d not
looked into them fearing to be tempted. This time we ventured. We came
upon two poems--"To O, Of Her Dark Eyes," and "A Wind of Clear Weather
in England." The book was ours--or rather, we were its, though we did
not yield at once. We came back the next day and got it. We are still
wondering how a book like that could stay in the shop so long. Once we
had it, the day was different. The sky was sluiced with a clearer blue,
air and sunlight blended for a keener intake of the lungs, faces seen
along the street moved us with a livelier shock of interest and
surprise. The wind that moved over Sussex and blew Mrs. Meynell's heart
into her lines was still flowing across the ribs and ledges of our
distant scene.

There is no mistaking a real book when one meets it. It is like falling
in love, and like that colossal adventure it is an experience of great
social import. Even as the tranced swain, the book-lover yearns to tell
others of his bliss. He writes letters about it, adds it to the
postscript of all manner of communications, intrudes it into telephone
messages, and insists on his friends writing down the title of the find.
Like the simple-hearted betrothed, once certain of his conquest, "I want
you to love her, too!" It is a jealous passion also. He feels a little
indignant if he finds that any one else has discovered the book, too. He
sees an enthusiastic review--very likely in _The New Republic_--and
says, with great scorn, "I read the book three months ago." There are
even some perversions of passion by which a book-lover loses much of his
affection for his pet if he sees it too highly commended by some rival
critic.

This sharp ecstasy of discovering books for one's self is not always
widespread. There are many who, for one reason or another, prefer to
have their books found out for them. But for the complete zealot nothing
transcends the zest of pioneering for himself. And therefore working for
a publisher is, to a certain type of mind, a never-failing fascination.
As H. M. Tomlinson says in "Old Junk," that fascinating collection of
sensitive and beautifully poised sketches which came to us recently with
a shock of thrilling delight:

To come upon a craft rigged so, though at her moorings and with
sails furled, her slender poles upspringing from the bright plane
of a brimming harbour, is to me as rare and sensational a delight
as the rediscovery, when idling with a book, of a favourite