Page:The haunted bookshop.djvu/146



"Did you ever notice how books track you down and hunt you out? They follow you like the hound in Francis Thompson's poem. They know their quarry! Look at that book The Education of Henry Adams! Just watch the way it's hounding out thinking people this winter. And The Four Horsemen—you can see it racing in the veins of the reading people. It's one of the uncanniest things I know to watch a real book on its career—it follows you and follows you and drives you into a corner and makes you read it. There's a queer old book that's been chasing me for years: The Life and Opinions of John Buncle, Esq., it's called. I've tried to escape it, but every now and then it sticks up its head somewhere. It'll get me some day, and I'll be compelled to read it. Ten Thousand a Year trailed me the same way until I surrendered. Words can't describe the cunning of some books. You'll think you've shaken them off your trail, and then one day some innocent-looking customer will pop in and begin to talk, and you'll know he's an unconscious agent of book-destiny. There's an old sea-captain who drops in here now and then. He's simply the novels of Captain Marryat put into flesh. He has me under a kind of spell; I know I shall have to read Peter Simple before I die, just because the old fellow loves it so. That's why I call this place