He was swiftly perceiving the necessity of creating a new harmony to take the place of that old one, now so strangely lost.
“There are two of us,” returned Dorothy, with conviction, wiping her eyes.
“I wish you’d ask me things,” said Harlan, a little later. “I’m no mind reader. And, besides, the seventh son of a seventh son, born with a caul, and having three trances regularly every day after meals, never could hope to understand a woman unless she was willing to help him out a little, occasionally.”
Which, after all, was more or less true.
XVIII
Uncle Ebeneezer’s Diary
Harlan had taken his work upstairs, that the ceaseless clatter of the typewriter might not add to the confusion which normally prevailed in the Jack-o’-Lantern. Thus it happened that Dorothy was able to begin her long-cherished project of dusting, rearranging, and cataloguing the books.
There is a fine spiritual essence which exhales from the covers of a book. Shall one touch a copy of Shakespeare with other than reverent hands, or take up his Boswell without a smile? Through the worn covers and broken binding the master-spirit still speaks, no less than through the centuries which lie between. The man who had the wishing carpet, upon which he sat and wished and was thence immediately transported to the ends of the earth, was not possessed of a finer magic than one who takes his Boswell in his hands and then, for a golden quarter of an hour, lives in a bygone London with Doctor Johnson.