his face
do not express. Khalid nicknames him second-hand Jerry, makes to him
professions of friendship, and for many months comes every day to
see him. He comes with his bucket, as he would say, to Jerry's well.
For the two, the young man and the old man of the cellar, the
neophite and the master, would chat about literature and the makers
of it for hours. And what a sea of information is therein under that
frowsy dome. Withal, second-hand Jerry is a man of ideals and
abstractions, exhibiting now and then an heretical twist which is
as agreeable as the vermiculations in a mahogany. "We moderns," said
he once to Khalid, "are absolutely one-sided. Here, for instance, is
my book-shop, there is the Church, and yonder is the Stock Exchange.
Now, the men who frequent them, and though their elbows touch, are
as foreign to each other as is a jerboa to a polar bear. Those who
go to Church do not go to the Stock Exchange; those who spend their
days on the Stock Exchange seldom go to Church; and those who
frequent my cellar go neither to the one nor the other. That is why
our civilisation produces so many bigots, so many philistines, so
many pedants and prigs. The Stock Exchange is as necessary to
Society as the Church, and the Church is as vital, as essential
to its spiritual well-being as my book-shop. And not until man
develops his mental, spiritual and physical faculties to what
Matthew Arnold calls 'a harmonious perfection,' will he be able to
reach the heights from which Idealism is waving to him."

Thus would the master discourse, and the neophite, sitting on the
steps of the cellar, smoking his cigarette, listens, admiring,
pondering. And every time he comes with his bucket, Jerry would be
standing there, between his little pyramids of books, pipe in mouth,
hands in pockets, ready for the discourse. He would also conduct
through his underworld any one who had the leisure and inclination.
But fortunately for Khalid, the people of this district are either too
rich to buy second-hand books, or too snobbish to stop before this
curiosity shop of literature. Hence the master is never too busy; he
is always ready to deliver the discourse.

One day Khalid is conducted into the labyrinthine gloom and mould of
the cellar. Through the narrow isles, under a low ceiling, papered, as
it were, with pamphlets, between ramparts and mounds of books, old
Jerry, his head bowed, his lighted taper in hand, proceeds. And Khalid
follows dire