pel of ease. Take
off your coat and sit down."

"Really," began Gilbert, "I'm afraid this is----"

"Nonsense! Now you sit down and commend your soul to Providence and
the kitchen stove. I'll bustle round and get supper." Gilbert pulled
out his pipe, and with a sense of elation prepared to enjoy an unusual
evening. He was a young man of agreeable parts, amiable and sensitive.
He knew his disadvantages in literary conversation, for he had gone to
an excellent college where glee clubs and theatricals had left him
little time for reading. But still he was a lover of good books,
though he knew them chiefly by hearsay. He was twenty-five years old,
employed as a copywriter by the Grey-Matter Advertising Agency.

The little room in which he found himself was plainly the bookseller's
sanctum, and contained his own private library. Gilbert browsed along
the shelves curiously. The volumes were mostly shabby and bruised;
they had evidently been picked up one by one in the humble mangers of
the second-hand vendor. They all showed marks of use and meditation.

Mr. Gilbert had the earnest mania for self-improvement which has
blighted the lives of so many young men--a passion which, however, is
commendable in those who feel themselves handicapped by a college
career and a jewelled fraternity emblem. It suddenly struck him that
it would be valuable to make a list of some of the titles in Mifflin's
collection, as a suggestion for his own reading. He took out a
memorandum book and began jotting down the books that intrigued him:

The Works of Francis Thompson (3 vols.)
Social History of Smoking: Apperson
The Path to Rome: Hilaire Belloc
The Book of Tea: Kakuzo
Happy Thoughts: F. C. Burnand
Dr. Johnson's Prayers and Meditations
Margaret Ogilvy: J. M. Barrie
Confessions of a Thug: Taylor
General Catalogue of the Oxford University Press
The Morning's War: C. E. Montague
The Spirit of Man: edited by Robert Bridges
The Romany Rye: Borrow
Poems: Emily Dickinson
Poems: George Herbert
The House of Cobwebs: George Gissing

So far had he got, and was beginning to say to himself that in the
interests of Advertising (who is a jealous mistress) he had best call a
halt, when his host entered the room, his small face eager, his eyes
blue points of light.

"Come, Mr. Aubrey Gilbert!" he cried. "The meal is set. You want to
wash your ha