were getting cream-puffs out for a customer. I want a
bookcase for books and not books for a bookcase."

(I really don't say all those clever things to the clerk. It took me
quite a while to think them up. What I really say is, timidly, "Haven't
you any bookcases without glass doors?" and when they say "No," I thank
them and walk into the nearest dining-room table.)

But if they keep on getting arrogant about it I shall speak up to them
one of these fine days. When I ask for an open-faced bookcase they look
with a scornful smile across the salesroom toward the mahogany
four-posters and say:

"Oh, no, we don't carry those any more. We don't have any call for them.
Every one uses the glass-doored ones now. They keep the books much
cleaner."

Then the ideal procedure for a real book-lover would be to keep his
books in the original box, snugly packed in excelsior, with the lid
nailed down. Then they would be nice and clean. And the sun couldn't get
at them and ruin the bindings. Faugh! (Try saying that. It doesn't work
out at all as you think it's going to. And it makes you feel very silly
for having tried it.)

* * * * *

Why, in the elder days bookcases with glass doors were owned only by
people who filled them with ten volumes of a pictorial history of the
Civil War (including some swell steel engravings), "Walks and Talks
with John L. Stoddard" and "Daily Thoughts for Daily Needs," done in
robin's-egg blue with a watered silk bookmark dangling out. A set of Sir
Walter Scott always helps fill out a bookcase with glass doors. It looks
well from the front and shows that you know good literature when you see
it. And you don't have to keep opening and shutting the doors to get it
out, for you never want to get it out.

[Illustration: I thank them and walk into the nearest dining-room
table.]

A bookcase with glass doors used to be a sign that somewhere in the room
there was a crayon portrait of Father when he was a young man, with a
real piece of glass stuck on the portrait to represent a diamond stud.

And now we are told that "every one buys bookcases with glass doors; we
have no call for others." Soon we shall be told that the thing to do is
to buy the false backs of bindings, such as they have in stage
libraries, to string across behind the glass. It will keep us from
reading too much, and then, too, no one will want to borrow our books.

* * * * *