ation. No one
could be in the room without thinking through his eyes and with his
imagination. Wherever he sat he would look up to a masterpiece as the
sole object of contemplation.

"This is my room. Here, Mary lets me have my way," said Jasper Ewold.
"And it is not expensive."

"The Japanese idea of concentration," said Jack.

Jasper Ewold, who had been watching the effect of the room on Jack, as he
watched it on every new-comer, showed his surprise and pleasure that this
young man in cowboy regalia understood some things besides camps and
trails; and this very fact made him answer in the vigorous and enjoyed
combatancy of the born controversialist.

"Japanese? No!" he declared. "The little men with their storks and vases
have merely discovered to us in decoration a principle which was Greek in
a more majestic world than theirs. It was the true instinct of the
classic motherhood of our art before collectors mistook their residences
for warehouses."

"And the books?" Jack asked, boyishly. "Where are they? Yes, what do you
do with all the second-class matter?"

The question was bait to Jasper Ewold. It gave him an opportunity for
discourse.

"When I read I want nothing but a paper-cutter close at hand--a good, big
paper-cutter, whose own weight carries it through the leaves. And I want
to be alone with that book. If I am too lazy to go to the library for
another, then it is not worth reading. When I get head-achy with print
and look up, I don't want to stare at the backs of more books. I want
something to rest and fill the eye. I--"

"Father," Mary admonished him, "I fear this is going to be long. Why not
continue after Mr. Wingfield has washed off the dust of travel and we are
at table?"

"Mary is merely jealous. She wants to hurry you to the dining-room, which
was designed to her taste," answered her father, with an affectation of
grand indignation. "The dust of travel here is clean desert dust--but I
admit that it is gritty. Come with me, Sir Chaps!"

He bade Jack precede him through a door diagonally opposite the one by
which he had entered from the veranda. On the other side Jack found
himself surrounded by walls of books, which formed a parallelogram around
a great deal table littered with magazines and papers. Here, indeed, the
printed word might riot as it pleased in the joyous variety and chaos of
that truly omnivorous reader of herbivorous capacity. Out of the library
Jack passed into Jasper Ewold