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Updated: May 29, 2025
The Bibliotaph had no explanation to give why he was so immediately and invariably accounted as one in orders.
He could pay a compliment, as when he was dining with a married pair who were thought to be not yet disenchanted albeit in the tenth year of their married life. The lady was speaking to the Bibliotaph, but in the eagerness of conversation addressed him by her husband's first name.
They imagine that they can successfully combine the glory of honorable publicity with the perfect retirement enjoyed only by aspiring mediocrity. The Bibliotaph believed that he was a missionary to these people. He awakened in them a sense of their obligations toward their admirers.
A humble satellite who disapproved of these proceedings read aloud to the Bibliotaph that scorching little essay entitled Involuntary Bailees, written by perhaps the wittiest living English essayist. If a man insists upon lending you a book, you become an involuntary bailee. You don't wish to read the book, but you have it in your possession.
All in good humor, to be sure, and laughter reigned, but it was tremendous and it was logically convincing. It was clearly not safe to have a reputation for good looks while the Bibliotaph was in this temper. All the gentlemen were in terror lest something about their countenances might be construed as beauty, and men with good complexions longed for newspapers behind which to hide their disgrace.
There was no friend with whom the Bibliotaph lived on easier terms than with the Country Squire. They were counterparts. They supplemented one another. The Bibliotaph, though he was born and bred on a farm, had fled for his salvation to the city.
Part of the secret lay in this idea: to be a good book-hunter one must not be too dainty; one must not be afraid of soiling one's hands. He who observes the clouds shall not reap, and he who thinks of his cuffs is likely to lose many a bookish treasure. Our Bibliotaph generally parted company with his cuffs when he began hunting for books.
Once when he had been narrating this incident he was asked what reply the lady had made to so uncourteous a speech. 'I don't remember, said the Bibliotaph, 'it was long ago; but my opinion is that she would have been justified in denominating me by a monosyllable beginning with the initial letter of the alphabet and followed by successive sibilants.
His knowledge of the world was fresh from life, not 'strained through books, as Johnson said of a certain Irish painter whom he knew at Birmingham. But the Bibliotaph was a mighty devourer of book-catalogues. He got a more complete satisfaction, I used to think, in reading a catalogue than in reading any other kind of literature.
Whereupon the first bridegroom, marveling that there could be another in the world so exalted as himself, exclaimed with sympathetic delight, 'And you, too, are married. 'Yes, said the second, 'pleasant, isn't it? with much the same air that he would have said, 'Nice afternoon. This was one of the incidents which made the Bibliotaph skeptical about marriage.
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