re
concerned the public is barely able to sit up and take a little liquid
nourishment. Solid foods don't interest it. If you try to cram roast
beef down the gullet of an invalid you'll kill him. Let the public
alone, and thank God when it comes round to amputate any of its
hard-earned cash."

"Well, take it on the lowest basis," said Roger. "I haven't any facts
to go upon----"

"You never have," interjected Jerry.

"But I'd like to bet that the Trade has made more money out of Bryce's
American Commonwealth than it ever did out of all Parson Wright's books
put together."

"What of it? Why shouldn't they make both?"

This preliminary tilt was interrupted by the arrival of two more
visitors, and Roger handed round mugs of cider, pointed to the cake and
the basket of pretzels, and lit his corn-cob pipe. The new arrivals
were Quincy and Fruehling; the former a clerk in the book department of
a vast drygoods store, the latter the owner of a bookshop in the Hebrew
quarter of Grand Street--one of the best-stocked shops in the city,
though little known to uptown book-lovers.

"Well," said Fruehling, his bright dark eyes sparkling above richly
tinted cheek-bones and bushy beard, "what's the argument?"

"The usual one," said Gladfist, grinning, "Mifflin confusing
merchandise with metaphysics."

MIFFLIN--Not at all. I am simply saying that it is good business to
sell only the best.

GLADFIST--Wrong again. You must select your stock according to your
customers. Ask Quincy here. Would there be any sense in his loading
up his shelves with Maeterlinck and Shaw when the department-store
trade wants Eleanor Porter and the Tarzan stuff? Does a country grocer
carry the same cigars that are listed on the wine card of a Fifth
Avenue hotel? Of course not. He gets in the cigars that his trade
enjoys and is accustomed to. Bookselling must obey the ordinary rules
of commerce.

MIFFLIN--A fig for the ordinary rules of commerce! I came over here to
Gissing Street to get away from them. My mind would blow out its fuses
if I had to abide by the dirty little considerations of supply and
demand. As far as I am concerned, supply CREATES demand.

GLADFIST--Still, old chap, you have to abide by the dirty little
consideration of earning a living, unless someone has endowed you?

BENSON--Of course my line of business isn't strictly the same as you
fellows'. But a thought that has often occurred to me in selling rare
editi