 
 suh. Matrimony has followed in every in 
 stance, suh, despite the best effo ts of her 
 
WRITING A "BEST-SELLER" 215 
 
 brother and myself to have her bestow her 
 affections upon a member of one of the best 
 families of Wilkes Caounty, suh. It is true, 
 suh, that I have always discovered, in the 
 last chapter but one, that the No therner is 
 acshally a gentleman, suh, though not born 
 in Wilkes Caounty, suh. He has always 
 rendered some magnificent service to my 
 family, suh. Six times he has saved Yancey 
 Hall from the depredations of his own men, 
 suh, and my daughter from insult inva iably 
 at the cost of physical damage to himself, suh. 
 Twice he has saved my daughters from a 
 mad bull, suh, and no less than sixty-three 
 times he has preserved my only son a cap 
 tain in Lee s ahmy, suh from execution as 
 a spy, and then nursed him ve y tenderly 
 through a long illness, while a prisoner in the 
 No thern lines, suh. The latter is, in fact, 
 his favorite method of endearin himself to 
 me, suh. But conceive my feelin s in the 
 
216 THE SECRET BOOK 
 
 precedin chapters, suh, befo the character 
 of this No therner is made manifest, suh. It 
 is ve y distressing suh, to be tormented fo 
 two hundred and sixty pages by a heavy 
 mortgage and an undutiful daughter, all fo 
 the sake of bein relieved at the ve y conclu 
 sion of the book, suh." 
 
 "I can understand that, Colonel. Well, 
 I must see if something can be done about it." 
 
 "I am certainly rejoiced to hear you say 
 it, suh. If I am to have the honah of ap- 
 pearin in yo 7 next novel, suh, kindly let it 
 be with my estates unencumbered, suh, and 
 if my daughter must contract an alliance, 
 let it be with a Confederate officer, suh." 
 
 "Probably I shall not need you at all in 
 my next book, Colonel, but if I have to call 
 on you in any future work, I will remember 
 what you say. Still I fear that no one would 
 recognize you unless you were engaged in a 
 struggle to maintain your patrimony. As for 
 
WRITING A "BEST-SELLER" 217 
 
 the possibility of a book about the South 
 in which the heroine did not marry a Nor 
 thern officer I doubt if any publisher would 
 touch it. How would it be if we varied 
 things a little by having her nurse the officer 
 through a sickness?" 
 
 "Not entirely unfamiliar to me, suh. To 
 my own knowledge she has seen twenty- 
 six Yankees through devastatin illnesses, suh. 
 How many more she has rescued from the 
 grave while I have been absent, fightin in 
 Virginyah, I cannot say. I would readily 
 fo go the pleasure of bein killed in battle, suh, 
 if she could be kept away from the Yankees 
 altogether, suh!" 
 
 "We ll see, we ll see. Must you go? Good 
 bye, Colonel." 
 
 "Good-day, suh, good-day. I shall return 
 to Yancey Hall, suh, to enjoy it while it is 
 still unmortgaged, suh though I shall hardly 
 dare to look at the book-shops on the way, 
 
218 THE SECRET BOOK 
 
 suh, fo fear of what may have happened in 
 my absence, suh. There is a young gentleman 
 outside the do , suh, waitin to see you. Good- 
 day. Yo servant, suh." 
 
 "Ask him to come in, will you please, 
 Colonel? Thanks. Good-by. . . . 
 
 "Well, sir, are you going to have any use 
 for me in your new book?" 
 
 "Why you are the reporter, are you 
 not?" 
 
 "Yes, the reporter-detective. Compara 
 tively new character, too. Whenever a 
 mystery has been committed the chief of 
 police sends for me right away. I am the 
 one man in New York to whom he turns to 
 solve the problem of the murdered million 
 aire and the missing scarabaeus. Whenever 
 there is something so very, very secret that 
 it will not do to have it breathed to a single 
 human being, then he always calls for me 
 the star reporter on the Evening. Comet. 
 
WRITING A "BEST-SELLER" 219 
 
 That s the way to keep a thing wrapped in 
 impenetrable gloom, you know tell it to a 
 newspaper reporter." 
 
 "But you always justify his confidence, I 
 believe." 
 
 "Oh, always. And I solve the mystery, 
 too. While the detectives stand around and 
 say, Is it possible? and How remarkable! 
 I prove that the murdered millionaire is not 
 the millionaire at all, but his butler, who 
 has murdered himself out of spite, and then 
 disguised himself so that the millionaire s 
 own wife and children never noticed the differ 
 ence. He has on a wig, you see, and of course 
 the detectives and police wouldn t notice that." 
 
 "And they didn t observe that the butler 
 had disappeared?" 
 
 "Oh, yes, they did. But they thought he 
 had the scarab." 
 
 "Didn t he?" 
 
 "No, of course not. I find that, in the 
 
220 THE SECRET BOOK 
 
 last chapter, on the drawing-room mantel 
 shelf. The house has been searched by six 
 expert searchers, but of course they hadn t 
 looked there." 
 
 "Certainly not. They were busy looking 
 for hollow places in the heels of the butler s 
 boots, and splitting open the pages of the 
 family Bible." 
 
 "That s it. And I am always well rewarded 
 for my cleverness, you know." 
 
 "Taken into partnership with the million 
 aire?" 
 
 "Yes; and married to his only daughter, 
 a girl of surpassing beauty, named Muriel." 
 
