This
chamber was a low, wide room, carpeted with matting, with neither shades
nor curtains at the many-paned windows, containing only furniture that
served a purpose--a washstand, with a small, gilt-framed glass hanging
over it, one rush-bottomed chair beside the chair at the desk, that
boasted arms and a leather cushion, a bureau, with two large brass rings
to open each drawer, and a narrow cot covered with a white counterpane
that his hostess had woven as a part of her wedding outfit before he was
born, and books! There were books everywhere--in the long pine chest, on
the high mantel, in the bookcase, under the bed, on the bureau, and on
the carpet wherever it was not absolutely necessary for him to tread.
Prudence and Marjorie had climbed the narrow stairway once this summer to
take a peep at his books, and Prudence had inquired if he intended
to take them all out West when he accepted the presidency of the college
that was waiting for him out there.
"I should have to come back to my den, I couldn't write anywhere else."
"And when somebody asks me if you are dead, as some king asked about the
author of Butler's 'Analogy' once, I'll reply, as somebody replied: 'Not
dead, but buried.'"
"That is what I want to be," he had replied. "Don't you want a copy of my
little pocket dictionary? It just fits the vest pocket, you see. You
don't know how proud I was when I saw a young man on the train take one
from his pocket one day!"
He opened his desk and handed her a copy; Marjorie looked at it and at
him in open-eyed wonder.
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