would only need to say to myself "You can't die yet, you haven't read
Lear." That would bring me round, I know it would.

You see, books are the answer to all our perplexities! Henry Adams
grinds his teeth at his inability to understand the universe. The best
he can do is to suggest a "law of acceleration," which seems to mean
that Nature is hustling man along at an ever-increasing rate so that he
will either solve all her problems or else die of fever in the effort.
But Adams' candid portrait of a mind grappling helplessly with its
riddles is so triumphantly delightful that one forgets the futility of
the struggle in the accuracy of the picture. Man is unconquerable
because he can make even his helplessness so entertaining. His motto
seems to be "Even though He slay me, yet will I make fun of Him!"

Yes, books are man's supreme triumph, for they gather up and transmit
all other triumphs. As Walter de la Mare writes, "How
uncomprehendingly must an angel from heaven smile on a poor human
sitting engrossed in a romance: angled upon his hams, motionless in his
chair, spectacles on nose, his two feet as close together as the flukes
of a merman's tail, only his strange eyes stirring in his time-worn
face."

Well, I've been scribbling away all this time and haven't given you any
news whatever. Helen came back the other day from a visit to Boston
where she enjoyed herself greatly. To-night she has gone out to the
movies with a young protegee of ours, Miss Titania Chapman, an engaging
damsel whom we have taken in as an apprentice bookseller. It's a
quaint idea, done at the request of her father, Mr. Chapman, the
proprietor of Chapman's Daintybits which you see advertised everywhere.
He is a great booklover, and is very eager to have the zeal transmitted
to his daughter. So you can imagine my glee to have a neophyte of my
own to preach books at! Also it will enable me to get away from the
shop a little more. I had a telephone call from Philadelphia this
afternoon asking me to go over there on Monday evening to make an
estimate of the value of a private collection that is to be sold. I
was rather flattered because I can't imagine how they got hold of my
name.

Forgive this long, incoherent scrawl. How did you like Erewhon? It's
pretty near closing time and I must say grace over the day's accounts.

Yours ever,
ROGER MIFFLIN.

Chapter X

Roger Raids the Ice-Box

Roger had just put Carlyle's Cromw