“And perhaps very little inclination.”
“Well, you know, Miss Earle, there is some excuse for a busy man. Don’t you think there is?”
“I don’t think there is very much. Who in America is a busier man than Mr. Gladstone? Yet he reads nearly everything, and is familiar with almost any subject you can mention.”
“Oh, Gladstone! Well, he is a man of a million. But you take the average New York man. He is worried in business, and kept on the keen jump all the year round. Then he has a vacation, say for a couple of weeks or a month, in summer, and he goes off into the woods with his fishing kit, or canoeing outfit, or his amateur photographic set, or whatever the tools of his particular fad may be. He goes to a book-store and buys up a lot of paper-covered novels. There is no use of buying an expensive book, because he would spoil it before he gets back, and he would be sure to leave it in some shanty. So he takes those paper-covered abominations, and you will find torn copies of them scattered all through the Adirondacks, and down the St. Lawrence, and everywhere else that tourists congregate. I always tell the book-store man to give me the worst lot of trash he has got, and he does. Now, what is that book you have with you?”
“This is one of Mr. Howells’ novels. You will admit, at least, that you have heard of Howells, I suppose?”
“Heard of him? Oh yes; I have read some of Howells’ books. I am not as ignorant as you seem to think.”
“What have you read of Mr. Howells’?”
“Well, I read The American, I don’t remember the others.”
“The American! That is by Henry James.”
“Is it? Well, I knew that it was by either Howells or James, I forgot which. They didn’t write a book together, did they?”