When I returned to my room on the following evening the aroma had gone, and the rays of the setting sun, illuminating the old blue suit as it hung there on the back of the chair, showed me a host of familiar faces—particularly that of an especially offensive brownish-white octopus over the pocket. They had come back every one; not a design was missing.
[SHELF CULTURE]
A man of education and refinement like you needs books befitting your culture—your place in the world," said my visitor. He spoke as though he were a revered friend of the family. But actually he was not just that. I had never seen him before. He was honoring me with a call at my room on Freshman Row.
I had come to college to get in touch with Belles-Lettres, and, lo, Belles-Lettres were seeking me out! Recognition had come far sooner than I had hoped.
To appreciate what I felt, you must know that Belles-Lettres' ambassador was no ordinary person. He had the clothes of a clubman, the benignity of a clergyman, and the dignity of an undertaker. There was scholarliness in the droop of the pinch glasses on his aquiline nose and as he talked he kept lifting his curiously arched eyebrows in a manner that fascinated the beholder.
From the subject of my culture in its broader aspects he progressed by easy gradations to my culture in its relation to the works of Hawthorne and Irving, the two authors indispensable to a man of discerning taste, the authors whose writings constituted the logical nucleus of the well-bred student's library. He was happy to be able to tell me of the rare opportunity that now lay in my grasp of acquiring the immortal and exhilarating works of both these masters at one and the same time—in one and the same set.
The urgency of my need for Hawthorne and Irving being thus established beyond the shadow of a hesitance, the only thing for me to decide fairly and squarely was whether they should come to me in blue half-morocco or in red buckram. The splendid showing that either set would make in my bookcase was attested by the accordion-plaited binding sample which at the proper moment he produced and unfolded. Nearly a yard of titled book-backs!