Be pleased to know, most worthy, that this little book is dedicated to you in affection and respect. The faults of the composition are plain to you all. I begin merely in the hope of saying something further of the adventures of ROGER MIFFLIN, whose exploits in "Parnassus on Wheels" some of you have been kind enough to applaud. But then came Miss Titania Chapman, and my young advertising man fell in love with her, and the two of them rather ran away with the tale. I think I should explain that t

If you are ever in Brooklyn, that borough of superb sunsets and magnificent vistas of husband-propelled baby-carriages, it is to be hoped you may chance upon a quiet by-street where there is a very remarkable bookshop. This bookshop, which does business under the unusual name "Parnassus at Home," is housed in one of the comfortable old brown-stone dwellings which have been the joy of several generations of plumbers and cockroaches. The owner of the business has been at pains to remodel the house

He stumbled down the three steps that led into the dwelling of the muses, lowered his overcoat collar, and looked about. It was very different from such bookstores as he had been accustomed to patronize. Two stories of the old house had been thrown into one: the lower space was divided into little alcoves; above, a gallery ran round the wall, which carried books to the ceiling. The air was heavy with the delightful fragrance of mellowed paper and leather surcharged with a strong bouquet of tobac

[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 re

The first pipe after breakfast is a rite of some importance to seasoned smokers, and Roger applied the flame to the bowl as he stood at the bottom of the stairs. He blew a great gush of strong blue reek that eddied behind him as he ran up the flight, his mind eagerly meditating the congenial task of arranging the little spare room for the coming employee. Then, at the top of the steps, he found that his pipe had already gone out. "What with filling my pipe and emptying it, lighting it and religh

I GIVE humble and hearty thanks for the safe return of this book which having endured the perils of my friend's bookcase, and the bookcases of my friend's friends, now returns to me in reasonably good condition. I GIVE humble and hearty thanks that my friend did not see fit to give this book to his infant as a plaything, nor use it as an ash-tray for his burning cigar, nor as a teething-ring for his mastiff. WHEN I lent this book I deemed it as lost: I was resigned to the bitterness of the long

Now that the fighting is over is a good time to read Thomas Hardy's The Dynasts. I don't want to sell it, because it is one of the greatest treasures I own. But if any one will guarantee to read all three volumes, and let them sink into his mind, I'm willing to lend them. If enough thoughtful Germans had read The Dynasts before July, 1914, there would have been no war. If every delegate to the Peace Conference could be made to read it before the sessions begin, there will be no more wars. R. MIF

"Well, my dear," said Roger after supper that evening, "I think perhaps we had better introduce Miss Titania to our custom of reading aloud." "Perhaps it would bore her?" said Helen. "You know it isn't everybody that likes being read to." "Oh, I should love it!" exclaimed Titania. "I don't think anybody ever read to me, that is not since I was a child." "Suppose we leave you to look after the shop," said Helen to Roger, in a teasing mood, "and I'll take Titania out to the movies. I think Tarzan

It was a cold, clear night as Mr. Aubrey Gilbert left the Haunted Bookshop that evening, and set out to walk homeward. Without making a very conscious choice, he felt instinctively that it would be agreeable to walk back to Manhattan rather than permit the roaring disillusion of the subway to break in upon his meditations. It is to be feared that Aubrey would have badly flunked any quizzing on the chapters of Somebody's Luggage which the bookseller had read aloud. His mind was swimming rapidly i

Obeying a sudden impulse, he slipped the book cover in his overcoat pocket. Mr. Weintraub entered the shop, a solid Teutonic person with discoloured pouches under his eyes and a face that was a potent argument for prohibition. His manner, however, was that of one anxious to please. Aubrey indicated the brand of cigarettes he wanted. Having himself coined the advertising catchword for them—They're mild—but they satisfy—he felt a certain loyal compulsion always to smoke this kind. The druggist hel

Although he kept late hours, Roger Mifflin was a prompt riser. It is only the very young who find satisfaction in lying abed in the morning. Those who approach the term of the fifth decade are sensitively aware of the fluency of life, and have no taste to squander it among the blankets. The bookseller's morning routine was brisk and habitual. He was generally awakened about half-past seven by the jangling bell that balanced on a coiled spring at the foot of the stairs. This ringing announced the

