Hard to Find
LIBRARIAN—"What kind of book do you want—fictional, historical, philosophical—?"
PATRON—"Oh, any kind that H.G. Wells hasn't written."
LIBRARIAN—"We have none!"
BOOKSELLERS AND BOOKSELLING
William Dean Howells, at a dinner in Boston, said of modern American letters:
"The average popular novel shows on the novelist's part an ignorance of his trade which reminds me of a New England clerk.
"In a New England village I entered the main street department-store one afternoon and said to the clerk at the book-counter:
"'Let me have, please, the letters of Charles Lamb.'