The Haunted Bookshop | Page 8

The Czecho-Slovak armies
were fed largely on prunes. It is our conviction in the office that our
campaign for the Chapman prunes did much to win the war."
"I read in an ad the other day--perhaps you wrote that, too?" said the
bookseller, "that the Elgin watch had won the war. However, Mr.
Chapman has long been one of my best customers. He heard about the
Corn Cob Club, and though of course he is not a bookseller he begged
to come to our meetings. We were glad to have him do so, and he has
entered into our discussions with great zeal. Often he has offered many
a shrewd comment. He has grown so enthusiastic about the bookseller's
way of life that the other day he wrote to me about his daughter (he is a
widower). She has been attending a fashionable girls' school where, he
says, they have filled her head with absurd, wasteful, snobbish notions.
He says she has no more idea of the usefulness and beauty of life than a
Pomeranian dog. Instead of sending her to college, he has asked me if
Mrs. Mifflin and I will take her in here to learn to sell books. He wants
her to think she is earning her keep, and is going to pay me privately
for the privilege of having her live here. He thinks that being
surrounded by books will put some sense in her head. I am rather
nervous about the experiment, but it is a compliment to the shop, isn't
it?"
"Ye gods," cried Gilbert, "what advertising copy that would make!"
At this point the bell in the shop rang, and Mifflin jumped up. "This
part of the evening is often rather busy," he said. "I'm afraid I'll have to
go down on the floor. Some of my habitues rather expect me to be on

hand to gossip about books."
"I can't tell you how much I've enjoyed myself," said Gilbert. "I'm
going to come again and study your shelves."
"Well, keep it dark about the young lady," said the bookseller. "I don't
want all you young blades dropping in here to unsettle her mind. If she
falls in love with anybody in this shop, it'll have to be Joseph Conrad or
John Keats!"
As he passed out, Gilbert saw Roger Mifflin engaged in argument with
a bearded man who looked like a college professor. "Carlyle's Oliver
Cromwell?" he was saying. "Yes, indeed! Right over here! Hullo, that's
odd! It WAS here."





Chapter II
The Corn Cob Club[1]
[1] The latter half of this chapter may be omitted by all readers who are
not booksellers.
The Haunted Bookshop was a delightful place, especially of an evening,
when its drowsy alcoves were kindled with the brightness of lamps
shining on the rows of volumes. Many a passer-by would stumble
down the steps from the street in sheer curiosity; others, familiar
visitors, dropped in with the same comfortable emotion that a man feels
on entering his club. Roger's custom was to sit at his desk in the rear,
puffing his pipe and reading; though if any customer started a
conversation, the little man was quick and eager to carry it on. The lion
of talk lay only sleeping in him; it was not hard to goad it up.
It may be remarked that all bookshops that are open in the evening are
busy in the after-supper hours. Is it that the true book-lovers are
nocturnal gentry, only venturing forth when darkness and silence and

the gleam of hooded lights irresistibly suggest reading? Certainly
night-time has a mystic affinity for literature, and it is strange that the
Esquimaux have created no great books. Surely, for most of us, an
arctic night would be insupportable without O. Henry and Stevenson.
Or, as Roger Mifflin remarked during a passing enthusiasm for
Ambrose Bierce, the true noctes ambrosianae are the noctes ambrose
bierceianae.
But Roger was prompt in closing Parnassus at ten o'clock. At that hour
he and Bock (the mustard-coloured terrier, named for Boccaccio)
would make the round of the shop, see that everything was shipshape,
empty the ash trays provided for customers, lock the front door, and
turn off the lights. Then they would retire to the den, where Mrs.
Mifflin was generally knitting or reading. She would brew a pot of
cocoa and they would read or talk for half an hour or so before bed.
Sometimes Roger would take a stroll along Gissing Street before
turning in. All day spent with books has a rather exhausting effect on
the mind, and he used to enjoy the fresh air sweeping up the dark
Brooklyn streets, meditating some thought that had sprung from his
reading, while Bock sniffed and padded along in the manner of