H. Why, what we are here _for _is to examine books--anybody's book that comes along. It's our _business_. Why should we turn away a book unexamined because it's a stranger's? It would be foolish. No publisher does it. On what ground did she request your influence, since you do not know her? She must have thought you knew her literature and could speak for it. Is that it? C. No; she knew I didn't. H. Well, what then? She had a reason of _some _sort for believing you competent to recommend her literature, and also under obligations to do it? C. Yes, I--I knew her uncle. H. Knew her _uncle_? C. Yes. H. Upon my word! So, you knew her uncle; her uncle knows her literature; he endorses it to you; the chain is complete, nothing further needed; you are satisfied, and therefore-- C._ No_, that isn't all, there are other ties. I know the cabin her uncle lived in, in the mines; I knew his partners, too; also I came near knowing her husband before she married him, and I _did _know the abandoned shaft where a premature blast went off and he went flying through the air and clear down to the trail and hit an Indian in the back with almost fatal consequences. H. To _him_, or to the Indian? C. She didn't say which it was. H. (_With a sigh_). It certainly beats the band! You don't know _her_, you don't know her literature, you don't know who got hurt when the blast went off, you don't know a single thing for us to build an estimate of her book upon, so far as I-- C. I knew her uncle. You are forgetting her uncle. H. Oh, what use is_ he_? Did you know him long? How long was it? C. Well, I don't know that I really knew him, but I must have met him, anyway. I think it was that way; you can't tell about these things, you know, except when they are recent. H. Recent? When was all this? C. Sixteen years ago. H. What a basis to judge a book upon! As first you said you knew him, and now you don't know whether you did or not. C. Oh yes, I know him; anyway, I think I thought I did; I'm perfectly certain of it. H. What makes you think you thought you knew him? C. Why, she says I did, herself. H._ She_ says so! C. Yes, she does, and I _did _know him, too, though I don't remember it now. H. Come--how can you know it when you don't remember it. C. _I_ don't know. That is, I don't know the process, but I_ do_ know lots of things that I don't remember, and remember lots of things that I don't know. It's so with every educated person. H. (_After a pause_). Is your time valuable? C. No--well, not very. H. Mine is. So I came away then, because he was looking tired. Overwork, I reckon; I never do that; I have seen the evil effects of it. My mother was always afraid I would overwork myself, but I never did.