 "That s quite a rise from being an every 
 day reporter." 
 
 "Isn t it? Indeed, the only mystery that 
 I cannot solve is why, when the next book 
 comes out, I am back on the old job again, 
 at nine per." 
 
 "Ah, well, we novelists cannot always fore- 
 
WRITING A "BEST-SELLER" 221 
 
 see the popularity of our own characters. 
 Sometimes we saddle them with a wife at 
 the end of the first book, and then we always 
 have the devil s own time getting rid of that 
 wife for future adventures. For what on 
 earth can you do with a hero who is a married 
 man in chapter i? Either we have to set the 
 adventure in the second book back to a time 
 earlier than that of the first novel, in which 
 case the hero can t get married at all in the 
 second book (and that is a grievous handicap), 
 or else we have to start in with a flirtatious 
 married man. And that s a bad thing, you 
 know, for that cuts out the patronage of the 
 jeune fille, on whom we depend. It s a tough 
 problem. Who are these gentlemen with 
 you? They look familiar." 
 
 "You ought to know this one, surely. 
 Doesn t his look of general vacuity tell you 
 anything?" 
 
 "There is something about the absolute 
 
222 THE SECRET BOOK 
 
 idiocy of his countenance which seems to 
 remind me why, surely it is the Professional 
 Detective!" 
 
 "That s right. Well, I ll let you talk it 
 over between yourselves. Good-by." 
 
 "Good-by Well, Mr. Detective, are you 
 from London?" 
 
 "Paris or London or New York or St. 
 Petersburg, Berlin or Vienna it s all the 
 same to me. The Bureau de Surete, or 
 Scotland Yard, or Mulberry Street. Poe 
 invented me, Garboriau added some improve 
 ments, but I blossomed into my fullest de 
 velopment of jack-assification under Conan 
 Doyle. A host of American novelists have 
 employed me. I am always the smartest 
 man in the Parisian police, or the keenest 
 sleuth at the Yard/ or the crack-a-jack of 
 the New York plain-clothes men. And I 
 sometimes wonder what the stupidest man 
 in those bodies must be, and how he keeps 
 
WRITING A "BEST-SELLER" 223 
 
 out of a retreat for drivelling idiots. For 
 I, mind you, hardly know enough to come 
 in when it rains." 
 
 "That s true. I remember all about you. 
 You have a hard part to play. You are 
 always up against the superhuman amateur 
 detective, and the clever criminal and you 
 do not show up to much advantage." 
 
 "Numb, sir, absolutely numb. Head is 
 solid ivory, you see. If it wasn t for my 
 friend here I do not know how I should get 
 along." 
 
 "Who s your friend?" 
 
 "In the book he s the friend of the ama 
 teur detective. The Dr. Watson of the 
 piece. Just a plain galoot, like me. Can t 
 see through a hole in a wall. We re on op 
 posite sides while the story is on, but at other 
 times we train together. We sympathize, you 
 know, and protect each other. It s soothing 
 for us to be together while we can, for so 
 
224 THE SECRET BOOK 
 
 much of our lives is spent with giant in 
 tellects, where we are not at an advantage." 
 
 "I am glad to have seen you, Mr. Detec 
 tive you and your friend. I am not sure 
 whether I ll have to call on you now or not. 
 Stop isn t that one of your associates over 
 there?" 
 
 "That! Sure; that s the Scientific Criminal." 
 
 "Oh, yes. Fetch him over here, will you? 
 I d like to see if he s got anything new up 
 his sleeve Ah, professor, how are you?" 
 
 "Pretty well, for an old man." 
 
 "Professor, got any new crimes today? 
 Any new and ghastly, and utterly inexpli 
 cable ways of killing people. I m not sure 
 but what I could use a good, up-to-date, 
 scientific murder in my book." 
 
 "Tee-hee-hee! Here s one I just thought 
 out. What d ye think of this? Prominent 
 man, millionaire, respected citizen, found 
 in his bedroom, in front of the window, all 
 
WRITING A "BEST-SELLER" 225 
 
 burned up. Not just singed, you under 
 stand, but regular shrivelled to a crisp. Only 
 identify him by his watch, which is slightly 
 melted, but still recognizable. No fire in the 
 room. Everything else all right. How did it 
 happen? " 
 
 "Well, how did it? Get hot about Roose 
 velt?" 
 
 "No, no. How did it happen? I did it. 
 Yes, sir, humble as you see me here, I did 
 it. And I can prove an alibi, too. A rock- 
 ribbed, pig-tight, horse-high, bull-strong alibi. 
 I was in my astronomical observatory all 
 the time. But of course it breaks down 
 when this gentleman here where is he? this 
 reporter-detective gentleman gets on the case. 
 He proves that I unscrewed the small end of 
 my telescope and turned it round, using the 
 reflector big lens, you know, as a burning- 
 glass, and focussed it on old money-bags 
 while he was looking out of his window, and 
 
226 THE SECRET BOOK 
 
 just frizzled him up like a spider on a hot 
 shovel." 
 
 "Dear, dear! That was a mean kind of 
 trick. What made you do it?" 
 
