“Have you any good light reading for vacation time?” called out the next customer in a loud, breezy voice—he had the air of a stock broker starting on a holiday.
“Yes,” said Mr. Sellyer, and his face almost broke into a laugh as he answered, “here’s an excellent thing—Golden Dreams—quite the most humorous book of the season—simply screaming—my wife was reading it aloud only yesterday. She could hardly read for laughing.”
“What’s the price, one dollar? One-fifty. All right, wrap it up.” There was a clink of money on the counter, and the customer was gone. I began to see exactly where professors and college people who want copies of Epictetus at 18 cents and sections of World Reprints of Literature at 12 cents a section come in, in the book trade.
“Yes, Judge!” said the manager to the next customer, a huge, dignified personage in a wide-awake hat, “sea stories? Certainly. Excellent reading, no doubt, when the brain is overcharged as yours must be. Here is the very latest—Among the Monkeys of New Guinea, ten dollars, reduced to four-fifty. The manufacture alone costs six-eighty. We’re selling it out. Thank you, Judge. Send it? Yes. Good morning.”
After that the customers came and went in a string. I noticed that though the store was filled with books—ten thousand of them, at a guess—Mr. Sellyer was apparently only selling two. Every woman who entered went away with Golden Dreams: every man was given a copy of the Monkeys of New Guinea. To one lady Golden Dreams was sold as exactly the reading for a holiday, to another as the very book to read AFTER a holiday; another bought it as a book for a rainy day, and a fourth as the right sort of reading for a fine day. The Monkeys was sold as a sea story, a land story, a story of the jungle, and a story of the mountains, and it was put at a price corresponding to Mr. Sellyer’s estimate of the purchaser.
At last after a busy two hours, the store grew empty for a moment.
“Wilfred,” said Mr. Sellyer, turning to his chief assistant, “I am going out to lunch. Keep those two books running as hard as you can. We’ll try them for another day and then cut them right out. And I’ll drop round to Dockem & Discount, the publishers, and make a kick about them, and see what they’ll do.”
I felt that I had lingered long enough. I drew near with the Epictetus in my hand.
“Yes, sir,” said Mr. Sellyer, professional again in a moment. “Epictetus? A charming thing. Eighteen cents. Thank you. Perhaps we have some other things there that might interest you. We have a few second-hand things in the alcove there that you might care to look at. There’s an Aristotle, two volumes—a very fine thing—practically illegible, that you might like: and a Cicero came in yesterday—very choice—damaged by damp—and I think we have a Machiavelli, quite exceptional—practically torn to pieces, and the covers gone—a very rare old thing, sir, if you’re an expert.”
“No, thanks,” I said. And then from a curiosity that had been growing in me and that I couldn’t resist, “That book—Golden Dreams,” I said, “you seem to think it a very wonderful work?”