or myself. "Mr. H. Wellington Jones," I would have it read,
"died yesterday of some mysterious form of bacterial poisoning
contracted while turning over the pages of an old family Bible which he
was accustomed to consult at frequent intervals. Mr. Smith had a cut
finger which was not quite healed and it is supposed that a dust-speck
from the pages of the old book must have entered the wound and induced
sepsis. He was found unconscious in his chair with the book open at the
thirtieth chapter of Proverbs." Yes, I sometimes find it hard to
understand what Harrington, a man of really fine sensibilities, sees in
Mrs. Harrington. The very suggestion of locking up books to prevent
their being carried away hurts like the screech of a pencil upon a
slate. I think of Mrs. Harrington and then I think of Cooper. Cooper's
shelves are continuously being denuded by his friends. But if you think
of Cooper as a helpless victim you are sadly mistaken. There is an
elaborate scheme behind it all, a scheme of such transcendent ingenuity
as only simple-hearted, sweet-natured, unpractised, purblind visionaries
like Cooper are capable of.

He let me into the secret one day when he saw that I was about to find
it out for myself. "I know very many dear people," he said, "who are too
busy to read books or too little in the habit of it. You know them, too;
they are men and women in whom the pulse of life beats too rapidly for
the calm pleasures of reading. They are not insensible to fine ideas,
but they must see these ideas in concrete form. If I, for instance, wish
to know something about Spain, I get one of Martin Hume's books, but
these people take a steamer and go to Spain. I have read everything of
Meredith's and they have read almost nothing, but they saw Meredith in
London and spent a week-end with him at a country-house in Sussex. I
avoid celebrities in the flesh. I don't want to minister to them and I
want still less to patronise them. I am afraid I should be disappointed
in them and I am sure they would be disappointed in me.

"However, that's not the point," says Cooper. "The problem is to make a
man read who won't read of his own accord. I do it by asking such a man
to dinner. I pull out a volume of Marriott's and remark, without
emphasis, that after infinite exertion I have just got it back from
Woolsey, who is wild over the book. The fires of envy and acquisition
flash in my visitor's eye. Might he have the book for a day or two? Yes