e hotel on
a winter Sunday afternoon.) Apparently the circulating libraries also have
noticed the growing frequency of such words in their lists. But what they
have noticed with more genuine alarm is the growing prices which clever
publishers have been putting on such books. It has not escaped the
observation of clever publishers that the demand by library subscribers
for such books is a very real demand, and clever publishers therefore
thought that they might make a little bit extra in this connexion by
charging high for volumes brief but scandalous. The libraries thought
otherwise. Hence, in truth, the attempted censorship. The now famous moral
crusade of the libraries would certainly not have occurred had not the
libraries perceived, in the moral pressure which was exercised upon them
from lofty regions, the chance of effecting economies. And there is not a
circulating library that does not feel an authentic need of economies.

* * * * *

I should have objected to a censorship even of scandalized history, for no
censorship ever cured a population of bad taste. But naturally the
libraries could not stop at memoirs. They had, in order to be consistent
and to talk big about morality, to include novels in their scheme of
scavenging. At this point the libraries pass from futile foolishness to
active viciousness, and so encounter the opposition of persons like
myself, whose business it is to keep an eye on things.

* * * * *

I can tell a true tale about one of the three great circulating libraries.
A certain man of taste was directing the education in literature of a
certain woman. The time came when the woman had to study Balzac. The man
gave her a list of titles of novels by Balzac which she was to read. She
went to her library, but could not find, in the list of Balzac's complete
"Comedie Humaine" furnished by the library, one of the works which she had
been instructed to peruse. Hearing of this, the man, whose curiosity was
aroused, called at the library to conduct an inquiry. He had an interview
with one of the managers, and the manager at once admitted that their
complete list was not complete. "We cannot supply a work with such a
title," the manager explained. The book was one of the most famous and one
of the finest of nineteenth-century novels, "Splendeurs et Miseres des
Courtisanes," issued by Messrs. Dent and Co. (surely a respectable firm),
with