The Haunted Bookshop

very unhappy results. He wheedled himself into Mrs. Mifflin’s good graces, and ended by putting us both into a book, called Parnassus on Wheels, which has been rather a trial to me. In that book he attributes to me a number of shallow and sugary observations upon bookselling that have been an annoyance to the trade. I am happy to say, though, that his book had only a trifling sale.”

“I have never heard of it,” said Gilbert.

“If you are really interested in bookselling you should come here some evening to a meeting of the Corn Cob Club. Once a month a number of booksellers gather here and we discuss matters of bookish concern over corncobs and cider. We have all sorts and conditions of booksellers: one is a fanatic on the subject of libraries. He thinks that every public library should be dynamited. Another thinks that moving pictures will destroy the book trade. What rot! Surely everything that arouses people’s minds, that makes them alert and questioning, increases their appetite for books.”

“The life of a bookseller is very demoralizing to the intellect,” he went on after a pause. “He is surrounded by innumerable books; he cannot possibly read them all; he dips into one and picks up a scrap from another. His mind gradually fills itself with miscellaneous flotsam, with superficial opinions, with a thousand half-knowledges. Almost unconsciously he begins to rate literature according to what people ask for. He begins to wonder whether Ralph Waldo Trine isn’t really greater than Ralph Waldo Emerson, whether J. M. Chapple isn’t as big a man as J. M. Barrie. That way lies intellectual suicide.

“One thing, however, you must grant the good bookseller. He is tolerant. He is patient of all ideas and theories. Surrounded, engulfed by the torrent of men’s words, he is willing to listen to them all. Even to the publisher’s salesman he turns an indulgent ear. He is willing to be humbugged for the weal of humanity. He hopes unceasingly for good books to be born.

“My business, you see, is different from most. I only deal in secondhand books; I only buy books that I consider have some honest reason for existence. In so far as human judgment can discern, I try to keep trash out of my shelves. A doctor doesn’t traffic in quack remedies. I don’t traffic in bogus books.

“A comical thing happened the other day. There is a certain wealthy man, a Mr. Chapman, who has long frequented this shop⁠—”

“I wonder if that could be Mr. Chapman of the Chapman Daintybits Company?” said Gilbert, feeling his feet touch familiar soil.

“The same, I believe,” said Mifflin. “Do you know him?”

“Ah,” cried the young man with reverence. “There is a man who can tell you the virtues of advertising. If he is interested in books, it is advertising that made it possible. We handle all his copy⁠—I’ve written a lot of it myself. We have made the Chapman prunes a staple of civilization and culture. I myself devised that slogan ‘We preen ourselves on our prunes’ which you see in every big magazine. Chapman prunes are known the world over. The Mikado eats them once a week. The Pope eats them. Why, we have just heard that thirteen cases of them are to be put on board the George Washington for the President’s voyage to the Peace Conference. The Czechoslovak armies were fed largely on prunes. It is our conviction in the office that our campaign for the Chapman prunes did much to win the war.”

“I read in an ad the other day⁠—perhaps you wrote that, too?” said the bookseller, “that the Elgin watch had won the war. However, Mr. Chapman has long been one of my best customers. He heard about the Corn Cob Club, and though of course he is not a bookseller he begged to come to our meetings. We were glad to have him do so, and he has entered into our discussions with great zeal. Often he has offered many a shrewd comment. He has grown so enthusiastic about the bookseller’s way of life that the other day he wrote to me about his daughter (he is a widower). She has been attending a fashionable girls’ school where, he says, they have filled her head with absurd, wasteful, snobbish notions. He says she has no more idea of the usefulness and beauty of life than a Pomeranian dog. Instead of sending her to college, he has asked me if Mrs. Mifflin and I will take her in here to learn to sell books. He wants her to think she is earning her keep, and is going to pay me privately for the privilege of having her live here. He thinks that being surrounded by books will put some sense in her head. I am rather nervous about the experiment, but it is a compliment to the shop, isn’t it?”

“Ye gods,” cried Gilbert, “what advertising copy that would make!”

At this point the bell in the shop rang, and Mifflin jumped up. “This part of the evening is often rather busy,” he said. “I’m afraid I’ll have to go down on the floor. Some of my habitués rather expect me to be on hand to gossip about books.”

“I can’t tell you how much I’ve enjoyed myself,” said Gilbert. “I’m going to come again and study your shelves.”

“Well, keep it dark about the young lady,” said the bookseller. “I don’t want all you young blades dropping in here to unsettle her mind. If she falls in love with anybody in this shop, it’ll have to be Joseph Conrad or John Keats!”

As he passed out, Gilbert saw Roger Mifflin engaged in argument with a bearded man who looked like a college professor. “Carlyle’s Oliver Cromwell?” he was saying. “Yes, indeed! Right over here! Hullo, that’s odd! It was here.”

II

The Corn Cob Club1

The Haunted Bookshop was a delightful place, especially of an evening, when its drowsy alcoves were