Booksellers and bookselling -- Fiction; Brooklyn (New York, N.Y.) -- Fiction; Mystery and detective stories
"Bless me," said Roger, "You'll find this very different from Lord and
Taylor's! We haven't any elevators, or any sales slips, or even a cash
register. We don't wait on customers unless they ask us to. They come
in and browse round, and if they find anything they want they come back
here to my desk and ask about it. The price is marked in every book in
red pencil. The cash-box is here on this shelf. This is the key
hanging on this little hook. I enter each sale in this ledger. When
you sell a book you must write it down here, and the price paid for it."
"But suppose it's charged?" said Titania.
"No charge accounts. Everything is cash. If someone comes in to sell
books, you must refer him to me. You mustn't be surprised to see
people drop in here and spend several hours reading. Lots of them look
on this as a kind of club. I hope you don't mind the smell of tobacco,
for almost all the men that come here smoke in the shop. You see, I
put ash trays around for them."
"I love tobacco smell," said Titania. "Daddy's library at home smells
something like this, but not quite so strong. And I want to see the
worms, bookworms you know. Daddy said you had lots of them."
"You'll see them, all right," said Roger, chuckling. "They come in and
out. To-morrow I'll show you how my stock is arranged. It'll take you
quite a while to get familiar with it. Until then I just want you to
poke around and see what there is, until you know the shelves so well
you could put your hand on any given book in the dark. That's a game
my wife and I used to play. We would turn off all the lights at night,
and I would call out the title of a book and see how near she could
come to finding it. Then I would take a turn. When we came more than
six inches away from it we would have to pay a forfeit. It's great
fun."
"What larks we'll have," cried Titania. "I do think this is a cunning
place!"
"This is the bulletin board, where I put up notices about books that
interest me. Here's a card I've just been writing."
Roger drew from his pocket a square of cardboard and affixed it to the
board with a thumbtack. Titania read:
THE BOOK THAT SHOULD HAVE PREVENTED THE WAR
Now that the fighting is over is a good time to read Thomas Hardy's The
Dynasts. I don't want to sell it, because it is one of the greatest
treasures I own. But if any one will guarantee to read all three
volumes, and let them sink into his mind, I'm willing to lend them.
If enough thoughtful Germans had read The Dynasts before July, 1914,
there would have been no war.
If every delegate to the Peace Conference could be made to read it
before the sessions begin, there will be no more wars.
R. MIFFLIN.
"Dear me," said Titania, "Is it so good as all that? Perhaps I'd
better read it."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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