“‘Of course, I presume,’ said Irene, thoughtfully, ’we shall have to have Gibbon.’

“‘If you want to read him,’ said Corey, with a laugh of sympathy for an imaginable joke.

“’We had a good deal about him in school.  I believe we had one of his books.  Mine’s lost, but Pen will remember.’

“The young man looked at her, and then said seriously, ’You’ll want Green, of course, and Motley, and Parkman.’

“‘Yes.  What kind of writers are they?’

“‘They’re historians, too.’

“’Oh, yes; I remember now.  That’s what Gibbon was.  Is it Gibbon or Gibbons?’

“The young man decided the point with apparently superfluous delicacy.  ‘Gibbon, I think.’

“‘There used to be so many of them,’ said Irene, gaily.  ’I used to get them mixed up with each other, and I couldn’t tell them from the poets.  Should you want to have poetry?’

“‘Yes.  I suppose some edition of the English poets.’

“‘We don’t any of us like poetry.  Do you like it?’

“‘I’m afraid I don’t, very much,’ Corey owned.  ’But of course there was a time when Tennyson was a great deal more to me than he is now.’

“’We had something about him at school, too.  I think I remember the name.  I think we ought to have all the American poets.’

“’Well, not all.  Five or six of the best; you want Longfellow, and Bryant, and Whittier, and Emerson, and Lowell.’

“‘And Shakespere,’ she added.  ’Don’t you like Shakespere’s plays?...  We had ever so much about Shakespere.  Weren’t you perfectly astonished when you found out how many other plays there were of his?  I always thought there was nothing but “Hamlet,” and “Romeo and Juliet,” and “Macbeth,” and “Richard iii.,” and “King Lear,” and that one that Robson and Crane have—­oh, yes, “Comedy of Errors!"’”

So you see how ridiculous this young girl, by the betrayal of such ignorance, made herself in conversation with a cultured young gentleman whose good opinion she was most anxious to win.  And yet, to talk too much about books is not well; it often marks the pedantic and egotistic character.  It is safe to say that unless one happens to meet a very congenial mind among conversers in general society, to introduce the subject of books is liable to be misconstrued.  It is not very long since another popular modern novelist held up to scorn and ridicule the young woman whose particular ambition seemed to be to let society know what an immense number of books she had been reading.  Nevertheless, one must have a good groundwork of knowledge of books in order to avoid mistakes such as poor Irene made in talking with young Corey.