Produced by Joshua Hutchinson, and PG Distributed Proofreaders
Toward the end of a city morning, that is, about four o'clock in theafternoon, Stanford Grey, and his guest, Daniel Tomes, paused in anargument which had engaged them earnestly for more than half an hour.What they had talked about it concerns us not to know. We take them aswe find them, each leaning back in his chair, confirmed in the opinionthat he had maintained, convinced only of his opponent's ability andrectitude of purpose, and enjoying the gradual subsidence of theexcitement that accompanies the friendliest intellectual strife assurely as it does the gloved set-tos between those two "talentedprofessors of the noble science of self-defence" who beat each otherwith stuffed buck-skin, at notably brief intervals, for the benefit ofthe widow and children of the late lamented Slippery Jim, or some otherequally mysterious and eminent person.
The room in which they sat was one of those third rooms on the firstfloor, by which city house-builders, self-styled architects, have madethe second room useless except at night, in their endeavor to reconcilea desire for a multitude of apartments with the fancied necessity thatcompels some men to live where land costs five dollars the square foot.The various members of Mr. Grey's household designated this room bydifferent names. The servants called it the library; Mrs. Grey and twosmall people, the delight and torment of her life, papa's study; andGrey himself spoke of it as his workshop, or his den. Against everystretch of wall a bookcase rose from floor to ceiling, upon the shelvesof which the books stood closely packed in double ranks, the variedcolors of the rows in sight wooing the eye by their harmoniousarrangement. A pedestal in one corner supported a half-size copy of theVenus of Milo, that masterpiece of sculpture; in its faultless amplitudeof form, its large life-giving loveliness, and its sweet dignity, theembodiment of the highest type of womanhood. In another corner stood asimilar reduction of the Flying Mercury. Between the bookcases and overthe mantel-piece hung prints;—most noticeable among them, Steinla'sengraving of Raphael's Sistine Madonna, and Toschi's reproduction, inlines, of the luminous majesty of Correggio's St. Peter and St. Paul;and these were but specimens of the treasures inclosed in a hugeportfolio that stood where the light fell favorably upon it. OppositeGrey's chair, when in its place, (it was then wheeled half round towardhis guest,) a portrait of Raphael and one of Beethoven flanked a copyof the Avon bust of Shakespeare; and where the wallpaper peeped throughthis thick array of works of literature and art, it showed a tint ofsoft tea-green. In the middle of the room a large library-table groanedbeneath a mass of books and papers, some of them arranged in formalorder, others disarranged by present use into that irregular order whichseems chaotic to every eye but one, while for that one the displacementof a single sheet would insure perplexity and loss of time. But neitherspreading table nor towering cases seemed to afford their owner roomenough to store his printed treasures. Books were everywhere. Below thewindows the recesses were filled out with crowded shelves; the door of acloset, left ajar, showed that the place was packed with books, roughlyor cheaply clad, and pamphlets. At the bottom of the cases, booksstretched in serried files along the floor. Some had crept up upon thelibrary-steps, as if, impatient to rejoin their c