 "Oh, anything you like. Old grudge, you 
 know. Stole my girl, forty years ago, and 
 I built this observatory then, and waited 
 patiently every i4th of May (when the sun 
 was in the right position) since that date. 
 He hadn t ever come to the window at the 
 right moment, before. Or you can have him 
 the perpetrator of some injury to my only 
 daughter golden-haired angel, you under 
 stand. That always gets em. Makes the 
 readers glad the old rascal did get broiled, 
 and soothes their feelings. Then you let me 
 down easy I make a full confession, say I 
 would gladly do it again to any such ruffian 
 and monster as Hiram J. Hoskins, and that 
 the world is well rid of the brute. I retire 
 to my laboratory, drink a ptomaine cock- 
 
WRITING A "BEST-SELLER" 227 
 
 tail or commit some other nice kind of a 
 scientific suicide anything not messy and 
 that s the end of me. What do you think?" 
 
 "It s not bad, not bad. It has possibilities, 
 I really believe. But it s such an expensive 
 sort of crime building that observatory, and 
 doing so much work, when you might have 
 slipped out and banged him over the head some 
 dark night. For my detective would have got 
 you in any case as you very well know." 
 
 "Expensive, expensive? It s no more ex 
 pensive than the time I poisoned that other 
 old duffer with the bacilli sandwich, which 
 it took nine years to prepare, and experi 
 ments costing hundreds of thousands to perfect. 
 It s no more expensive than the time I im 
 ported the only living specimen of the pink- 
 spotted death s-head serpent from the island 
 of Zamboanga, and bribed whatshisname s 
 valet to put it in his master s slipper. It s 
 no more expensive than the time I bought 
 
228 THE SECRET BOOK 
 
 all the real estate in a New York block, and 
 moved all the people out except one man, 
 in order to blow him up with picric acid. 
 I tell you, my dear sir, these scientific crimes 
 come high, and they always will. Of course 
 if you want to descend to little, vulgar knock- 
 ings on the head why, you can buy them 
 cheap, as you ll have to do when your royal 
 ties decrease. I ll be going, I ve no time to " 
 "Wait a minute! wait a minute, please, 
 professor! I beg your pardon, I ve no in 
 tention of letting you leave me. I m sure 
 we can come to some agreement. Just take 
 a seat for a minute or two, will you? I must 
 speak to this magnificent young gentleman. 
 Ah, good morning! Mr. Wentworth, is it not?" 
 
 "Jack Wentworth. Yes. Although I am 
 sometimes known as Tom Fairfax, or even 
 Bob Langworthy. I always stipulate for a 
 good sounding name. I am the typical 
 
WRITING A "BEST-SELLER" 229 
 
 college man as you see, Mr. MacCarty. 
 I am almost invariably from Harvard or Yale, 
 though I have been known to stray as far 
 as Princeton. There are one or two things 
 about which I am adamant. First and fore 
 most I must be captain of either the football 
 team or the Varsity crew preferably of both. 
 That keeps me rather busy, but I manage it 
 somehow. What would the girls who read 
 about me think, if I failed to be elected 
 captain of the football team?" 
 
 "What can I do for you, Jack?" 
 
 "It s this. Do you know a man named 
 Owen Johnson?" 
 
 "Slightly." 
 
 "Well, he s gone, and written a college 
 story, and left me out. Cut me, in favor of a 
 man who is on the team, to be sure, but he 
 isn t captain, and his team actually gets 
 licked. Did you ever hear of such a thing 
 in your life? Why I have bounded on to the 
 
230 THE SECRET BOOK 
 
 field a dozen times, in my career, and made 
 the winning touchdown. I usually carry the 
 opposing fullback in my arms, as well as the 
 ball, and I run sixty yards with them both 
 all the rest of the fellows strung out behind, 
 like a pint of peanuts chasing a watermelon. 
 The illustrator always makes a nice picture 
 of it. Then after the game is over, I walk to 
 the campus, or the yard, with the prettiest 
 girl in sight. Some football players would be 
 just such dubs as to go and take a bath and 
 put on clean clothes, after the fiercest game 
 of the season. But I don t. I don t have to. 
 There I am the illustrator always gets me 
 with a fine blue or crimson sweater on, and 
 my hair neatly parted. She has a big bunch of 
 violets or Jacqueminots, and she looks up at 
 me in such an adoring fashion. She can t help 
 it, of course. It s very fine of me to make the 
 poor girl so happy. In the middle distance 
 you can see all the rest of the fellows, led by 
 
WRITING A "BEST-SELLER" 231 
 
 the president of the university, giving the 
 college cheer for me. But I don t pay any 
 attention to them. I m too modest. I just 
 look down at her and say that it was nothing 
 at all. Anyone could have made three touch 
 downs, kicked two goals from the field, and 
 played the whole game generally, for my side, 
 with a fractured wrist, a broken collar-bone, 
 two busted ribs, and a dislocated hip. That s 
 what I ve got. But I don t mention it to her. 
 She must know nothing about it. Now and 
 then I wince, when she isn t looking. Just 
 wince, that s all. Because if I let her know, 
 she might want to call a doctor, and have me 
 sit down and rest, or something. Then who 
 would carry her coat for her? Sometimes 
 when I am captain of the Yale team, the 
 captain of the Harvard eleven walks up from 
 the field on the other side of her. That makes 
 a nice picture, too. He has on his football 
 clothes, and if I have black hair, he has yellow 
 
232 THE SECRET BOOK 
 
 hair, and vice versa. In choosing football 
 captains both universities always look out for 
 that." 
 
 "All that you say is true, Jack. None 
 should know that better than myself, who have 
 had a large share in your creation." 
 
