--'Hearn's books, which you have just mentioned, are charming,' said another lady. 'I have read some of them. They go, I think, a long way in contradicting those unfair charges.' --'Yes, I think so too,' said I. 'But, you know, one tongue is nothing against a hundred, as we say. However that may be, he was a fine writer. It is sad that he died last year. He made, as he said, the study of the Japanese heart and thought his special subject. All his books, therefore, are concerned with some sort of Japanese psychology. They are generally so full of pathos and feeling that even Japanese readers are often moved to tears.' --'Then you have read all his books. I should like you to give me the outline of them at your leisure,' she said. --'I don't think that would be possible, because I don't know them all.' --'But you have just now said "all his books," as though you knew all,' she said. --'No!' I answered, 'I have not read _all_. I have seen most of the titles, and some pages here and there, and guessed all the rest. You see, nowadays, printing is comparatively so cheap and people are so fond of writing, and further, nine-tenths of the writers have their books printed at their own expense, so that the publishers run no, risk. If, therefore, one tries to read all books, one would become a mere bookworm and a good-for-nothing fellow. Once a compatriot of mine, when in Germany, was admitted into the study of a great professor. The four walls were covered with nothing but shelves of books. The professor said that all those books were sent to him by writers of all nations who were engaged in the same pursuits as himself. As a matter of fact he was a jurist, and all those books were on law. The visitor asked if he had read all of them, to which the professor answered "Yes." Thereupon he observed, "Impossible, you could not have had time to read them all." The professor then explained that the essential points of any book were all known to experts, so that a few pages on those points, which could easily be found by index, were sufficient to know all that was contained in a book. In that way, he said, "he read all the books which had come to him."' --'What a joke!' said the lady. 'But what kind of man was he? I mean Mr. Hearn. His life seems to have been much in the clouds.'