He puffed away in silence for a minute or two, and then leaning over the arm of his seat he re-opened the conversation.
"I say, Mr. Bangs," he said, rather wistfully, I thought, "you must read a great deal from one year's end to another—maybe you could recommend one or two good books for me?"
It was something of a poser. Somehow or other he did not suggest at first glance anything remotely connected with a literary taste, and I temporized with the problem.
"Why, yes," I answered cautiously. "I do run through a good many books in the course of a year; but I don't like to prescribe a course of literary treatment for a man unless I have had time to diagnose his case, and get at his symptoms. You know you mightn't like the same sort of thing that I do."
"That may be so too," he observed coolly. "But we've got some time on our hands—suppose you try me and find out. I'm willin' to testify. Fire ahead—nothin' like a few experiments."
"Well," said I, "personally I prefer biography to any other kind of reading. I like novels well enough; but after all I'd rather read the story of one real man's life, sympathetically presented, than any number of absorbing tales concerning the deeds and emotions of the fictitious creatures of a novelist's fancy. I like Boswell better than Fielding, and Dr. Johnson is vastly more interesting to me than Tom Jones."
"Same here," said my new friend. "That's what I've always said. What's the use of puttin' in all your time on fiction when there's so much romance to be found in the real thing? The only trouble is that there ain't much in the way of good biography written these days—is there?"
"Oh, yes, there is," said I. "There's plenty of it, and now and then we come upon something that is tremendously stimulating. I don't suppose it would interest you very much, but I have just finished a two-volume life of a great painter—it is called 'Memorials of Edward Burne-Jones,' written by his wife."
The old man's face fairly shone with interest as I spoke, and reaching down into the inner pocket of his ragged coat he produced a time-smeared, pocket-worn envelop upon which to make a memorandum, and then after rummaging around in the mysterious recesses of an over-large waistcoat for a moment or two he brought forth the merest stub of a pencil.
"Who publishes that book?" he asked, leaning forward and gazing eagerly into my face.