atent of
respectability. If a thing does not rot and smell in a hundred and forty
years, it would seem to be safe from corruption: it were true peacock. But
here at last from Bell was an unsavory whiff. My flood had abated only a
fortnight since, and here was a stowaway escaped. Bell was proclaimed a
villain. Again had a flood proved itself a failure.

[Illustration]

Now, I feel no shame in having an outsider like Murray display to me these
hidden evils; for I owe no inquisitorial duty to my books. There are
people who will not admit a volume to their shelves until they have thrown
it open and laid its contents bare. This is the unmannerly conduct of the
customs wharf. Indeed, it is such scrutiny, doubtless, that induces some
authors to pack their ideas obscurely, thereby to smuggle them. However,
there being now a scandal on my shelves, I must spy into it.

John Murray, wherein I had read the charge, had been such a friendly,
tea-and-gossip book, not the kind to hiss a scandal at you. It was bound
in blue cloth and was a heavy book, so that I held it on a cushion. (And
this device I recommend to others.) It was the kind of book that stays
open at your place, if you leave it for a moment to poke the fire. Some
books will flop a hundred pages, to make you thumb them back and forth,
though whether this be the binder's fault or a deviltry set therein by
their authors I am at a loss to say. But Shaw would be of this kind,
flopping and spry to mix you up. And in general, Shaw's humor is like that
of a shell-man at a country fair--a thimble-rigger. No matter where you
guess that he has placed the bean, you will be always wrong. Even though
you swear that you have seen him slip it under, it's but his cunning to
lead you off. But Murray was not that kind. It would stand at its post,
unhitched, like a family horse.

Here was quandary. I looked at Bell, but God forgive me, it was not with
the old trustfulness. He was on the top shelf but one, just in line with
the eyes, with gilt front winking in the firelight. I had set him thus
conspicuous with intention, because of his calfskin binding, quite old and
worn. A decayed Gibbon, I had thought, proclaims a grandfather. A set of
British Essayists, if disordered, takes you back of the black walnut. To
what length, then, of cultured ancestry must not this Bell give evidence?
(I had bought Bell, secondhand, on Farringdon Road, London, from a cart,
cheap, because a volume was missing