I listen with amused tolerance to people who grow voluble on the weather and their symptoms, and often wish they would ask me to prescribe for them.  I’d probably tell them to become readers of William J. Locke.  But, perhaps, their symptoms might seem preferable to the remedy.  A neighbor came in to borrow a book, and I gave her “Les Miserables,” which she returned in a day or so, saying that she could not read it.  I knew that I had overestimated her, and that I didn’t have a book around of her size.  I had loaned my “Robin Hood,” “Rudder Grange,” “Uncle Remus,” and “Sonny” to the children round about.

I like to browse around among my books, and am trying to have my boys and girls acquire the same habit.  Reading for pure enjoyment isn’t a formal affair any more than eating.  Sometimes I feel in the mood for a grapefruit for breakfast, sometimes for an orange, and sometimes for neither.  I’m glad not to board at a place where they have standardized breakfasts and reading.  If I feel in the mood for an orange I want an orange, even if my neighbor has a casaba melon.  So, if I want my “Middlemarch,” I’m quite eager for that book, and am quite willing for my neighbor to have his “Henry Esmond.”  The appetite for books is variable, the same as for food, and I’d rather consult my appetite than my neighbor when choosing a book as a companion through a lazy afternoon beneath the maple-tree, I refuse to try to supervise the reading of my pupils.  Why, I couldn’t supervise their eating.  I’d have to find out whether the boy was yearning for porterhouse steak or ice-cream, first; then I might help him make a selection.  The best I can do is to have plenty of steak, potatoes, pie, and ice-cream around, and allow him to help himself.

CHAPTER XIX

MAKE-BELIEVE

The text may be found in “Over Bemerton’s,” by E. V. Lucas, and reads as follows:  “A gentle hypocrisy is not only the basis but the salt of civilized life.”  This statement startled me a bit at first; but when I got to thinking of my experience in having a photograph of myself made I saw that Mr. Lucas has some warrant for his statement.  There has been only one Oliver Cromwell to say:  “Paint me as I am.”  The rest of us humans prefer to have the wart omitted.  If my photograph is true to life I don’t want it.  I’m going to send it away, and I don’t want the folks who get it to think I look like that.  If I were a woman and could wear a disguise of cosmetics when sitting for a picture the case might not be quite so bad.  The subtle flattery of the photograph is very grateful to us mortals whether we admit it or not.  My friend Baxter introduced me once as a man who is not two-faced, and went on to explain that if I had had two faces I’d have brought the other instead of this one.  And that’s true.  I expect the photographer to evoke another face for me, and hence my generous gift of money to him.  I like that chap immensely.  He takes my money, gives me another face, bows me out with the grace of a finished courtier, and never, by word or look, reveals his knowledge of my hypocrisy.