advises The Wealth of Nations, Rome under the Caesars, The
Statesman's Year Book, certain novels of Henry James, and The Letters
of Queen Victoria (in three volumes). It is plausibly contended that
books of this kind cannot be read (late at night) for more than a few
minutes at a time, and that they afford useful scraps of information.

Another branch of opinion recommends for bedtime reading short stories,
volumes of pithy anecdote, swift and sparkling stuff that may keep one
awake for a space, yet will advantage all the sweeter slumber in the
end. Even ghost stories and harrowing matter are maintained seasonable
by these pundits. This class of reading comprises O. Henry, Bret
Harte, Leonard Merrick, Ambrose Bierce, W. W. Jacobs, Daudet, de
Maupassant, and possibly even On a Slow Train Through Arkansaw, that
grievous classic of the railway bookstalls whereof its author, Mr.
Thomas W. Jackson, has said "It will sell forever, and a thousand years
afterward." To this might be added another of Mr. Jackson's onslaughts
on the human intelligence, I'm From Texas, You Can't Steer Me, whereof
is said (by the author) "It is like a hard-boiled egg, you can't beat
it." There are other of Mr. Jackson's books, whose titles escape
memory, whereof he has said "They are a dynamite for sorrow." Nothing
used to annoy Mifflin more than to have someone come in and ask for
copies of these works. His brother-in-law, Andrew McGill, the writer,
once gave him for Christmas (just to annoy him) a copy of On a Slow
Train Through Arkansaw sumptuously bound and gilded in what is known to
the trade as "dove-coloured ooze." Roger retorted by sending Andrew
(for his next birthday) two volumes of Brann the Iconoclast bound in
what Robert Cortes Holliday calls "embossed toadskin." But that is
apart from the story.

To the consideration of what to put on Miss Titania's bookshelf Roger
devoted the delighted hours of the morning. Several times Helen called
him to come down and attend to the shop, but he was sitting on the
floor, unaware of numbed shins, poring over the volumes he had carted
upstairs for a final culling. "It will be a great privilege," he said
to himself, "to have a young mind to experiment with. Now my wife,
delightful creature though she is, was--well, distinctly mature when I
had the good fortune to meet her; I have never been able properly to
supervise her mental processes. But this Chapman girl will come to us
wholly unlettere