Doone" it was--and showed me the letters _a m_ scrawled in
pencil in the back.

"That means that I paid ten cents for this.  Now, if you sell
it for a quarter you've got a safe profit.  It costs me about
four dollars a week to run Parnassus--generally less.  If you
clear that much in six days you can afford to lay off on Sundays!"

"How do you know that _a m_ stands for ten cents?" I asked.

"The code word's _manuscript_.  Each letter stands for a figure,
from 0 up to 9, see?"  He scrawled it down on a scrap of paper:

                     m a n u s c r i p t
                     0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

"Now, you see _a m_ stands for 10, _a n_ would be 12, _n s_ is
24, _a c_ is 15, _a m m_ is $1.00, and so on.  I don't pay much
over fifty cents for books as a rule, because country folks
are shy of paying much for them.  They'll pay a lot for a
separator or a buggy top, but they've never been taught to
worry about literature!  But it's surprising how excited they
get about books if you sell 'em the right kind.  Over beyond
Port Vigor there's a farmer who's waiting for me to go
back--I've been there three or four times--and he'll buy about
five dollars' worth if I know him.  First time I went there I
sold him `Treasure Island,' and he's talking about it yet.  I
sold him `Robinson Crusoe,' and `Little Women' for his
daughter, and `Huck Finn,' and Grubb's book about `The
Potato.' Last time I was there he wanted some Shakespeare, but
I wouldn't give it to him.  I didn't think he was up to it yet."

I began to see something of the little man's idealism in his
work.  He was a kind of traveling missionary in his way.  A
hefty talker, too.  His eyes were twinkling now and I could
see him warming up.

"Lord!" he said, "when you sell a man a book you don't sell
him just twelve ounces of paper and ink and glue--you sell him
a whole new life.  Love and friendship and humour and ships at
sea by night--there's all heaven and earth in a book, a real
book I mean.  Jiminy!  If I were the baker or the butcher or
the broom huckster, people would run to the gate when I came
by--just waiting for my stuff.  And here I go loaded with
everlasting salvation--yes, ma'am, salvation for their little,
stunted minds--and it's hard to make 'em see it.  That's what
makes it worth while--I'm doing something that nobody else
from Nazareth, Maine, to Walla Walla, Washington, has ever
thought of.  It's a new field, but by the bones of Whitman
it's worth while.  That's what this country needs--more books!"}

He laughed at his own vehemence.  "Do you know, it's comical,"
he said.  "Even the publishers, the fellows that print the
books, can't see what I'm doing for them.  Some of 'em refuse
me credit because I sell their books for what they're worth
instead of for the prices they mark on them.  They write me
letters about price-maintenance--and I write back about
merit-maintenance.  Publish a good book and I'll get a good
price for it, Say I!  Sometimes I think the publishers know
less about books than any one else!  I guess that's natural,
though.  Most school teachers don't know much about children."

"The best of it is," he went on, "I have such a darn good
time.  Peg and Bock (that's the dog) and I go loafing along
the road on a warm summer day, and by and by we'll fetch up
alongside some boarding-house and there are the boarders all
rocking off their lunch on the veranda.  Most of 'em bored to
death--nothing good to read, nothing to do but sit and watch
the flies buzzing in the sun and the chickens rubbing up and
down in the dust.  First thing you know I'll sell half a dozen
books that put the love of life into them, and they don't
forget Parnassus in a hurry.  Take O. Henry, for
instance--there isn't anybody so dog-gone sleepy that he won't
enjoy that man's stories.  He understood life, you bet, and he
could write it down with all its little twists.  I've spent an
evening reading O. Henry and Wilkie Collins to people and had
them buy out all their books I had and clamour for more."

"What do you do in winter?"  I asked--a practical question, as
most of mine are.

"That depends on where I am when bad weather sets in," said
Mr. Mifflin.  "Two winters I was down south and managed to
keep Parnassus going all through the season.  Otherwise, I
just lay up wherever I am.  I've never found it hard to get
lodging for Peg and a job for myself, if I had to have them.
Last winter I worked in a bookstore in Boston.  Winter before,
I was in a country drugstore down in Pennsylvania.  Winter
before that, I tutored a couple of small boys in English
literature.  Winter before that, I was a steward on a steamer;
you see how it goes.  I've had a fairly miscellaneous
experience.  As far as I can see, a man who's fond of books
never need starve!  But this winter I'm planing to live with
my brother in Brooklyn and slog away at my book.  Lord, how
I've pondered over that thing!  Long summer afternoons I've
sat here, jogging along in the dust, thinking it out until it
seemed as if my forehead would burst.  You see, my idea is
that the common people--in the country, that is--never have
had any chance to get hold of books, and never have had any
one to explain what books can mean.  It's all right for