of Mudie, and has not heard of the Grosvenor. Mr. Jesse Boot has had
the singular and beautiful idea of advertising his wares by lending books
to customers and non-customers at a loss of ten thousand a year. His
system is simplicity and it is cheapness. He is generous. If you desire a
book which he has not got in stock he will buy it and lend it to you for
twopence. Thus in the towns of my group the effulgent centre of culture is
the chemist's shop. The sole point of contact with living literature is
the chemist's shop. A wonderful world, this England! Two things have
principally struck me about Mr. Jesse Boot's [Now Sir Jesse Boot] clients.
One is that they are usually women, and the other is that they hire their
books at haphazard, nearly in the dark, with no previous knowledge of what
is good and what is bad.

* * * * *

It is to be added that the tremendous supply of sevenpenny bound volumes
of modern fiction, and of shilling bound volumes of modern belles-lettres
(issued by Nelsons and others), is producing a demand in my group, is, in
fact, making book-buyers where previously there were no book-buyers. These
tomes now rival the works of the brothers Hocking in the stationer's shop.
Their standard is decidedly above the average, owing largely to the fact
that the guide-in-chief of Messrs. Nelsons happens to be a genuine man of
letters. I am told that Messrs. Nelsons alone sell twenty thousand volumes
a week. Yet even they have but scratched the crust. The crust is still
only the raw material of a new book public.

* * * * *

If it is cultivated and manufactured with skill it will surpass
immeasurably in quantity, and quite appreciably in quality, the actual
book public. One may say that the inception of the process has been
passably good. One is inclined to prophesy that within a moderately short
period--say a dozen years--the centre of gravity of the book market will
be rudely shifted. But the event is not yet.

H.G. WELLS

[_4 Mar. '09_]

Wells! I have heard that significant monosyllable pronounced in various
European countries, and with various bizarre accents. And always there was
admiration, passionate or astonished, in the tone. But the occasion of its
utterance which remains historic in my mind was in England. I was, indeed,
in Frank Richardson's Bayswater. "Wells?" exclaimed a smart, positive
little woman--one of those creatures that