u look at that window it simply makes your mouth water. You decide
to have something to eat. But do you get it there? Not much! You go
a little farther down the street and get it at the Automat or the
Crystal Lunch. The delicatessen fellow pays the overhead expense of
that beautiful food exhibit, and the other man gets the benefit of it.
It's the same way in my business. I'm in a factory district, where
people can't afford to have any but the best books. (Meredith will
bear me out in saying that only the wealthy can afford the poor ones.)
They read the book ads in the papers and magazines, the ads of
Meredith's shop and others, and then they come to me to buy them. I
believe in advertising, but I believe in letting someone else pay for
it.

MIFFLIN--I guess perhaps I can afford to go on riding on Meredith's
ads. I hadn't thought of that. But I think I shall put a little
notice in one of the papers some day, just a little card saying

PARNASSUS AT HOME
GOOD BOOKS BOUGHT
AND SOLD
THIS SHOP IS HAUNTED

It will be fun to see what come-back I get.

QUINCY--The book section of a department store doesn't get much chance
to enjoy that tangential advertising, as Fruehling calls it. Why, when
our interior decorating shark puts a few volumes of a pirated Kipling
bound in crushed oilcloth or a copy of "Knock-kneed Stories," into the
window to show off a Louis XVIII boudoir suite, display space is
charged up against my department! Last summer he asked me for
"something by that Ring fellow, I forget the name," to put a punchy
finish on a layout of porch furniture. I thought perhaps he meant
Wagner's Nibelungen operas, and began to dig them out. Then I found he
meant Ring Lardner.

GLADFIST--There you are. I keep telling you bookselling is an
impossible job for a man who loves literature. When did a bookseller
ever make any real contribution to the world's happiness?

MIFFLIN--Dr. Johnson's father was a bookseller.

GLADFIST--Yes, and couldn't afford to pay for Sam's education.

FRUEHLING--There's another kind of tangential advertising that
interests me. Take, for instance, a Coles Phillips painting for some
brand of silk stockings. Of course the high lights of the picture are
cunningly focussed on the stockings of the eminently beautiful lady;
but there is always something else in the picture--an autom