plate-glass, and much carving;
whereof a wit said, 'The Squire has such a beautiful library, and no
place to put his books.'

These books are of a sort to rejoice the heart, but their tenure of
occupancy is uncertain. Hardly one of them but is liable to eviction
without a moment's notice. They have a look in their attitude which
indicates consciousness of being pilgrims and strangers. They seem to
say, 'We can tarry, we can tarry but a night.' Some have tarried two
nights, others a week, others a year, a few even longer. But aside
from a dozen or so of volumes, not one of the remaining three thousand
dares to affirm that it holds a permanent place in its owner's heart
of hearts. It is indeed a noble procession of books which has passed
in and out of those doors. A day will come in which the owner realizes
that he has as good as the market can furnish, and then banishments
will cease. One sighs not for the volumes which deserved exile, but
for those which were sent away because their master ceased to love
them.

There was no friend with whom the Bibliotaph lived on easier terms
than with the Country Squire. They were counterparts. They
supplemented one another. The Bibliotaph, though he was born and bred
on a farm, had fled for his salvation to the city. The Squire, a man
of city birth and city education, had fled for his soul's health to
the country; he had rendered existence almost perfect by setting up an
urban home in rural surroundings. It was well said of that house that
it was finely reticent in its proffers of hospitality, and regally
magnificent in its kindness to those whom it delighted to honor.

It was in the Country Squire's library that the Bibliotaph first met
that actor with whom he became even more intimate than with the Squire
himself. The closeness of their relation suggested the days of the old
Miracle plays when the theatre and the Church were as hand in glove.
The Bibliotaph signified his appreciation of his new friend by giving
him a copy of a sixteenth-century book 'containing a pleasant
invective against Poets, Pipers, Players, Jesters, and such like
Caterpillars of a Commonwealth.' The Player in turn compiled for his
friend of clerical appearance a scrap-book, intended to show how evil
associations corrupt good actors.

This actor professed that which for want of a better term might be
called parlor agnosticism. The Bibliotaph was sturdily inclined
towards orthodoxy, and there was from tim