tempted her off my pages! Or maybe there was
red rhubarb in the cart and the jolly farmer, as he journeyed up the
street, pitched it to a pleasing melody. Dear lady, I forgive you. But let
us hope no laundryman led you off! Such discord would have marred my book.

I saw once in a public library, as I went along the shelves, a volume of
mine which gave evidence to have been really read. The record in front
showed that it had been withdrawn one time only. The card was blank
below--but once certainly it had been read. I hope that the book went out
on a Saturday noon when the spirits rise for the holiday to come, and that
a rainy Sunday followed, so that my single reader was kept before his fire.
A dull patter on the window--if one sits unbuttoned on the hearth--gives
a zest to a languid chapter. The rattle of a storm--if only the room be
snug--fixes the attention fast. Therefore, let the rain descend as though
the heavens rehearsed for a flood! Let a tempest come out of the west! Let
the chimney roar as it were a lion! And if there must be a clearing, let
it hold off until the late afternoon, lest it sow too early a distaste for
indoors and reading! There is scarcely a bookworm who will not slip his
glasses off his nose, if the clouds break at the hour of sunset when the
earth and sky are filled with a green and golden light. I took the book off
the library shelf and timidly glancing across my shoulder for fear that
some one might catch me, I looked along the pages. There was a thumb mark
in a margin, and presently appeared a kindly stickiness on the paper as
though an orange had squirted on it. Surely there had been a human being
hereabouts. It was as certain as when Crusoe found the footprints in the
sand. Ah, I thought, this fellow who sits in the firelight has caught an
appetite. Perhaps he bit a hole and sucked the fruit, and the skin has
burst behind. Or I wave the theory and now conceive that the volume was
read at breakfast. If so, it is my comfort that in those dim hours it stood
propped against his coffee cup.

But the trail ended with the turning of the page. There were, indeed,
further on, pencil checks against one of the paragraphs as if here the book
had raised a faint excitement, but I could not tell whether they sprang
up in derision or in approval. Toward the end there were uncut leaves, as
though even my single reader had failed in his persistence.

Being swept once beyond a usual caution, I lamented to m