Page:The Works of H G Wells Volume 8.djvu/217

 tion," an autotype of Watt's "Minotaur," a Swiss carved pipe with many joints and a photograph of Amiens Cathedral (these two the spoils of travel), a phrenological bust, and some broken fossils from the Warren. A rotating bookshelf carried the Encyclopædia Britannica (tenth edition), and on the top of it were lying a large official-looking, age-grubby envelope bearing the mystic words, "On His Majesty's Service," a number or so of the Bookman, and a box of cigarettes. A table under the window bore a little microscope, some dust in a saucer, some grimy glass slips and broken cover glasses; for Coote had "gone in for" biology a bit. The longer side of the room was given over to bookshelves, neatly edged with pinked American cloth and with an array of books—no worse an array of books than you find in any public library; an almost haphazard accumulation of obsolete classics, contemporary successes, the Hundred Best Books (including Samuel Warren's "Ten Thousand a Year"), old school books, directories, the Times Atlas, Ruskin in bulk, Tennyson complete in one volume, Longfellow, Charles Kingsley, Smiles and Mrs. Humphry Ward, a guide book or so, several medical pamphlets, odd magazine numbers, and much indescribable rubbish—in fact a compendium of the contemporary British mind. And in front of this array stood Kipps, ill-taught and untrained, respectful, awestricken and, for the moment at any rate, willing to learn, while Coote, the exemplary Coote, talked to him of reading and the virtue in books.

"Nothing enlarges the mind," said Coote, "like