I mused, watching my toast. "I suppose," I said, "no one in his senses would leave a comfortable city house to go and lie out in a marsh at night, in a forty-mile gale, with the mercury at ten, unless he had some other motive than the thing itself--ducks, or conspiracy, or something. And yet it is the thing itself that is the real reward." "Isn't that true of almost everything?" said Jonathan. XVI Comfortable Books Jonathan methodically tucked his bookmark into "The Virginians," and, closing the fat green volume, began to knock the ashes out of his pipe against the bricked sides of the fireplace. "'The Virginians' is a very comfortable sort of book," he remarked. "Is it?" I said. "I wonder why." He ruminated. "Well, chiefly, I suppose, because it's so good and long. You get to know all the people, you get used to their ways, and when they turn up again, after a lot of chapters, you don't have to find out who they are--you just feel comfortably acquainted." I sighed. I had just finished a magazine story--condensed, vivid, crushing a whole life-tragedy into seven pages and a half. In that space I had been made acquainted with sixteen different characters, seven principal ones and the rest subordinate, but all clearly drawn. I had found it interesting, stimulating; as a _tour de force_ it was noteworthy even among the crowd of short-stories--all condensed, all vivid, all interesting--that had appeared that month. But--comfortable? No. And I felt envious of Jonathan. He had been reading "The Virginians" all winter. His bookmark was at page 597, and there were 803 pages in all, so he had a great deal of comfort left.