f the "Songs of
Solomon."

MEDITATIONS OF A BOOKSELLER

(Roger Mifflin _loquitur_)

[Illustration]

I had a pleasant adventure to-day. A free verse poet came in to see me,
wanted me to buy some copies of "The Pagan Anthology." I looked over the
book, to which he himself had contributed some pieces. I advised him to
read Tennyson. I wish you could have seen his face.

If you want to see a really good anthology (I said) have a look at
Pearsall Smith's "Treasury of English Prose," just out. The only thing
that surprises me is that Mr. Smith didn't include some free verse in
it. The best thing about free verse is that it is often awfully good
prose.

It's a superb clear night: a milky pallor washed in the blue: a white
moon overhead: stars rare but brilliant, one in the south twinkles and
flutters like a tiny flower stirred by faint air. The wind is "a cordial
of incredible virtue" (Emerson)--sharp and chill, but with a milder
tincture. To-day, though brisk and snell on the streets, the sunshine
had a lively vigour, a generous quality, a promissory note of the
equinox. I felt it from first rising this morning--the old demiurge at
work! As I sat in the bathtub (when a man is fifty he may be pardoned
for taking a warm bath on winter mornings) my mind fell upon the desire
of wandering: it occurred to me that a spread of legs in the vital air
would be richly repaid. The windows called me: as soon as shirt and
trousers were on, I was at the sill peering out over Gissing Street.
Later, even through closed panes, the chink of milk bottles on the
pavement below seemed to rise with a clearer, merrier note. Setting out
for some tobacco about 8:30, I stopped to study the ice-man's great
blocks of silvery translucence, lying along the curb by a big apartment
house. "Artificial" ice, I suppose: it was interesting to see, in the
meridian of each cake, a kind of silvery fracture or membrane, with the
grain of air-bubbles tending outward therefrom--showing, no doubt, if
one knew the mechanics of refrigeration, just how the freezing
proceeded. Even in so humble a thing as a block of ice are these
harmonic and lovely patterns, the seal of Nature's craft, inscrutable,
inimitable. I might have made a point of this in talking to that free
verse poet. I'm glad I didn't, however: he would have had some tedious
reply, convincing to himself. That's the trouble with replies: they are
always convincing to the replier. As a friend of m