In regard to women’s book-clubs, a recent writer, Mr. Edward Sanford Martin, in “Windfalls of Observation,” observes: “If a man wants to read a book he buys it, and if he likes it he buys six more copies and gives (not all the same day, of course) to six women whose intelligence he respects. But if a club of fifteen girls determine to read a book, do they buy fifteen copies? No. Do they buy five copies? No. Do they buy—No, they don’t buy at all; they borrow a copy. It doesn’t lie in womankind to spend money for books unless they are meant to be a gift for some man.” Mr. Martin is a little too hard here, for I have been told of such clubs which sometimes bought one copy. To be sure they always bully the bookseller into letting them have it at cost on account of the probable benefit to his trade. But it is true that no normally organized woman will forego a dollar’s worth of ribbon or gloves for a dollar’s worth of book
I have sometimes read aloud to a number of women while they were sewing, but I do it no more, for just as I got to a point where you ought to be able to hear a pin drop, I always have heard some woman whisper, “Lend me your eighty cotton.” A story was told me of the first meeting of a Browning Club in a large city in Ohio. My informant was a young lady from the East, who was present, and my readers can safely rely on the correctness of the narration. The club was composed of young ladies from sixteen to twenty-five years of age, all of the “first families.” It was thought best to take an easy poem for the first meeting, and so one of them read aloud, “The Last Ride Together”
After the reading there was a moment’s silence, and then one observed that she would like to know whether they took that ride on horseback or in a “buggy.” Another silence, and then an artless young bud ventured the remark that she thought it must have been in a buggy, because if it was on horseback he could not have got his arm around her. I once thought of sending this anecdote to Mr. Browning, but was warned that he was destitute of the sense of humor, especially at his own expense, and so desisted
“Ah, that our wives could only see
How well the money is invested
In these old books, which seem to be
By them, alas! so much detested.”
But the wives are not always unwise in their opposition to their husband’s book-buying. There is nothing more pitiful than to see the widow of a poor clergyman or lawyer trying to sell his library, and to witness her disappointment at the