Parnassus on Wheels | Page 9

health went back on me.
The doctor told me to get into the open air. By and by I got this idea of
a travelling bookstore. I had always been a lover of books, and in the
days when I boarded out among the farmers I used to read aloud to
them. After my mother died I built the wagon to suit my own ideas,
bought a stock of books from a big second-hand store in Baltimore, and
set out. Parnassus just about saved my life I guess."
He pushed his faded old cap back on his head and relit his pipe. I
clicked to Pegasus and we rumbled gently off over the upland, looking
down across the pastures. Distant cow bells sounded tankle-tonk among
the bushes. Across the slope of the hill I could see the road winding
away to Redfield. Somewhere along that road Andrew would be rolling
back toward home and roast pork with apple sauce; and here was I,
setting out on the first madness of my life without even a qualm.
"Miss McGill," said the little man, "this rolling pavilion has been wife,
doctor, and religion to me for seven years. A month ago I would have
scoffed at the thought of leaving her; but somehow it's come over me I
need a change. There's a book I've been yearning to write for a long
time, and I need a desk steady under my elbows and a roof over my
head. And silly as it seems, I'm crazy to get back to Brooklyn. My
brother and I used to live there as kids. Think of walking over the old
Bridge at sunset and seeing the towers of Manhattan against a red sky!
And those old gray cruisers down in the Navy Yard! You don't know

how tickled I am to sell out. I've sold a lot of copies of your brother's
books and I've often thought he'd be the man to buy Parnassus if I got
tired of her."
"So he would," I said. "Just the man. He'd be only too likely to--and go
maundering about in this jaunting car and neglect the farm. But tell me
about selling books. How much profit do you make out of it? We'll be
passing Mrs. Mason's farm, by and by, and we might as well sell her
something just to make a start."
"It's very simple," he said. "I replenish my stock whenever I go through
a big town. There's always a second-hand bookstore somewhere about,
where you can pick up odds and ends. And every now and then I write
to a wholesaler in New York for some stuff. When I buy a book I mark
in the back just what I paid for it, then I know what I can afford to sell
it for. See here."
He pulled up a book from behind the seat--a copy of "Lorna Doone" it
was--and showed me the letters a m scrawled in pencil in the back.
"That means that I paid ten cents for this. Now, if you sell it for a
quarter you've got a safe profit. It costs me about four dollars a week to
run Parnassus--generally less. If you clear that much in six days you
can afford to lay off on Sundays!"
"How do you know that a m stands for ten cents?" I asked.
"The code word's manuscript. Each letter stands for a figure, from 0 up
to 9, see?" He scrawled it down on a scrap of paper:
m a n u s c r i p t 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
"Now, you see a m stands for 10, a n would be 12, n s is 24, a c is 15, a
m m is $1.00, and so on. I don't pay much over fifty cents for books as a
rule, because country folks are shy of paying much for them. They'll
pay a lot for a separator or a buggy top, but they've never been taught to
worry about literature! But it's surprising how excited they get about
books if you sell 'em the right kind. Over beyond Port Vigor there's a

farmer who's waiting for me to go back--I've been there three or four
times--and he'll buy about five dollars' worth if I know him. First time I
went there I sold him 'Treasure Island,' and he's talking about it yet. I
sold him 'Robinson Crusoe,' and 'Little Women' for his daughter, and
'Huck Finn,' and Grubb's book about 'The Potato.' Last time I was there
he wanted some Shakespeare, but I wouldn't give it to him. I didn't
think he was up to it yet."
I began to see something of the little man's idealism in his work. He
was a kind