"I don't believe I've opened any book but the Bible in the past month."
"I want to know! Then the hundreds of books in your house are about
like money that's locked up in the safe instead o' bein' out at
interest, or turnin' itself over in some other way, ain't they?"
"Quite so."
Caleb went into a brown study, and Philip and Grace chatted apart, and
laughed--occasionally sighed--over what they had intended to buy and
read, when they found themselves well off. Suddenly Caleb emerged from
his brown study and said:--
"Ain't them books like a lot of clothes or food that's locked up, doin'
no good to their owner, while other folks, round about, are hungry, or
shiverin'?"
"Caleb," said Philip, after a long frown in which his wife did not
join, although distinctly invited, "my practised eye discerns that you
think our books, which are about as precious to us as so many children
might be, ought to be lent out, to whoever would read them."
"Well, why not? Ev'rybody else in these parts that's got books lends
'em. Doc Taggess does it, the minister does it, an' a lot of others.
The trouble is that a good many families has got the same books. Once
in a while some book agent with head-piece enough to take his pay in
truck has gone through this county like a cyclone--an' left about as
much trash behind him as a cyclone usually does."
"Aha! And yet you'd have me believe that the people who have bought
such trash would enjoy the books which my wife and I have been
selecting with great care for years?"
"Can't tell till you give 'em the chance, as the darkey said when he
was asked how many watermelons his family could tuck away. I don't
s'pose you knowed there was the makin' of a first-class country
merchant in you, did you, till you got the chance to try? Besides, as I
reckon I've said before, you mustn't judge our people by their clothes.
I don't b'lieve they average more fools to the thousan' than city
folks."
"Neither do I, Caleb; but tastes differ, even among the wisest, and to
risk my darling books among a lot of people who might think me a fool
for my pains--oh, 'tis not to be thought of. Next, I suppose, you'll
suggest that I take my pictures from the walls and lend them around,
say a week to a family."
"No; I wouldn't be so mean as that. Besides, pictures, an' bang-up
ones, are plentifuller than books in these parts, for people that like
that sort o' thing."
"Indeed? I wouldn't have thought it. Well, 'Live and learn.' Do tell me
what kind of pictures you refer to, and who has them?"
Caleb looked embarrassed for a moment; then he assumed an air of
bravado, and replied:--
"Well, I haven't missed a sunrise or sunset in nigh onto twenty year,
unless I was too busy or too sick to see 'em. An' I've put lots o'
other folks up to lookin' at 'em, an' you'd be astonished to know how
many has stuck to it."
"Bravo, Caleb! Bravo!" Grace exclaimed.
"Much obliged; reckon you enjoy 'em, too. As Doc Taggess says, when you
look at that kind o' pictur', you don't have to hold in until you can
hunt up a book an' find out if the painter was first-class. But there's
plenty more pictur's in the sky an' lots o' other places out doors,
for folks that like 'em. To be sure, you can't always find 'em, as if
they was in frames on a wall, but they show up often enough to keep
'emselves in mind. But books--well, books are different."
"Caleb, I weaken. I'm willing to compromise. I promise you that I will
set apart a certain number of my books--volumes that ought to be of
general interest--to be loaned to customers!"
"Good! I knowed you'd see your duty if 'twas dumped right before your
face. But what's the matter with doin' somethin' more? I've had a
project for a long time, that--"
Caleb suddenly ceased speaking and looked hurt, for he detected a
peculiar interchange of glances between Philip and Grace.
"Go on," said Philip.
"Never mind," Caleb replied.
"Please go on, Caleb," Grace begged.
"I may be a fool," said Caleb, "but it does gall me to be laughed at
ahead of time."
"Really, Caleb, we weren't laughing at you. Both of us chanced to
think, at the same time, of something--something that we had read. Some
husbands and wives have a way of both getting the same thought at an
unforeseen instant. Do go on; haven't we proved to you that we think
your projects good?"
"Sorry I made a baby of myself," apologized Caleb. "Well, I've read
in newspapers that books never was so cheap as they are now, an' from
some of the offers that come to us by letter I should say 'twas so. I
know more'n a little about the names o' books an' o' their writers, an'
some of the prices o' good ones look as if the printers stole their
paper an' didn't pay their help. Now, we don't make much use o' the
back room o' the store. S'pose you fetch in there your cyclopeedy, an'
dictionary, an' big atlas, to be looked at by anybody that likes. Then
buy, in the city, a couple of hundred books,--say a hundred dollars'
worth,--not too wise, an' not too silly, an' let it be knowed that at
Somerton's store there's a free circulating library."
