. One of his first acquaintances
in Octavius had been the owner of the principal book-store in the
place--a gentle and bald old man who produced the complete impression of
a bibliophile upon what the slightest investigation showed to be only a
meagre acquaintance with publishers' circulars. But at least he had the
air of loving his business, and the young minister had enjoyed a long
talk with, or rather, at him. Out of this talk had come the information
that the store was losing money. Not even the stationery department now
showed a profit worth mentioning. When Octavius had contained only five
thousand inhabitants, it boasted four book-stores, two of them good
ones. Now, with a population more than doubled, only these latter two
survived, and they must soon go to the wall. The reason? It was in a
nutshell. A book which sold at retail for one dollar and a half cost the
bookseller ninety cents. If it was at all a popular book, "Thurston's"
advertised it at eighty-nine cents--and in any case at a profit of only
two or three cents. Of course it was done to widen the establishment's
patronage--to bring people into the store. Equally of course, it was
destroying the book business and debauching the reading tastes of the
community. Without the profits from the light and ephemeral popular
literature of the season, the book-store proper could not keep up its
stock of more solid works, and indeed could not long keep open at all.
On the other hand, "Thurston's" dealt with nothing save the demand of
the moment, and offered only the books which were the talk of the week.
Thus, in plain words, the book trade was going to the dogs, and it was
the same with pretty nearly every other trade.

Theron was indignant at this, and on his return home told Alice that
he desired her to make no purchases whatever at "Thurston's." He
even resolved to preach a sermon on the subject of the modern idea of
admiring the great for crushing the small, and sketched out some notes
for it which he thought solved the problem of flaying the local abuse
without mentioning it by name. They had lain on his desk now for ten
days or more, and on only the previous Friday he had speculated upon
using them that coming Sunday.

On this bright and cheerful Tuesday morning he walked with a blithe step
unhesitatingly down the main street to "Thurston's," and entered without
any show of repugnance the door next to the window wherein, flanked
by dangling banjos and key-b