 "Very well, then are you going to stand 
 for this man Johnson? What shall I do 
 for a living if he gets his way? It is true he 
 puts his man through some of the proper 
 stunts, gets him engaged to be married before 
 he is out of college, for instance. I always do 
 that. Usually propose to her on Class Day 
 looking down together on the Japanese lan 
 terns in the yard. I am due to leave for New 
 London on the midnight train to stroke our 
 crew to victory next day, and I am sure 
 that I shall do it much better if she says 
 1 yes. She always does, and then I return 
 to my disheartened crew probably sour be 
 cause their captain can go to Class Day 
 
WRITING A "BEST-SELLER" 233 
 
 and then we or rather I beat the other 
 boat by eighty lengths. All the other men 
 in our boat collapse and I pull it in alone." 
 
 "I know your manners and customs well. 
 You needn t worry about losing your occupa 
 tion. You will always be necessary to us, 
 Jack. From Maine to Oregon, from Miss 
 Lindsay s Select School for Girls to Mrs. 
 Dunbar s Academy for Young Ladies, wher 
 ever the smell of fudge arises at 9 P. M. and 
 bed-rooms are decorated with college banners, 
 you are believed in, my boy, and fondly 
 adored. They search for you on many a 
 campus, and though they find you not, their 
 faith in you dieth never. Some day, they 
 trust, you will burst upon their vision, hand 
 some, athletic, a C. D. Gibson fancy come to 
 life. They see athletes who are not beauties, 
 and beauties who are not athletes; they see 
 real football players ignominiously taken out 
 of the game for a mere sprained finger, in- 
 
234 THE SECRET BOOK 
 
 stead of proceeding, as you would, under the 
 handicap of six mortal wounds, to a triumph 
 ant conclusion. But they hope on. I am full 
 of lyric feeling when I consider how hopeful 
 they are. Trust me, Jack, trust me and my 
 fellow-novelists. Trust the magazine illus 
 trators and the poster artists, our right hand 
 shall forget their cunning before we give you 
 up. And now, so long, old top; these ladies 
 have been waiting patiently, and I must 
 speak to them. . . . Good afternoon, madam! 
 Look out, there goes a table well, you man 
 age that hoop-skirt wonderfully, still it is hard 
 to get used to a thing " 
 
 "Sir! I cannot abide coarse remarks in 
 connection with my apparel. I am the shrink 
 ing lady of Early Victorian times, and I con 
 sider such comments not only superfluous, but 
 indelicate. I play croquet in the morning, 
 and I droop under weeping willows. Some 
 times I have a lap-dog, and I have a tender- 
 
WRITING A "BEST-SELLER" 235 
 
 ness for a young gentleman with Dundreary 
 whiskers. When I am indoors I like to have 
 some painted wax fruit for a background. 
 Surely there is an air of languid refinement 
 about me, which would be well in this vulgar 
 age. I do not swim, nor drive a what do 
 you call it? a motor car, thank heaven, but I 
 can ride, if accompanied by a suitable cavalier, 
 and I am also addicted to archery. Have you 
 no place for me in your romance? Anna 
 Whelan Betts can paint me. I can weep over 
 graves, my tears flow freely at the slightest 
 provocation, and my swoons are considered 
 exquisite by all who have witnessed them. 
 I have a small casket of precious letters, over 
 which I weep if need be. A linnet in a cage 
 is one of my regular accessories, and my 
 small sister, if her services should be required, 
 would of course wear her pantalettes, and 
 bring a pet lamb. May I hope, sir, to re 
 ceive your consideration? I will retire now 
 
236 THE SECRET BOOK 
 
 there is a person, a menial, evidently, who 
 seems to be edging in this direction. I should 
 prefer to retire before she steps any closer. 
 Au revoir." 
 
 "Au revoir, madam. . . . Ah, what can 
 I do for you, my good woman?" 
 
 "Get me a job in yer new book that s 
 what yer can do for me. You know me. 
 I m the Mysterious Servant Girl. Wilkie 
 Collins was fond of me; Anna Katharine 
 Green dotes upon me. I am dark, sullen, 
 moody. I have fits of temper. So do other 
 servant girls, I ve heard tell. But I do more 
 than that: I fall in love with the young master, 
 or I surprise the mistress in her secret. I 
 disappear. Lawyer-folks and p licemen try 
 to find me. I am the only one who saw the 
 old marquis murder his son, or else I saw the 
 wicked lawyer burn up the true will, an 
 I snatched it out of the fire, when he wa n t 
 lookin . I know the real secret of the babies 
 
WRITING A "BEST-SELLER" 237 
 
 who were changed at birth, but nothin will 
 get it outer me till the end of the last chapter 
 but one. I am devoted to the young mistress, 
 and I am too smart for the tectives. I 
 usually have a blow, or a broken-heart, or 
 a grouch. They say I m goin outer fashion, 
 an bein robbed of my livelihood by English 
 butlers and French shofers, an the likes of 
 them. What d ye say, master?" 
 
 "I say that it s half -past five, and I think I 
 shall close for the day. I shall be pleased to 
 see all you ladies and gentlemen here tomorrow, 
 or, are you here? Beg pardon, I m sure. I 
 must speak to you. I think I recognize one 
 of my trump cards. Are you not ?" 
 
