Steps were heard descending. When the elder people reached the floor where they were sitting, Corey rose and presently took his leave.
"What makes you so solemn, 'Rene?" asked Mrs. Lapham.
"Solemn?" echoed the girl. "I'm not a BIT solemn. What CAN you mean?"
Corey dined at home that evening, and as he sat looking across the table at his father, he said, "I wonder what the average literature of non-cultivated people is."
"Ah," said the elder, "I suspect the average is pretty low even with cultivated people. You don't read a great many books yourself, Tom."
"No, I don't," the young man confessed. "I read more books when I was with Stanton, last winter, than I had since I was a boy. But I read them because I must--there was nothing else to do. It wasn't because I was fond of reading. Still I think I read with some sense of literature and the difference between authors. I don't suppose that people generally do that; I have met people who had read books without troubling themselves to find out even the author's name, much less trying to decide upon his quality. I suppose that's the way the vast majority of people read."
"Yes. If authors were not almost necessarily recluses, and ignorant of the ignorance about them, I don't see how they could endure it. Of course they are fated to be overwhelmed by oblivion at last, poor fellows; but to see it weltering all round them while they are in the very act of achieving immortality must be tremendously discouraging. I don't suppose that we who have the habit of reading, and at least a nodding acquaintance with literature, can imagine the bestial darkness of the great mass of people--even people whose houses are rich and whose linen is purple and fine. But occasionally we get glimpses of it. I suppose you found the latest publications lying all about in Lapham cottage when you were down there?"
Young Corey laughed. "It wasn't exactly cumbered with them."
"No?"
"To tell the truth, I don't suppose they ever buy books. The young ladies get novels that they hear talked of out of the circulating library."