I am sensible that Mr. Aubrey Gilbert is by no means ideal as the leading juvenile of our piece. The time still demands some explanation why the leading juvenile wears no gold chevrons on his left sleeve. As a matter of fact, our young servant of the Grey-Matter Agency had been declined by a recruiting station and a draft board on account of flat feet; although I must protest that their flatness detracts not at all from his outward bearing nor from his physical capacity in the ordinary concerns

These delicate wafers, crisped by a secret process, cherish in their unique tang and flavour all the life-giving nutriment that has made the potato the King of Vegetables—— But the face of Miss Titania kept coming between his hand and brain. Of what avail to flood the world with Chapman Chips if the girl herself should come to any harm? "Was this the face that launched a thousand chips?" he murmured, and for an instant wished he had brought The Oxford Book of English Verse instead of O. Henry. A

A few doors from the bookshop was a small lunchroom named after the great city of Milwaukee, one of those pleasant refectories where the diner buys his food at the counter and eats it sitting in a flat-armed chair. Aubrey got a bowl of soup, a cup of coffee, beef stew, and bran muffins, and took them to an empty seat by the window. He ate with one eye on the street. From his place in the corner he could command the strip of pavement in front of Mifflin's shop. Halfway through the stew he saw Rog

Roger had spent a quiet evening in the bookshop. Sitting at his desk under a fog of tobacco, he had honestly intended to do some writing on the twelfth chapter of his great work on bookselling. This chapter was to be an (alas, entirely conjectural) "Address Delivered by a Bookseller on Being Conferred the Honorary Degree of Doctor of Letters by a Leading University," and it presented so many alluring possibilities that Roger's mind always wandered from the paper into entranced visions of his ima

Roger had just put Carlyle's Cromwell back in its proper place in the History alcove when Helen and Titania returned from the movies. Bock, who had been dozing under his master's chair, rose politely and wagged a deferential tail. "I do think Bock has the darlingest manners," said Titania. "Yes," said Helen, "it's really a marvel that his wagging muscles aren't all worn out, he has abused them so." "Well," said Roger, "did you have a good time?" "An adorable time!" cried Titania, with a face and

Aubrey, sitting at his window with the opera glasses, soon realized that he was blind weary. Even the exalted heroics of romance are not proof against fatigue, most potent enemy of all who do and dream. He had had a long day, coming after the skull-smiting of the night before; it was only the frosty air at the lifted sash that kept him at all awake. He had fallen into a half drowse when he heard footsteps coming down the opposite side of the street. He had forced himself awake several times befo

Seldom has a young man spent a more desolate afternoon than Aubrey on that Sunday. His only consolation was that twenty minutes after he had left the bookshop he saw a taxi drive up (he was then sitting gloomily at his bedroom window) and Titania enter it and drive away. He supposed that she had gone to join the party in Larchmont, and was glad to know that she was out of what he now called the war zone. For the first time on record, O. Henry failed to solace him. His pipe tasted bitter and brac

Rarely was a more genuine tribute paid to entrancing girlhood than when Aubrey compelled himself, by sheer force of will and the ticking of his subconscious time-sense, to wake at six o'clock the next morning. For this young man took sleep seriously and with a primitive zest. It was to him almost a religious function. As a minor poet has said, he "made sleep a career." But he did not know what train Roger might be taking, and he was determined not to miss him. By a quarter after six he was seate

"You utter idiot," said Roger, half an hour later. "Why didn't you tell me all this sooner? Good Lord, man, there's some devil's work going on!" "How the deuce was I to know you knew nothing about it?" said Aubrey impatiently. "You'll grant everything pointed against you? When I saw that guy go into the shop with his own key, what could I think but that you were in league with him? Gracious, man, are you so befuddled in your old books that you don't see what's going on round you?" "What time did

Gissing Street will not soon forget the explosion at the Haunted Bookshop. When it was learned that the cellar of Weintraub's pharmacy contained just the information for which the Department of Justice had been looking for four years, and that the inoffensive German-American druggist had been the artisan of hundreds of incendiary bombs that had been placed on American and Allied shipping and in ammunition plants—and that this same Weintraub had committed suicide when arrested on Bromfield Street