 "The Athletic Heroine. Yes. Call me 
 any name you like, I m usually Bet or Bess, 
 though it s quite a fad to call me Billy or Bob, 
 or some other boy s name. And I m dead 
 sick I mean I am so bored with the whole 
 business. I am dying, simply dying to be 
 
238 THE SECRET BOOK 
 
 named Hermione or Gwendolen, or Ermin- 
 trude. Yes, I ll sit down in the most com 
 fortable chair you ve got I know I ought to 
 sit on the table and swing my legs oh, dear, 
 how very unladylike to mention legs my 
 ideal would have died before she d do such a 
 thing. She just simply didn t have any legs, 
 the dear, sweet creature. Now I ll sit here 
 and I want you to stand over me and fan me 
 and pick up my handkerchief if I drop it 
 and pay me compliments and write poems 
 about me, and say that I have a lily white 
 hand I know it s as black as a crow with 
 sunburn, and " 
 
 "Why, Bet, what on earth is the matter 
 with you? Have you gone crazy? " 
 
 "Sick of the whole shooting match oh, 
 I mean so ineffably weary of this athletic pose. 
 Do you realize what I go through? Getting 
 up early (I hate it) and taking a cold bath to 
 begin the day. Hate cold baths they make 
 
WRITING A BEST-SELLER" 239 
 
 me shiver and they turn my lips blue. But 
 I have to do it, so you and the other novelists 
 can say: She entered, all vibrant from the 
 bath. This bath business is getting run into 
 the ground. You authors are so set on assur 
 ing your readers that your heroes and hero 
 ines are acquainted with the use of the com 
 mon or domestic bathtub, that you keep us 
 in soak most of the time. Really I m not 
 vibrant, at all, when I enter. I m parboiled. 
 And I don t want to get up early. I want to 
 lie in bed late, and have a warm bath, and 
 breakfast in my room. Can I do it? No; 
 you rout me out and send me off on a fiend 
 of a horse at 5 G. M. Then after break 
 fast all I really want is coffee and rolls, but 
 you stuff beefsteak and all kinds of disgusting 
 things into me then tennis, or swimming, 
 or mountain climbing, or something, until 
 night. It s all right for those who like it, 
 but I m tired of trying to be Annette Keller- 
 
240 THE SECRET BOOK 
 
 man, and Teddy Roosevelt, and May Sutton 
 and Christobel Pankhurst rolled into one. 
 And I want to have some pretty clothes 
 look at this horrid khaki skirt! I love chocolates 
 and bonbons do you let me have any, you 
 stingy old thing? No, you don t! What did 
 you make me say in A Girl of the Open 
 Air? 
 
 "Somebody oh, I know, it was Reginald 
 Van Twinkle and he was a dear, too he wore 
 clothes that were perfectly lovely, and I would 
 have liked to marry him, instead of that big, 
 hulk of a cowboy you gave me to well, he 
 brought me a perfectly lovely box of Mail- 
 lard s, and I was dying to sit right down and 
 devote myself to it. But did you let me have 
 a single, solitary piece? Not you. You 
 made me say in a horrid, sniffy manner 
 Oh, I never touch those things. You can t, 
 you know, if you want to keep fit! Imagine 
 a girl talking like that! And then I had to 
 
WRITING A "BEST-SELLER" 241 
 
 ride off with that nasty brute of a cowboy, 
 and leave poor Reggy standing there, looking 
 so hurt! Now, I m just going to stop the 
 whole thing. No more cold baths, no vibrant 
 business, no beefsteak for breakfast, no tennis, 
 nor swims, nor khaki skirts. No cowboys: 
 I like nice, city men, who take good care of 
 their fingernails. Why, I ve suffered enough 
 from surf-bathing alone to turn me gray. 
 I don t look at all well in a bathing suit, 
 anyhow. Oh, I know the illustrator shows me 
 poised on top of a wave that would make me 
 scream if I saw it a mile off but I hate 
 getting my hair wet, and as for those hideous 
 bathing caps! No, sir; I m going to be lan 
 guid. I m going to recline on verandas. 
 I m going to say La, sir! I don t know what 
 La means, but it sounds nice and die-away, 
 and Jane Austeny. I may even swoon, now 
 and then, if I m sure my gown is fixed be 
 comingly. It would serve you right if I took 
 
242 THE SECRET BOOK 
 
 to having vapors (whatever they are) like 
 my great-grandmother in Richardson s time." 
 
 "Why, Bet consider " 
 
 "Not Bet, sir! How dare you be familiar 
 in the presence of one so delicate? La, sir, 
 how you do fluster one! Miss Ermintrude, 
 sir! 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 OUT or THE FOG 
 
 When Lenox had finished reading his paper 
 we were led by Bronson into the dining-room. 
 There he sacrificed some perfectly good 
 oysters to a new and fantastic recipe. Brown 
 bread and bottled ale (Newberry enjoyed it 
 better by calling it "brown stout") helped out 
 the tortured oysters, however, and the supper 
 served the highest purpose of suppers: it made 
 one last pipe taste especially sweet. 
 
 "Apropos of Lauriston in Paris," remarked 
 Bronson, when we were back in the li 
 brary, "I have some advice for him in this 
 poem. It is a good poem, I wrote it 
 
 myself." 
 
 243 
 
244 THE SECRET BOOK 
 
 THE BOOK-LOVER IN PARIS 
 
 The foolish man, J t is he who takes 
 His way along the Rue de Paix, 
 Or stands bewildered mid the roar 
 That sounds throughout Rue St. Honore; 
 Or to escape the city s noise 
 Doth ride or drive within the Bois, 
 Or seeks relief from dirt and grime 
 In quarters of the old regime. 
 
