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'When they say six for the dinner-hour, they might surely be in the drawing-room by that hour, was Miss Betty's reflection as she turned over some of the magazines and circulating-library books which since Nina's arrival had found their way to Kilgobbin.
But in this case a room redeemed by an upright piano with a green-silk-and-gold-lace-shaded floor lamp glowing by. Two gilt-framed photographs and a cluster of ivory knickknacks on the white mantel. A heap of handmade cushions. Art editions of the gift poets and some circulating-library novels.
But partly mere love of change, partly the observations of those critics who were not content to follow the fashion merely, and partly also the familiar but inexplicable rise at the same time of divers persons whose talent inclined in a new direction, brought in, about 1880 or later, a demand for romance, for historical romance, and for the short story three things against which the taste of the circulating-library reader during the generation then expiring had distinctly set itself.
An hour after arrival, having refused the offer of refreshments, which in such places are not always refreshing, I betook myself to a comparatively cool back verandah to further investigate my temporary surroundings. A yellow-haired girl with rings on her fingers sprawled in a hammock reading a much-thumbed circulating-library novel and eating peaches.
I should like, if I possibly could, to give the reader some idea of my mother's circulating-library and sort of universal commodity shop: it was a low-windowed building, one story high, but running a long way back, where it was joined to a small parlour, in which we generally sat during the day, as it was convenient in case of company or customers, the little parlour having a glass door, which permitted us to look into the shop.
About ten feet on each side of the shop was occupied with the above articles; the remainder of the shelves were reserved for the circulating-library. At the back of the shop were some seats round a small table, on which was laid the newspaper of the day, and on each side of the parlour-door were hoops, bats, balls, traps, skittles, and a variety of toys for children.
On the whole, he is less irritating to the poetical student than those who have laboured in kindred “fields of literature.” Indeed, we do not so much blame the editors of such books as we blame the public, whose coarse and vulgar mouth is always agape for such pabulum. The writer of this review possesses an old circulating-library copy of a book containing some letters of Coleridge.
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