"For Somerton's customers only," added Philip.
"No, for ev'rybody--not only for the sake o' the principle, but to draw
trade. The first man that does that thing in this town won't ever be
forgot by folks whose hearts are in the right place--not unless I'm all
wrong on human nature."
"Which is as unlikely as the wildest thing ever dreamed," said Philip.
"I don't doubt that you're entirely right about the advertising value
of your project. My atlas, dictionary, and cyclopedia will serve me
quite as well in the back room as if in the house, and the cost of the
other books will be repaid by the first new farmer-customer we catch by
means of the library."
"Then the thing is to be a go?"
"Certainly it is."
"When?"
"Now--at once--as soon as my books can be brought from the house and
the others bought in the city."
"And I," Grace added, "am to be a librarian, and to select the new
books. I remember well the names of all the most popular books in
the public library of the little town I was born in, and all the
best--never mind the worst--that my fellow-shopgirls used to read,
and I know the second-hand bookshops in New York, where many good
books may be had at a quarter of their original price; so if a hundred
dollars is to be spent, I'll engage to get three or four hundred
volumes, instead of two hundred. Meanwhile, don't either of you men
breathe a word of Caleb's project, until the books are here; otherwise
some other merchant may get ahead of us."
"That's sound business sense," said Caleb, "but I wish you hadn't--I
mean I wish one of us had said it instead of you."
"Oh, Caleb! Do you think that my interest in the business of the store
is making me sordid--mercenary--grasping?"
"Well, I never saw any signs of it before, but--"
"Nor have you seen them to-day. You'll have to take to eye-glasses,
Caleb, if only in justice to me. The only reason I don't wish any one
else to start the library is that I think the laborer is worthy of
his hire. You were the laborer--that is, you devised the plan,--and I
wouldn't for anything have you deprived of your pay, which will consist
of your pleasure at seeing your old acquaintances supplied with good
reading matter. Honor to whom honor is due. Now do you understand?"
Caleb's small gray face grew rosy, albeit a bit sheepish, and to hide
it, he tiptoed over to Philip, who was staring into vacancy, apparently
in search of something, and said:--
"As I b'lieve I've said before, ain't she a peeler?"
"Yes; oh, yes," Philip answered mechanically.
"You don't seem so sure of it as you might be," complained Caleb. "Have
you struck a stump?"
"No; oh, no."
"What is the matter, Mr. Owl?" asked Grace, moving toward the couple.
"I'm puzzled--that's all, yet 'tis not a little," Philip replied. "I
don't think I'm a fool about business. Even Caleb here, who is too true
a friend to flatter, says I've done remarkably well, and increased the
number of our customers and the profits of the business, yet 'tis never
I who devise the new, clever plans by which the increase comes. This
matter of the free circulating library is only one of several cases
in point; they began months ago, with the use of our piano in church.
I don't believe I'd have done them solely with a view to business, but
I couldn't have helped seeing that they would have that effect in the
end, so I wonder why I, myself, shouldn't have thought of them. Perhaps
you can tell me, Caleb; don't be afraid of hurting my feelings, and
don't be over-modest about yourself; 'tis all between friends, you
know."
Caleb leaned on the counter, from which he brushed some imaginary dust;
then he contemplated the brushed spot as if he were trying to look
through the counter, as he replied:--
"Mebbe it's because we have different startin'-places. In a book
of sermons I've got up in my room--though 'tain't by one o' our
Methodists--there's a passage that tells how astronomers find certain
kinds o' stars. It 'pears that they don't p'int their telescopes here,
there, an' ev'rywhere, lookin' for the star an' nothin' else, but they
turn the big concern on a rather dark bit o' sky, somewhere near where
the star ought to be, an' they work it 'round, little by little,
lookin' at ev'rythin' they can see, until they've took in the whole
neighborhood, so to speak, an' what stars of ev'ry kind is around, an'
what all of 'em is doin', an' so workin' in'ard, little by little,
they stumble on what they was really lookin' for. Well, that's 'bout
my way in business. First, I think about the neighborhood, the people,
an' what they're doin', an' what ought to be done for 'em, an' all of
a sudden they're all p'intin' right at the business, like the little
stars for the big one, and couldn't keep from doin' it if they tried
their level best. Now, p'raps you don't work that way, but try the
other, 'cause--well, p'raps 'cause it's the quickest. P'raps I ought to
say that mebbe my way ain't the best, but--"
"Don't say it," interrupted Philip, "because I shan't believe it, nor
shall I believe that you yourself thought there was any possibility of
its not being the better way of the two."