carelessness, for which I have warned her twice. Were it not for her cunning with griddlecakes, to which I am much affected, I would have dismissed her before this.

And now this Bell, which has ridden out so many of my floods, is proclaimed to me a villain. We had got beyond the April freshets and there was in consequence a soapy smell about. It is clear in my mind that a street organ had started up a gay tune and that there were sounds of gathering feet. I was reading at the time, in the green rocker by the lamp, a life of John Murray, by one whose name I have forgotten, when my eyes came on the sentence that has shaken me. Bell, it said, Bell of my own bookshelf, of all the editors of Shakespeare was the worst.

In my agitation I removed my glasses, breathed upon the lenses, and polished them. Here was one of my familiars accused of something that was doubtless heinous, although in what particulars I was at a loss to know. It came on me suddenly. It was like a whispered scandal, sinister in its lack of detail. All that I had known of Bell was that its publication had dated from the eighteenth century. Yet its very age had seemed a patent of respectability. If a thing does not rot and smell in a hundred and forty years, it would seem to be safe from corruption: it were true peacock. But here at last from Bell was an unsavory whiff. My flood had abated only a fortnight since, and here was a stowaway escaped. Bell was proclaimed a villain. Again had a flood proved itself a failure.

Now, I feel no shame in having an outsider like Murray display to me these hidden evils; for I owe no inquisitorial duty to my books. There are people who will not admit a volume to their shelves until they have thrown it open and laid its contents bare. This is the unmannerly conduct of the customs wharf. Indeed, it is such scrutiny, doubtless, that induces some authors to pack their ideas obscurely, thereby to smuggle them. However, there being now a scandal on my shelves, I must spy into it.

John Murray, wherein I had read the charge, had been such a friendly, tea-and-gossip book, not the kind to hiss a scandal at you. It was bound in blue cloth and was a heavy book, so that I held it on a cushion. (And this device I recommend to others.) It was the kind of book that stays open at your place, if you leave it for a moment to poke the fire. Some books will flop a hundred pages, to make you thumb them back and forth, though whether this be the binder’s fault or a deviltry set therein by their authors I am at a loss to say. But Shaw would be of this kind, flopping and spry to mix you up. And in general, Shaw’s humor is like that of a shell-man at a country fair—a thimble-rigger. No matter where you guess that he has placed the bean, you will be always wrong. Even though you swear that you have seen him slip it under, it’s but his cunning to lead you off. But Murray was not that kind. It would stand at its post, unhitched, like a family horse.

Here was quandary. I looked at Bell, but God forgive me, it was not with the old trustfulness. He was on the top shelf but one, just in line with the eyes, with gilt front winking in the firelight. I had set him thus conspicuous with intention, because of his calfskin binding, quite old and worn. A decayed Gibbon, I had thought, proclaims a grandfather. A set of British Essayists, if disordered, takes you back of the black walnut. To what length, then, of cultured ancestry must not this Bell give evidence? (I had bought Bell, secondhand, on Farringdon Road, London, from a cart, cheap, because a volume was missing.)

And now it seemed he was in some sort a villain. Although shocked, I felt a secret joy. For somewhat too broadly had Bell smirked his sanctity on me. When piety has been flaunting over you, you will steal a slim occasion to proclaim a flaw. There is much human nature goes to the stoning of a saint. In my ignorance I had set the rogue in the company of the decorous Lorna Doone and the gentle ladies of Mrs. Gaskell. It is not that I admire that chaste assembly. But it were monstrous, even so, that I should neighbor them with this Bell, who, as it appeared, was no better than a wolf in calf’s clothing. It was Little Red Riding Hood, you will recall, who mistook a wolf for her grandmother. And with what grief do we look on her unhappy end!

My hand was now raised to drag Bell out by the heels, when I reflected that what I had heard might be unfounded gossip, mere tattle, and that before I turned against an old acquaintance, it were well to set an inquiry afoot. First, however, I put him alongside Herbert Spencer. If it were Bell’s desire to play the grandmother to him, he would find him tough meat.

Bell, John—I looked him up, first in volume Aus to Bis of the encyclopedia, without finding him, and then successfully in the National Biography—Bell, John, was a London bookseller. He was born in 1745, published his edition of Shakespeare in 1774, and after this assault, with the blood upon him, lived fifty years. This was reassuring. It was then but a bit of wild oats, no hanging matter. I now went at the question deeply. Yet I left him awhile with the indigestible Herbert.

It was in 1774 that Bell squirted his dirty ink. In The Gentleman’s Magazine for that year appear mutterings from America, since called the Boston Tea Party. I set this down to bring the time more warmly to your mind, for a date alone is but a blurred signpost unless you be a scholar. And it is advisedly that I quote from this particular periodical, because its old files can best put the past back upon its legs and set it going. There is a kind of history-book that sorts the bones and ties them all about with strings, that sets the past up and bids it walk. Yet it will not wag a finger. Its knees will clap together, its chest fall in. Such books are like the scribblings on a tombstone; the ghost below gives not the slightest squeal of life. But slap it shut and read what was written hastily at the time on the pages of The Gentleman’s Magazine, and it will be as though Gabriel had blown a practice toot among the headstones. It is then that you will get the gibbering of returning life.

So it was in 1774 that Bell put out his version of Shakespeare. Bell was not a man of the schools. Caring not a cracked tinkle for learning, it was not to the folios, nor to any authority that he turned for the texts of his plays. Instead, he went to Drury Lane and Covent Garden and took their acting copies. These volumes, then, that catch my firelight hold the very plays that the crowds of 1774 looked upon. Herein is the Romeo, word for word, that Lydia Languish sniffled over. Herein is Shylock, not yet with pathos on him, but a buffoon still, to draw the gallery laugh.

A few nights later, having by grace of God escaped a dinner out, and being of a consequence in a kindly mood, the scandal, too, having somewhat abated in my memory, I took down a brown volume and ran my fingers over its sides and along its yellow edges. Then I made myself comfortable and opened it up.

There is nothing to-day more degenerate than our title-pages. It is in a mean spirit that we pinch and starve them. I commend the older kind wherein, generously ensampled, is the promise of the rich diet that shall follow. At the circus, I have said, I’ll go within that booth that has most allurement on its canvas front, and where the hawker has the biggest voice. If a fellow will but swallow a snake upon the platform at the door, my money is already in my palm. Thus of a book I demand