 Let him not sit with pallid cheeks 
 Reading in the Bibliotheques, 
 The bargain hunter, shrewd and keen, 
 Will haunt the book-stalls on the Seine. 
 The books, they are not always bosh, 
 That you encounter au rive gauche. 
 And there, at least, you walk at ease 
 And smoke and stroll along the quais, 
 And run across, as like as not, 
 A volume really comme il faut. 
 
 From all distractions keep aloof 
 While crossing over the Pont Neuf, 
 Look not to left and not to right, 
 But quickly pass L lle de la Cite. 
 
OUT OF THE FOG 245 
 
 T will chance, perhaps, that as you came 
 You stopped and gazed at Notre Dame 
 But tarry not for priest nor verger, 
 Ho! for the realm of Henri Murger! 
 Where mid the book-stalls you may search 
 For volumes truly tres recherche. 
 
 After the meeting was over, I walked home 
 alone. My thoughts turned constantly to 
 Lauriston. There seemed to be some fore 
 boding which could not be shaken off. It was 
 a dismal night, foggy and dark, and the 
 street lights burned dully, surrounded by a 
 circle of blue. Turning the corner, just be 
 fore reaching my house, I thought I caught 
 sight of someone a hurrying figure crossing 
 the little park on the other side of the street. 
 
 It was only a moment s glimpse, but I 
 could have sworn the figure was Lauriston s. 
 He looked haggard and pale, the signs of 
 sickness, or some unknown horror, were written 
 plainly upon his face. I stopped short for an 
 
246 THE SECRET BOOK 
 
 instant, and then darted forward to cross the 
 street. But it was too late, the figure, 
 wraith-like in the fog, glided into the shadows 
 and vanished. 
 
 Two or three minutes passed before I had 
 recovered my self-possession. Then I ran up 
 the steps, and let myself into the house. Of 
 course it was all folly, I had not really seen 
 Lauriston at all, only someone hurrying 
 home, as I was doing. I tried to believe this. 
 The man or whatever it was carried an 
 object which looked like a book under his arm. 
 
 It was no use, I was decidedly nervous as 
 I entered the library and lighted the gas. 
 It was in this very room, I remembered, that 
 I had that last interview with my poor friend, 
 the night before he set out on his quest for 
 that sinister book, that book which had 
 brought disaster upon so many of its owners, 
 if all the stories were true. I found now 
 that I more than half believed them. 
 
OUT OF THE FOG 247 
 
 As I sat there by the dying fire, something 
 a sound perhaps, caused me to look up, 
 and out into the entrance hall. The front 
 door, which I must have left ajar, was slowly 
 opening! In the dim light, from the one gas 
 jet in my library, I could see it swing back. 
 
 Then Lauriston entered. 
 
 I saw him as plain as ever I saw anything 
 in my life. My tongue clove to the roof of 
 my mouth; I could not speak, a horrible 
 icy paralysis held me bound, as if in chains. 
 He looked directly at me, his eyes seemed 
 to bore into mine. Then he spoke: 
 
 "Have you got anything to drink?" he 
 asked. 
 
 This from a ghost! In all supernatural litera 
 ture, I have never heard of a similar utterance. 
 
 "Is it you?" I asked faintly. 
 
 "No," he replied; "it s the Dowager Em 
 press of China, in my clothes. Do you mind 
 getting her a drink? She s chilly." 
 
248 THE SECRET BOOK 
 
 "But, but " 
 
 "But you thought I was in Paris? So I will 
 be in another week. I m not due there, any 
 way, till the first of next month." 
 
 He advanced into the room and lighted a 
 cigarette. I watched him, spell-bound. The 
 cigarette smelled exactly like the villainous 
 brand he always smoked. I got him the 
 Scotch, and a siphon. He poured out a large 
 drink, for a wraith. 
 
 "I thought I saw you," I hesitated, "over 
 in the park." 
 
 "Very likely you did. I ve been here twice 
 before. Been walking around to keep warm. 
 Br-r-r-r-r!" 
 
 "But what s the matter with you, you 
 look so" 
 
 "The matter is that I got in, this morning, 
 on the Hectic/ after the roughest trip they ve 
 had in five years. Three days I was sick, 
 and the other three I just couldn t eat. I 
 
OUT OF* THE FOG 249 
 
 was bounced out of my berth twice in the 
 night, and I slept only about four hours dur 
 ing the whole voyage." 
 
 "What are you here for? Why did you 
 cross? " 
 
 "Wouldn t you cross if you had something 
 
 you could sell to for twelve thousand 
 
 dollars?" 
 
 He named the wealthiest book-collector in 
 the world. 
 
 "What is it?" 
 
 He smiled. 
 
 "The Secret Book," he said. 
 
 And he took it out of his pocket, and placed 
 it on the table before me. 
 
 END 
 
INDEX 
 
 Anon, Complete Works of, 119. 
 
 Bath-tubs, Novelists Keep Their Characters in, too 
 
 much, 239. 
 
 Bees, Sherlock Holmes on, 69. 
 Book-auction, Mysterious, 145. 
 
 Centre of Earth, Lauriston Reaches, 129. 
 Cigarette, How to Roll a, 74. 
 Cocktail, Ptomaine, 266. Ifrlo 
 Cuckoo, First, Be Suspicious of, 104. 
 
