“Why should you want to make it last so long? They are always printing books over again, and a new book is much nicer than an old one.”
“So some people think; but others would much rather read a book in its first shape. And then books get so changed by printers and editors, that it is absolutely necessary to have copies of them as they were at first. You see this little book, miss? It don't look much, does it?”
“It looks miserable—and so dirty!”
“By the time I have done with it, it will be worth fifty, perhaps a hundred pounds—I don't know exactly. It is a play of Shakespeare's us published in his lifetime.”
“But they print better and more correctly now, don't they?”
“Yes; but us I said, they often change things.”
“How is that?”
“Sometimes they will change a word, thinking it ought to be another; sometimes they will alter a passage because they do not understand it, putting it all wrong, and throwing aside a great meaning for a small one: the change of a letter may alter the whole idea. But they often do it just by blundering. Shall I tell you an instance that came to my knowledge yesterday? It is but a trifle, yet is worth telling.—Of course you know the Idylls of the King?”
“No, I don't Why do you say 'of course'?”
“Because I thought every English lady read Tennyson.”