Moonbeams from the Larger Lunacy, Stephen Leacock [best mobile ebook reader TXT] 📗

“I suppose not,” said Mr. Sellyer, with a condescending smile. “But of course, madam,” he went on, falling into the easy chat of the fashionable bookman, “such mistakes are bound to happen sometimes. We had a very painful case only yesterday. One of our oldest customers came in in a great hurry to buy books to take on the steamer, and before we realised what he had done—selecting the books I suppose merely by the titles, as some gentlemen are apt to do—he had taken two of last year’s books. We wired at once to the steamer, but I’m afraid it’s too late.”

“But now, this book,” said the lady, idly turning over the leaves, “is it good? What is it about?”

“It’s an extremely POWERFUL thing,” said Mr. Sellyer, “in fact, MASTERLY. The critics are saying that it’s perhaps THE most powerful book of the season. It has a—” and here Mr. Sellyer paused, and somehow his manner reminded me of my own when I am explaining to a university class something that I don’t know myself—“It has a—a—POWER, so to speak—a very exceptional power; in fact, one may say without exaggeration it is the most POWERFUL book of the month. Indeed,” he added, getting on to easier ground, “it’s having a perfectly wonderful sale.”

“You seem to have a great many of them,” said the lady.

“Oh, we have to,” answered the manager. “There’s a regular rush on the book. Indeed, you know it’s a book that is bound to make a sensation. In fact, in certain quarters, they are saying that it’s a book that ought not to—” And here Mr. Sellyer’s voice became so low and ingratiating that I couldn’t hear the rest of the sentence.

“Oh, really!” said Mrs. Rasselyer. “Well, I think I’ll take it then. One ought to see what these talked-of things are about, anyway.”

She had already begun to button her gloves, and to readjust her feather boa with which she had been knocking the Easter cards off the counter. Then she suddenly remembered something.

“Oh, I was forgetting,” she said. “Will you send something to the house for Mr. Rasselyer at the same time? He’s going down to Virginia for the vacation. You know the kind of thing he likes, do you not?”

“Oh, perfectly, madam,” said the manager. “Mr. Rasselyer generally reads works of—er—I think he buys mostly books on—er—”

“Oh, travel and that sort of thing,” said the lady.

“Precisely. I think we have here,” and he pointed to the counter on the left, “what Mr. Rasselyer wants.”

He indicated a row of handsome books—“Seven Weeks in the Sahara, seven dollars; Six Months in a Waggon, six-fifty net; Afternoons in an Oxcart, two volumes, four-thirty, with twenty off.”

“I think he has read those,” said Mrs. Rasselyer. “At least there are a good many at home that seem like that.”

“Oh, very possibly—but here, now, Among the Cannibals of Corfu—yes, that I think he has had—Among the—that, too, I think—but this I am certain he would like, just in this morning—Among the Monkeys of New Guinea—ten dollars, net.”

And with this Mr. Sellyer laid his hand on a pile of new books, apparently as numerous as the huge pile of Golden Dreams.

“Among the Monkeys,” he repeated, almost caressingly.

“It seems rather expensive,” said the lady.

“Oh, very much so—a most expensive book,” the manager repeated in a tone of enthusiasm. “You see, Mrs. Rasselyer, it’s the illustrations, actual photographs”—he ran the leaves over in his fingers—“of actual monkeys, taken with the camera—and the paper, you notice—in fact, madam, the book costs, the mere manufacture of it, nine dollars and ninety cents—of course we make no profit on it. But it’s a book we like to handle.”

Everybody likes to be taken into the details of technical business; and of course everybody likes to know that a bookseller is losing money. These, I realised, were two axioms in the methods of Mr. Sellyer.

So very naturally Mrs. Rasselyer bought Among the Monkeys, and in another moment Mr. Sellyer was directing a clerk to write down an address on Fifth Avenue, and was bowing deeply as he showed the lady out of the door.

As he turned back to his counter his manner seemed much changed.

“That Monkey book,” I heard him murmur to his assistant, “is going to be a pretty stiff proposition.”

But he had no time for further speculation.

Another lady entered.

This time even to an eye less trained than Mr. Sellyer’s, the deep, expensive mourning and the pensive face proclaimed the sentimental widow.

“Something new in fiction,” repeated the manager, “yes, madam—here’s a charming thing—Golden Dreams”—he hung lovingly on the words—“a very sweet story, singularly sweet; in fact, madam, the critics are saying it is the sweetest thing that Mr. Slush has done.”

“Is it good?” said the lady. I began to realise that all customers asked this.

“A charming book,” said the manager. “It’s a love story—very simple and sweet, yet wonderfully charming. Indeed, the reviews say it’s the most charming book of the month. My wife was reading it aloud only last night. She could hardly read for tears.”

“I suppose it’s quite a safe book, is it?” asked the widow. “I want it for my little daughter.”

“Oh, quite safe,” said Mr. Sellyer, with an almost parental tone, “in fact, written quite in the old style, like the dear old books of the past—quite like”—here Mr. Sellyer paused with a certain slight haze of doubt visible in his eye—“like Dickens and Fielding and Sterne and so on. We sell a great many to the clergy, madam.”

The lady bought Golden Dreams, received it wrapped up in green enamelled paper, and passed out.

“Have you any good light reading for vacation time?” called out the next customer in a loud, breezy voice—he had the air of a stock broker starting on a holiday.

“Yes,” said Mr. Sellyer, and his face almost broke into a laugh as he answered, “here’s an excellent thing—Golden Dreams—quite the most humorous book of the season—simply screaming—my wife was reading it aloud only yesterday. She could hardly read for laughing.”

“What’s the price, one dollar? One-fifty. All right, wrap it up.” There was a clink of money on the counter, and the customer was gone. I began to see exactly where professors and college people who want copies of Epictetus at 18 cents and sections of World Reprints of Literature at 12 cents a section come in, in the book trade.

“Yes, Judge!” said the manager to the next customer, a huge, dignified personage in a wide-awake hat, “sea stories? Certainly. Excellent reading, no doubt, when the brain is overcharged as yours must be. Here is the very latest—Among the Monkeys of New Guinea, ten dollars, reduced to four-fifty. The manufacture alone costs six-eighty. We’re selling it out.