 Degradation, Bottomless Pit of, 213. 
 
 Dime Novels, 204. 
 
 Drood, Edwin, Mystery of, 46. 
 
 Education, Marvels of, 183. 
 Fools, Book of, 9. 
 
 Ghost, see Wraith. 
 
 Gobbling, Effect of, on Professors, 9. 
 
 Gosh, 173. 
 
 251 
 
252 INDEX 
 
 Helena Landless Theory, Dr. Watson Believes in, 59. 
 Hell Fire Clubs, Futility of, 22. 
 Hyena, Prof. Sears Imitates a, 171. 
 
 Ibid, Tragic Death of, 115. 
 Information, Useful, 32. 
 
 Johnson, Owen, Football Hero Indignant with, 229. 
 Kilts, Not Worn by Bibliographers, 25. 
 
 "La!", Heroine Resolves to Say, 241. 
 
 Ladies Home Journal, Editor of, Does Not Wear 
 
 Helmet, 179. 
 
 "Librarian, The" Column, Pratt Furious with, 150. 
 London Times, Thrilling Nature of, 97. 
 Rollicking Humor of, 97. 
 
 Murder, Small, by Author, 21. 
 
 Nilghai, Unmarried, 86. 
 
 Oldest Library Joke in Existence, 173. 
 
 Ostrich, Correct Conduct when Sat upon by an, 88. 
 
 Oysters, Innocent, Sacrifice of, 243. 
 
 Pantalettes, Small Sister Wears, 235. 
 Perseverance Island, 75. 
 Polar Bear, How to Shoot a, 124. 
 Ptomaine Cocktail, see Cocktail, Ptomaine. 
 Pythons, Gigantic, in Library, 84. 
 
INDEX 253 
 
 Queen of Saxony, see Saxony, Queen of. 
 Queer Conduct of Ghost, 247. 
 
 Rabbit, Welsh, 73. 
 
 Red Whiskers, Sunflower Looks Well with, 6. 
 
 Reference Librarian, The, 187. 
 
 Road to Hell, 200. 
 
 Salad, Three Ages of, 104. 
 
 Saturday Review, Does Sapsea Edit, 51. 
 
 Saxony, Queen of, see Queen of Saxony. 
 
 Secret Room, 132. 
 
 Shadows, Lauriston Disappears in, 149. 
 
 Sniff, Mrs. Buntin Begins to, 198. 
 
 Snorers, How to Discourage, 12. 
 
 South Pole, Correct Language in Discovering, 123. 
 
 Telegraph, Full Directions to Make a, 34. 
 Thermometer, Large, Hard to Swallow a, 4. 
 
 Unicorns, Preposterous Book on, 16. 
 Vanishing, Habit of, 149. 
 
 Whiskers, Red, see Red Whiskers. 
 Wraith, Peculiar Remark of a, 247. 
 
 Xoanon, Definition of a, 163. 
 
 Yaw, Ryerson Does Not Know How to, 94. 
 
 Zamboanga, Spotted Serpent from, 227. 
 
BY THE SAME AUTHOR 
 
 The Voyage of the Hoppergrass 
 
 Decorated cloth, ill., ismo, $1.35 net; postpaid $1.47 
 
 "There is a keen appreciation of the boy in this book and plenty to 
 keep the youngster thrilled." Boston Globe. 
 
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 PUBLISHED BY 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York 
 
BY THE SAME AUTHOR 
 
 The Believing Years 
 
 Decorated cloth, i2mo, $1.25 net; postpaid, $1-34 
 
 Mr. Pearson s unique volume is a book for grown-up children told 
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 that never becomes prosaic or preachy. 
 
 This story of the doings of a group of country boys, shows that along 
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 "Truly, a most delicious and refreshing bit of reminiscence." 
 
 Christian Observer. 
 
 PUBLISHED BY 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York 
 
S. R. CROCKETT S NEW NOVEL 
 
 " SANDY 
 
 BY S. R. CROCKETT 
 AUTHOR OF "PATSY." "THE STICKIT MINISTER," ETC. 
 
 With frontispiece in colors by R. Pearson Lawrence; decorated Cloth, i2mo t 
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 Up from his country home Sandy goes to London. And there he has 
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 love is told by Mr. Crockett in a fashion which will convince many 
 people that this is quite the most satisfactory novel he has ever written. 
 Full of the vigor of life, with a wit and humor that win the reader even 
 as they won his associates, Sandy is a cheery kind of hero and the tale 
 of his experiences of that inspiring type which fires men and women, 
 too on to the accomplishment of big things. No less appealing a figure 
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 book s close becomes his life partner. Altogether "Sandy" thrills and 
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 most modern and most masterful of all heroes in current fiction. . . . 
 As winning a heroine as any one could desire is skillfully wrought into 
 the warp and woof of Mr. Crockett s fabric of narrative. Popular favor 
 is likely to score one for Sandy ." Phila. North American. 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York 
 
NEW MACMILLAN FICTION 
 
 The Treasure 
 
 BY KATHLEEN NORRIS 
 AUTHOR OF "MOTHER," "THE RICH MRS. BURGOYNE," ETC. 
 
 With illustrations. Decorated cloth, i2mo. $1.00 net. 
 
