er's very pleasant article about him in a
recent _Bookman_. My last act before turning out the light was to lay
the magazine on the table, open at Mr. Weaver's essay, to remind me to
get a copy of Kenko the first thing this morning. Happily to-day was
Saturday. I don't know what I should have done if it had been Sunday. I
felt that I could not wait another day without owning that book. I
suspected it was a good deal in the mood of another bachelor, an
Anglo-American Caleb of to-day--Mr. Logan Pearsall Smith, whose
whimsical "Trivia" belongs on the same shelf.

This morning I tried to argue myself out of the decision. It may be a
very expensive book, I thought; it may cost two or three dollars; I have
been spending a lot of money lately, and I certainly ought to buy some
new undershirts. Moreover, this has been a bad week; I have never
written those paragraphs I promised a certain editor, and I haven't paid
the rent yet. Why not try to find the book at a library? But I knew the
only library where I would have any chance of finding Kenko would be the
big pile at Fifth avenue and Forty-second street, and I could not bear
the thought of having to read that book without smoking. I felt
instinctively (from what Mr. Weaver had written) that it was the kind
of book that requires a pipe.

Well, I thought, I won't decide this too hastily; I'll walk down to the
post office (four blocks) and make up my mind on the way. I knew
already, however, that if I didn't go downtown for that book it would
bother me all day and ruin my work.

I walked down to the post office (to mail to an editor a sonnet I
thought fairly well of) saying to myself: That book is imported from
England, it may be a big book, it may even cost four dollars. How much
better to exhibit the stoic tenacity of all great men, go back to my
hall bedroom (which I was temporarily occupying) and concentrate on
matters in hand. What right, I said, has a Buddhist recluse, born either
in 1281 or 1283, to harass me so? But I knew in my heart that the matter
was already decided. I walked back to the corner of Hallbedroom street,
and stood vacillating at the newsstand, pretending to glance over the
papers. But across six centuries the insistent ghost of Kenko had me in
its grip. Annoyed, and with a sense of chagrin, I hurried to the subway.

In the dimly lit vestibule of the subway car, a boy of sixteen or so sat
on an up-ended suitcase, plunged in a book. I can never resist th