"A sweet little edition," he said, examining the text, "but small print. I have left my glasses at home. Would you very kindly indicate to me the nature of its contents, sir?"
I read a few lines aloud to him—poetry.
"I don't know it," I confessed. "Poetry is not much in my line. Let me look at the title-page. Ah—Robert Southey."
"I rather thought it was Southey," said Mr. Baxter immediately.
"I fancy you are more widely read than I am," I remarked.
"I make a point of reading aloud a passage out of one of my books every day, sir. I acquired the habit under the late Archdeacon. We read together constantly. He had very definite views on the value of reading. 'A man with books about him,' he used to say, 'is a man surrounded by friends far more interesting and distinguished than any he is likely to meet when he dines with the Bishop. A man with a library of his own, however small, is at once a capitalist who can never go bankrupt and an aristocrat who moves in circles to which the common herd cannot penetrate. In other words, a man with a library is a man respected!' That was why I founded my own, sir. The Archdeacon himself contributed the first few volumes."
"Is it a large library?" I asked, glancing furtively at my wrist-watch.
"No, sir; of very modest dimensions. But it is sufficiently large to be utilized by nearly all my friends."
"You lend them books, then?"
"Oh, no, sir. I would not do that. My books are everything to me—and you know what book-borrowers are! My friends are welcome to tap my literary resources, but it must be through me as medium."