 Stories of the home circle Mrs. Norris has made peculiarly her own. 
 Whether the scene be laid in the parlor or the kitchen, whether the char 
 acter be mistress or maid, she writes with an understanding and sympathy 
 which compel admiration. In the present novel Mrs. Norris chronicles 
 the experiences of one family in trying to solve the servant problem! 
 What they do, with the results, not only provide reading that is amusing 
 but will be found by many who look beneath the surface, highly sug 
 gestive and significant. As in all of Mrs. Norris s work, the atmosphere 
 of the home has been wonderfully caught; throughout are those intimate 
 little touches which make the incidents described seem almost a part of 
 the reader s own life, so close to reality, so near to the everyday hap 
 penings of everybody does Mrs. Norris bring them. 
 
 A Stepdaughter of the Prairie 
 
 BY MARGARET LYNN 
 
 Cloth, I2tno. $1.35 net. 
 
 Many people have written of the prairies but few from Miss Lynn s 
 viewpoint. It is not of the vastness nor of the silences nor of the great 
 unpeopled wastes that she writes primarily, but of all these things as 
 they touch the life of the people. The prairie folks she has uppermost 
 in her mind s eye. It is this human note which distinguishes her nar 
 rative and gives to it a compelling interest. The sketches of the day 
 to day existence of the members of the family whose experiences in this 
 far western country are chronicled have not only the appeal that comes 
 from the reading of that which is, because of subject matter, attention- 
 arresting, but further the satisfaction resulting from good writing. It 
 is not necessary in order to derive pleasure from this book to have a 
 keen appreciation of literature; on the other hand, one who does have 
 such an appreciation will be much gratified at the beauty, the fullness 
 and the fluency of Margaret Lynn s prose. 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York 
 
JACK LONDON S NEW NOVEL 
 
 The Valley of the Moon 
 
 Frontispiece in colors by George Harper. Decorated cover. $1.35 net. 
 
 "The most wholesome, the most interesting, the most acceptable 
 book that Mr. London has written." The Dial. 
 
 "Read The Valley of the Moon. Once begin it and you can t 
 let it alone until you have finished it. . . . The Valley of the Moon 
 is that kind of a book." Pittsburgh Post. ^ 
 
 "A ripping yarn . . . goes rushing along ... a human 
 document of real value." Boston Globe. 
 
 "As winning, as genuine an idyl of love, of mutual trust and happi 
 ness, of but a single united aim in life as one can desire. American to 
 the core; picturesque, wholesome, romantic, practical." N. Y. Tribune. 
 
 "Unlike any book of his we have met before . . . extremely 
 pleasant and genial . . . holds the reader s attention to the end." 
 N. Y. Sun. 
 
 "A fine, worthy book, indeed; too popular, perhaps, but the finest 
 Mr. London has done." Michigan Churchman. 
 
 "Jack London s good story. ... A delightful picture of Cali 
 fornia life . . . such a lovable pair. . . . The story is an excel 
 lent one for grouchy persons. It ought to cure them." Brooklyn Eagle. 
 
 Short Stories 
 
 BY JACK LONDON 
 
 Cloth, i2mo. 
 
 This volume representing the maturer work of Mr. London has 
 that compelling style, that skill in character portrayal and in the con 
 struction of unusual plot which since he first began to write fiction 
 have always marked him apart from the rank and file of novelists. No 
 writer to-day is more praised than Mr. London for the color of his stories, 
 for the fertility of his imagination, for the strength of his prose, for the 
 way in which he makes his people live. His versatility, for he can turn 
 out a bit of grim tragedy or a tale brimming with humor with equal 
 facility, makes him everybody s author. The present book is a col 
 lection of particularly human stories based on a variety of emotions 
 and worked out with consummate mastery of his art. 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 Publishers 64-66 Filth Avenue New York 
 
NEW MACMILLAN FICTION 
 
 The Reconnaissance 
 
 BY GORDON GARDINER 
 
 With frontispiece in colors by George Harper. Cloth, i2mo, 
 $1.35 net. 
 
 Unusual both in thought and in character is this briskly 
 moving story of adventure in which a young man ultimately 
 finds himself. The action is vigorous and the tale of the 
 youth s endeavors to overcome certain deep-rooted traits in 
 his nature appealing. The novel is distinguished by the 
 vivacity and crispness of the author s style. For the most part 
 Mr. Gardiner reveals his theme and portrays his people 
 through dialogue, thus imbuing his book with a liveliness 
 and an alertness which the reader will find most pleasant. 
 Opening on the veldt in Africa with a situation of striking 
 power and originality, the scene, in the course of the plot, 
 shifts to other lands, bringing in a variety of well-drawn and 
 interesting men and women. Like A. E. W. Mason s "The 
 Four Feathers," to which it bears a slight resemblance, "The 
 Reconnaissance" is a story of courage, raising in perplexing 
 fashion the question as to whether the winner of the Victoria 
 Cross is a hero or a coward, and answering it in a way likely 
 to be satisfactory to all. 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York 
 
GENERAL LIBRARY 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA BERKELEY 
 
 RETURN TO DESK FROM WHICH BORROWED 
 
 This book iAIBBAffle lSQ$%t aWjMftlSw, or on the 
 
 date to which renewed. 
 Renewed books are subject to immediate recall. 
 
 NOV 2? 954 
 
 NOV 1 7 1966 
 SENT ON ILL 
 
 JAN 2 6 2006 
 
 U.C. BERKELEY 
 
 LD 21-IOOm-l, 54(1887816)476 
 
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 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY