Stephen Butler Leacock
[1] “Wish to look about the store? Oh, oh, by all means, sir,” he said.
[2] Then, as he rubbed his hands together in an urbane fashion, he directed a piercing glance at me through his spectacles.
[3] “You’ll find some things that night interest you,” he said, “in the back of the store on the left.” We have there a series of reprints — Universal Knowledge from Aristotle to Arthur Balfour — at seventeen cents.Or perhaps you might like to look over the Pantheon of Dead Authors, at ten cents.“Mr.Sparrow,” he called, “just show this gentleman our classical reprints — the ten-cent series.”
[4] With that he waved his hand to an assistant and dismissed me from his thought.
[5] In other words, he had divined me in a moment.There was no use in my having bought a sage-green fedora in Broadway, and a sporting tie done up crosswise with spots as big as nickels.These little adornments can never hide the soul within.I was a professor, and he knew it, or at least, as part of his business, he could divine in on the instant.
[6] The sales manager of the biggest book store for ten blocks cannot be deceived in a customer.And he knew, of course, that, as a professor, I was no good.I had come to the store, as all professors go to book stores, just as a wasp comes to an open jar of marmalade.He knew that I would hang around for two hours, get in everybody’s way, and finally buy a cheap reprint of the Dialogues of Plato, or the Prose Works of John Milton, or Locke on the Human Understanding, or some trash of that sort.
[7] As for real taste in literature — the ability to appreciate at its worth a dollar-fifty novel of last month, in a spring jacket with a tango frontispiece — I hadn’t got it and he knew it.
[8] He despised me, of course.But it is a maxim of the book business that a professor standing up in a corner buried in a book looks well in a store.The real customers like it.
[9] So it was that even so up-to-date a manager as Mr.Sellyer tolerated my presence in a back corner of his store; and so it was that I had an opportunity of noting something of his methods with his real customer’s methods so successful, I may say, that his is rightly looked upon by all the publishing business as one of the mainstays of literature in America.
[10] I had no intention of standing in the place and listening as a spy.In fact, to tell the truth, I had become immediately interested in a new translation of the Moral Discourses of Epictetus.The book was very neatly printed, quite well bound and was offered at eighteen cents; so that for the moment I was strongly tempted to buy it, though it seemed best to take a dip into it first.
[11] I had hardly read more that the first three chapters when my attention was diverted by conversation going on in the front of the store.
[12] “You’re quite sure it’s his latest?” a fashionably dressed woman was saying to Mr.Sellyer.
[13] “Oh, yes, Mrs.Rasselyer,” answered the manager.“I assure you this is his very latest.In fact, they only came in yesterday.”
[14] As he spoke, he indicated with his hand a huge pile of books, gaily jacketed in white and blue.I could make out the title in bit gilt lettering — Golden Dreams.
[15] “Oh, yes, ”repeated Mr.Sellyer.“This is Mr.Slush’s latest book.It’s having a wonderful sale.”
[16] “That’s all right, then, ”said the lady.“You see, one sometimes gets taken in so: I came in here last week and took two that seemed very nice, and I never noticed till I got home that they were both old books, published , I think, six months ago.”
[17] “Oh, dear me, Mrs.Rasselyer, ”said the manager in an apologetic tone, “I’m extremely sorry.Pray let us send for them and exchange them for you.”
[18] “Oh, it does not matter,” said the lady, “of course I didn’t read them.I gave them to my maid.She probably wouldn’t know the difference, anyway.”
[19] “I suppose not,” said Mr.Sellyer, with a condescending smile.“But of course, madam, ”he went on, falling into the easy chat of the fashionable bookman, “such mistakes are bound to happen sometimes.We had a very painful case only yesterday.One of our oldest customers came in, in a great hurry, to buy books to take on the steamer, and before we realized what he had done — selecting the books I suppose merely by the titles, as some gentlemen are apt to do — he had taken two of last year’s books.We wired at once to the steamer, but I’m afraid it’s too late.”
[20] “But now, this book, ”said the lady, idly turning over the leaves, “is it good? What is it about?”
[21] “It’s an extremely powerful thing,” said Mr.Sellyer, “in fact, masterly.The critics are saying that it’s perhaps the most powerful book of the season.It has a — ,”and here Mr.Sellyer paused, and somehow his manner reminded me of my own when I am explaining to a university class something that I don’t know myself.“It has a-apower, so to speak, a very exceptional power; in fact, one may say without exaggeration it is the most powerful book of the month.Indeed,” he added, getting on to easier ground, “it’s having a perfectly wonderful sale.”
[22] “You seem to have a great many of them, ”said the lady.
[23] “Oh, we have to, ”answered the manager.“There’s a regular rush on the book.Indeed, you know it’s a book that is bound to make a sensation.In fact, in certain quarters, they are saying that it’s a book that ought not to — ” And here Mr.Sellyer’s voice became so low and ingratiating that I couldn’t hear the rest of the sentence.
[24] “Oh, really!” said Mrs.Rasselyer.“Well, I think I’ll take it then.One ought to see what these talked-of things are about, anyway.”
[25] She had already begun to button her gloves, and to readjust her feather boa, with which she had been knocking the Easter cards off the counter.Then she suddenly remembered something.
[26] “Oh, I was forgetting, ”she said.“Will you send something to the house for Mr.Rasselyer at the same time? He’s going down to Virginia for the vacation.You know the kind of thing he likes, do you not?”
[27] “Oh, perfectly, madam, ”said the manager.“Mr.Rasselyer generally reads works of — er — I think he buys mostly books on — er — ”
[28] “Oh, travel and that sort of thing,” said the lady.
[29] “Precisely.I think we have here,” and he pointed to the counter on the left, “what Mr.Rasselyer wants.” — he indicated a row of handsome books — ”Seven Weeks in the Sahara, seven dollars; Six Months in a Waggon, six-fifty net; Afternoons in an Ox-cart, two volumes, four-thirty, with twenty off.”
[30] “I think he has read those, ”said Mrs.Rasselyer.“At least there are a good many at home that seem like that.”
[31] “Oh, very possibly.But here, now, Among the Canibals of Corfu — yes, that I think he has had — Among the — that, too, I think.But this I am certain he would like, just in this morning, Among the Monkeys of New Guinea, ten dollars, net.”
[32] And with this Mr.Sellyer laid his hand on a pile of new books, apparently as numerous as the huge pile of Golden Dreams.
Notes
1.Text B is the excerpt from The Reading Public: a Book Store Study by Stephen Butler Leacock, who is the best known humorist in Canada as well as in English-speaking countries.
2. Universal Knowledge from Aristotle to Arthur Balfour: 《通用知识：从亚里士多德到亚瑟·贝尔福》
3. Dialogues of Plato: 《柏拉图对话》
Questions for discussion.
1) What is the setting of the story?
2) What is the first impression of the sales manager of the book store?
3) Why did the manager recommend books with low prices?
4) While reading in the book store, what did the narrator notice from a conversation?
5) Do you think the sales manager read widely? Why or why not?
6) What do you think of their recommended books?