e
temptation to try to see what books other people are reading. This
innocent curiosity has led me into many rudenesses, for I am
short-sighted and have to stare very close to make out the titles. And
usually the people who read books on trolleys, subways and ferries are
women. How often I have stalked them warily, trying to identify the
volume without seeming too intrusive. That weakness deserves an essay in
itself. It has led me into surprising adventures. But in this case my
quarry was easy. The lad--I judged him a boarding school boy going back
to school after the holidays--was so absorbed in his reading that it was
easy to thrust my face over his shoulder and see the running head on the
page--"The Light That Failed."

I left the subway at Pennsylvania Station. Just to appease my
conscience, I stopped in at the agreeable Cadmus bookshop on
Thirty-third street to see if by any chance they might have a
second-hand copy of Kenko. But I know they wouldn't; it is not the kind
of book at all likely to be found second-hand. I tarried here long
enough to smoke one cigarette and pay my devoirs to the noble profession
of second-hand bookselling. I even thought, a little wildly, of buying a
copy of "The Monk" by M.G. Lewis, which I saw there. So does the frenzy
rage when once you unleash it. But I decided to be content with paying
my devoirs to the proprietor, a friend of mine, and not go on (as the
soldier does in Hood's lovely pun) to devour my pay. I hurried off to
the office of the Oxford University Press, Kenko's publishers.

It should be stated, however, that owing to some confusion of doors I
got by mistake into the reception room of the Brunswick-Balke-Collender
Billiard Table Company, which is on the same corridor as the salesroom
of the Oxford Press. It was a pleasant reception room, not very bookish
in aspect, but in my agitation I was too eager to feel surprised by the
large billiard table in the offing. I somewhat startled a young man at
an adding machine by demanding, in a husky voice, a copy of "The
Miscellanies of a Japanese Priest." I was rather nervous by this time,
lest for some reason I should not be able to buy a copy of Kenko. I
feared the publishers might be angry with me for not having made a round
of the bookstores first. The young man saw that I was chalking the wrong
cue, and forwarded me.

In the office of the Oxford Press I met a very genial reception. I had
been, as I say, apprehensive lest the