lending them."
"Still, if a man collects books merely for their contents – " persisted Mr. Pedagog.
"He is a wild, extravagant person," said the Idiot. "He might save himself hundreds of dollars, not to say thousands. The library on that plan need not occupy an honored place among the rooms of the house. A mere pigeon-hole with a subscriber's card to a circulating library filed away in it will do as well, or if the city or town in which he lives maintains a public library he may spare himself even that expense."
"Good for you!" exclaimed the Bibliomaniac. "That's the best answer to the critics of book-collectors I have heard yet."
"I agree with you," said Mr. Pedagog. "It is a very comprehensive reply. As for you, my dear Bibliomaniac, why do you collect books?"
"Because I love 'em as books," replied the Bibliomaniac. "Because of their associations, and because when I get a treasure I have the bliss of knowing I have something that others haven't."
"Then it is selfishness?" asked Mr. Pedagog.
"Just as everything else is," returned the Bibliomaniac. "You, sir, if I may be personal without wishing to be offensive, are wedded to Mrs. Pedagog. You take pleasure in knowing that she belongs to you and not to any one else. The Idiot here is proud of his children, and is glad they are his children and nobody else's. I am wedded to my rare books, and it rejoices my soul to pick up a volume that is unique, and to know that it belongs to me and to no one else. If that is selfishness, then all possession is selfish."
"That's about it," said the Idiot. "You collect books just as Mormons and Solomon used to collect wives. You are called a Bibliomaniac. I suppose Brigham Young and Solomon would have been known as Gamyomaniacs – though I don't suppose that age in women as in books is a requisite of value to marrying men – and they are both of them supposed to be rather canny persons."
Mr. Pedagog puffed away in silence. It was evident that the argumentum ad hominem did not please him.
"Well," he said, after awhile, "possibly you are right. If a man wants a library to be a small British Museum – "
"He will take better care of his rarities than the Idiot does," said the Bibliomaniac, putting the rare Leech back into its place. "If that were mine I'd put it out of the reach of my children."
"I didn't know you had any," said the Idiot, eagerly.
"Oh, you know what I mean," retorted the Bibliomaniac. "You place Dryden on the top shelf where Tommy and Mollie cannot get at him. But this book, which is worth ten larger paper editions of Dryden, you keep below, where the children can easily reach it. It's a wonder to me you've been able to keep it in its present superb condition."
"The mind of a child," said Mr. Pedagog, sententiously, "is above values, above all conceits. It is the mind of sincerity, and a rare book has no greater attraction to the boy or girl than one not so favored."
"That is not my reason," said the Idiot. "I know children pretty well, and I have observed that they are ambitious, and in a sense rebellious. They want to do what they cannot do. That is why, when mothers place jam on the top shelf of the pantry, the children always climb up to get it. If they would leave it on the dining-room table, within easy reach, the children would soon cease to regard it as a thing to be sought for. Make jam a required article of diet and the little ones will soon cease to want it. So with that book. If I should put that out of Tommy's reach, Tommy would lie awake nights to plan his campaign to get it. Leaving it where it is he doesn't think about it, doesn't want it, is not forbidden to have it, and so it escapes his notice."
"You have the right idea, the human idea," said Mr. Pedagog, and even the Bibliomaniac was inclined to agree. But just then Tommy happened in, with Mollie close after. The boy walked straight to the bookcase, and Mollie gathered up the large shears from the Idiot's table, and together they approached their father.
"Pa," said Mollie, holding up the scissors, "can I borrow these?"
"What for?" asked the Idiot.
"We want to cut the pictures out o' this," said Tommy, holding up the fifty-dollar Leech.
After all, it is difficult to lay down a cast-iron rule as to how a private library should be constructed or arranged, particularly when one's loyalty is divided between one's children and one's merely bookish treasures.
IV
AS TO A SMALL DINNER
It was sad but true. Mr. and Mrs. Idiot had invited Mr. Whitechoker and Mr. and Mrs. Pedagog and the Poet to dinner, and for some reason or another the cook had taken wings unto herself and flown, and the guests were expected within two hours.
"I see now," said the Idiot, "why they call it taking French leave. Nobody who doesn't understand French understands it. If it wasn't French, or if somebody would translate it for us, we might be able to comprehend it; as it is, it is one of the mysteries, and, as usual, we must make the best of it. Life, after all, my dear, consists largely of making the best of things."
"Well, I'm sure I don't know what to do," said Mrs. Idiot, despairfully, "unless you telegraph them all not to come, and tell them why."
"It is too late to do that," said the Idiot, looking at his watch. "They've probably all left home by this time. Poets and clergymen and old people like Mr. and Mrs. Pedagog always do start an hour too early, for fear of missing their train."
"I wouldn't care so much about the Poet," said Mrs. Idiot; "he doesn't know enough about housekeeping, anyhow, to make it matter. But Mr. Whitechoker and Mr. and Mrs. Pedagog – I simply can't ask them to camp out, as it were. The very fact that Mrs. Pedagog would become sympathetic immediately she learned what had happened would in itself be unbearable."
"I thought women liked sympathy?" said the Idiot, with a proper manifestation of surprise.
"So they do; but you might just as well talk about claret as meaning one thing as of sympathy being all of the same brand," Mrs. Idiot answered. "Certain kinds of claret are insufferable – sour and heady. I suppose there are sixty different kinds."
"Sixty-two," said the Idiot, blandly. "The sixty you mean and two more whose names I have forgotten."
"I wish you would be serious for a moment," Mrs. Idiot retorted, with as near an approach to irritation as was possible to one of her amiable disposition. "And it's just the same way with sympathy," she continued; "Mrs. Pedagog will lay this whole trouble to my inexperience. Probably she never had a servant take French leave in her life on the eve of a dinner-party."
"I'll bet she didn't," said the Idiot. "And for why? Because she never gave a dinner-party in all her life. The habits of early life cling unto old age, and even as in her early days as a boarding-house keeper she never gave anything, so now she doubtless considers giving a dinner as a reckless waste of opportunity. And she is quite right. Does a lawyer invite his friends to join him in an opinion? Never. Does Mr. Tiffany request Mr. and Mrs. Idiot to accept a diamond tiara given in their honor? Not. Does a true poet, with three names on his autograph, give a poem to anybody when he can sell it? Not if he knows it. Why, then, expect a landlady, by birth and previous training, to give a dinner?"
"I notice," said Mrs. Idiot, severely, "that you are always willing to give your views!"
"Precisely, my dear, and that proves my point," replied the Idiot, amiably. "I am not a professional viewer, and I am not a photographer by trade. Therefore, why should I not give my views? But really," he added, "I wouldn't bother; it'll all come out right. I don't know just how, but I am confident we shall have the most glorious dinner of our lives. When I was down cellar this morning looking at the gas-meter I saw two big boxes full of potatoes, a can of French pease, and a bottle of sarsaparilla, and if they don't like what they get it will be because they are exacting. And I'll wager you from what I know of their manners that if you gave them dried apples, cold tongue, and milk they'd say it was the most delightful repast they ever sat down to."
"But I'd know they didn't mean it," said Mrs. Idiot, smiling in spite of her woe.
"And that brings up the question, why should your conscience be troubled by the insincerity of others?" said he. "Now, I'll tell you what we'll