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Updated: June 12, 2025
Whither do they go? One never sees them elsewhere. Do they steal away at closing time into the depths of the Museum and hide themselves until morning in sarcophagi or mummy cases? Or do they creep through spaces in the book-shelves and spend the night behind the volumes in a congenial atmosphere of leather and antique paper? Who can say? "What have we got to do?"
Soames turned and stood pressed closely against the book-shelves, against the book-shelves which magically had grown up in front of the door by which he had entered. He was in the place of books and roses in the haunt of MR. KING!
Heaped in corners, and upon the tops of the book-shelves lay bric-a-brac in hopeless confusion; toy canoes from Kamchatka and the Southern seas; wooden masks from the burial places of the Alaskan Indians and the Theban Tombs of the Nile Kings; rude fish-hooks that had been dropped in the coral seas; sharks' teeth; and the strong beak of an albatross whose webbed feet were tobacco pouches and whose hollow wing-bones were the long jointed stem of a pipe; spears and war-clubs were there, brought from the gleaming shores of reef-girdled islands; a Florentine lamp; a roll of papyrus; an idol from Easter Island, the eyes of which were two missionary shirt buttons of mother-of-pearl, of the Puritan type; your practical cannibal, having eaten his missionary, spits out the shirt buttons to be used as the eyes which see not; carved gourds were there, and calabashes; Mexican pottery; and some of the latest Pompeiian antiquities such as are miraculously discovered in the presence of the amazed and delighted tourist who secretly purchases the same for considerably more than a song.
Nearly every inch of wall-space was covered with book-shelves. Only one space, above the mantelpiece, was uncovered, and there hung what was even dearer than the books. It was an oil painting of his father. Robert Nancarrow looked at it long and steadily, and as he did so his eyes became moist. "Dear old father!" he murmured; "the noblest man that ever breathed." It was a fine face he saw.
After all, we have to conjure up ideal poets for ourselves out of those who stand in or behind the range of volumes on our book-shelves; and our ideal Browning would have for his entire structural type those two volumes of Men and Women with Pippa Passes. Certainly, it is a delightful world to which Mr.
Symon Fraser, whom we used to call by another title, but that is an old song. Mr. Fraser has an errand to you." With that he stepped aside to his book-shelves, and made believe to consult a quarto volume in the far end. There was no doubt upon the terms of introduction; this could be no other than the forfeited Master of Lovat and chief of the great clan Fraser.
Marie exclaimed with surprise and delight when, on entering the room adjoining the baroness's own sleeping-chamber, she beheld her own furniture the canopy-bed, the book-shelves, toys, card-table, everything. Even Hitz, Mitz, Pani, and Miura sat in a row on the sofa, and Phryxus and Helle came waddling toward her, and sat up on their hind legs.
It was indeed a perfect room for arm-chair meditations; there were tall book-shelves, mahogany writing-tables, each with its shaded electric lamp; the carpet was as deep as a summer lawn; and in the wide hearth logs consumed themselves in an almost deferential silence. There was every conceivable thing that could be wanted laid in its proper place.
Nor did he luxuriate in the collective pride like that of David when he numbered his people of beholding how his volumes increased in multitude, and ranged with one another, like well-sized and properly dressed troops, along an ample area of book-shelves. His collection if it deserved the name was piled in great heaps in garrets, cellars, and warerooms, like unsorted goods.
First, she tried to look down and make out what she was coming to, but it was too dark to see anything: then she looked at the sides of the well, and noticed that they were filled with cupboards and book-shelves: here and there she saw maps and pictures hung upon pegs.
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