The Haunted Bookshop by Christopher Morley (parable of the sower read online TXT) 📕

had just sold the only copy they had. Somebody must have been boosting Thomas! Maybe he’s quoted in Tarzan, or somebody has bought up the film rights.”

Mifflin came in, looking rather annoyed.

“Here’s an odd thing,” he said. “I know damn well that copy of Cromwell was on the shelf because I saw it there last night. It’s not there now.”

“That’s nothing,” said Quincy. “You know how people come into a secondhand store, see a book they take a fancy to but don’t feel like buying just then, and tuck it away out of sight or on some other shelf where they think no one else will spot it, but they’ll be able to find it when they can afford it. Probably someone’s done that with your Cromwell.”

“Maybe, but I doubt it,” said Mifflin. “Mrs. Mifflin says she didn’t sell it this evening. I woke her up to ask her. She was dozing over her knitting at the desk. I guess she’s tired after her trip.”

“I’m sorry to miss the Carlyle quotation,” said Benson. “What was the gist?”

“I think I’ve got it jotted down in a notebook,” said Roger, hunting along a shelf. “Yes, here it is.” He read aloud:

“The works of a man, bury them under what guano-mountains and obscene owl-droppings you will, do not perish, cannot perish. What of Heroism, what of Eternal Light was in a Man and his Life, is with very great exactness added to the Eternities, remains forever a new divine portion of the Sum of Things.

“Now, my friends, the bookseller is one of the keys in that universal adding machine, because he aids in the cross-fertilization of men and books. His delight in his calling doesn’t need to be stimulated even by the bright shanks of a Coles Phillips picture.”

“Roger, my boy,” said Gladfist, “your innocent enthusiasm makes me think of Tom Daly’s favourite story about the Irish priest who was rebuking his flock for their love of whisky. ‘Whisky,’ he said, ‘is the bane of this congregation. Whisky, that steals away a man’s brains. Whisky, that makes you shoot at landlords⁠—and not hit them!’ Even so, my dear Roger, your enthusiasm makes you shoot at truth and never come anywhere near it.”

“Jerry,” said Roger, “you are a upas tree. Your shadow is poisonous!”

“Well, gentlemen,” said Mr. Chapman, “I know Mrs. Mifflin wants to be relieved of her post. I vote we adjourn early. Your conversation is always delightful, though I am sometimes a bit uncertain as to the conclusions. My daughter is going to be a bookseller, and I shall look forward to hearing her views on the business.”

As the guests made their way out through the shop, Mr. Chapman drew Roger aside. “It’s perfectly all right about sending Titania?” he asked.

“Absolutely,” said Roger. “When does she want to come?”

“Is tomorrow too soon?”

“The sooner the better. We’ve got a little spare room upstairs that she can have. I’ve got some ideas of my own about furnishing it for her. Send her round tomorrow afternoon.”

III Titania Arrives

The first pipe after breakfast is a rite of some importance to seasoned smokers, and Roger applied the flame to the bowl as he stood at the bottom of the stairs. He blew a great gush of strong blue reek that eddied behind him as he ran up the flight, his mind eagerly meditating the congenial task of arranging the little spare room for the coming employee. Then, at the top of the steps, he found that his pipe had already gone out. “What with filling my pipe and emptying it, lighting it and relighting it,” he thought, “I don’t seem to get much time for the serious concerns of life. Come to think of it, smoking, soiling dishes and washing them, talking and listening to other people talk, take up most of life anyway.”

This theory rather pleased him, so he ran downstairs again to tell it to Mrs. Mifflin.

“Go along and get that room fixed up,” she said, “and don’t try to palm off any bogus doctrines on me so early in the morning. Housewives have no time for philosophy after breakfast.”

Roger thoroughly enjoyed himself in the task of preparing the guest room for the new assistant. It was a small chamber at the back of the second storey, opening on to a narrow passage that connected through a door with the gallery of the bookshop. Two small windows commanded a view of the modest roofs of that quarter of Brooklyn, roofs that conceal so many brave hearts, so many baby carriages, so many cups of bad coffee, and so many cartons of the Chapman prunes.

“By the way,” he called downstairs, “better have some of the prunes for supper tonight, just as a compliment to Miss Chapman.”

Mrs. Mifflin preserved a humorous silence.

Over these noncommittal summits the bright eye of the bookseller, as he tacked up the freshly ironed muslin curtains Mrs. Mifflin had allotted, could discern a glimpse of the bay and the leviathan ferries that link Staten Island with civilization. “Just a touch of romance in the outlook,” he thought to himself. “It will suffice to keep a blasée young girl aware of the excitements of existence.”

The room, as might be expected in a house presided over by Helen Mifflin, was in perfect order to receive any occupant, but Roger had volunteered to psychologize it in such a fashion as (he thought) would convey favourable influences to the misguided young spirit that was to be its tenant. Incurable idealist, he had taken quite gravely his responsibility as landlord and employer of Mr. Chapman’s daughter. No chambered nautilus was to have better opportunity to expand the tender mansions of its soul.

Beside the bed was a bookshelf with a reading lamp. The problem Roger was discussing was what books and pictures might be the best preachers to this congregation of one. To Mrs. Mifflin’s secret amusement he had taken down the picture of Sir Galahad which he had once hung there, because (as he had said) if Sir Galahad