ou begin to hand them gold bricks, if you begin to sell them books
built like an apartment house, all marble front and all brick behind,
you're cutting your own throat, or rather cutting your own pocket,
which is the same thing.

MEREDITH--I think Mifflin's right. You know the kind of place our shop
is: a regular Fifth Avenue store, all plate glass front and marble
columns glowing in the indirect lighting like a birchwood at full moon.
We sell hundreds of dollars' worth of bunkum every day because people
ask for it; but I tell you we do it with reluctance. It's rather the
custom in our shop to scoff at the book-buying public and call them
boobs, but they really want good books--the poor souls don't know how
to get them. Still, Jerry has a certain grain of truth to his credit.
I get ten times more satisfaction in selling a copy of Newton's The
Amenities of Book-Collecting than I do in selling a copy of--well,
Tarzan; but it's poor business to impose your own private tastes on
your customers. All you can do is to hint them along tactfully, when
you get a chance, toward the stuff that counts.

QUINCY--You remind me of something that happened in our book department
the other day. A flapper came in and said she had forgotten the name
of the book she wanted, but it was something about a young man who had
been brought up by the monks. I was stumped. I tried her with The
Cloister and the Hearth and Monastery Bells and Legends of the Monastic
Orders and so on, but her face was blank. Then one of the salesgirls
overheard us talking, and she guessed it right off the bat. Of course
it was Tarzan.

MIFFLIN--You poor simp, there was your chance to introduce her to
Mowgli and the bandar-log.

QUINCY--True--I didn't think of it.

MIFFLIN--I'd like to get you fellows' ideas about advertising. There
was a young chap in here the other day from an advertising agency,
trying to get me to put some copy in the papers. Have you found that
it pays?

FRUEHLING--It always pays--somebody. The only question is, does it pay
the man who pays for the ad?

MEREDITH--What do you mean?

FRUEHLING--Did you ever consider the problem of what I call tangential
advertising? By that I mean advertising that benefits your rival
rather than yourself? Take an example. On Sixth Avenue there is a
lovely delicatessen shop, but rather expensive. Every conceivable kind
of sweetmeat and relish is displayed in the brightly lit window. When
yo