READING FOR A GRANDFATHER

A young girl (much respected by the Easy Chair) who had always had the real good of her grandfather at heart, wished to make him a Christmas present befitting his years and agreeable to his tastes. She thought, only to dismiss them for their banality, of a box of the finest cigars, of a soft flannel dressing-gown, a bath robe of Turkish towelling embroidered by herself, of a velvet jacket, and of a pair of house shoes. She decided against some of these things because he did not smoke, because he never took off his walking coat and shoes till he went to bed, and because he had an old bath robe made him by her grandmother, very short and very scant (according to her notion at the chance moments when she had surprised him in it), from which neither love nor money could part him; the others she rejected for the reason already assigned. Little or nothing remained, then, but to give him books, and she was glad that she was forced to this conclusion because, when she reflected, she realized that his reading seemed to be very much neglected, or at least without any lift of imagination or any quality of modernity in it. As far as she had observed, he read the same old things over and over again, and did not know at all what was now going on in the great world of literature. She herself was a famous reader, and an authority about books with other girls, and with the young men who asked her across the afternoon tea-cups whether she had seen this or that new book, and scrabbled round, in choosing between cream and lemon, to hide the fact that they had not seen it themselves. She was therefore exactly the person to select a little library of the latest reading for an old gentleman who was so behind the times as her grandfather; but before she plunged into the mad vortex of new publications she thought she would delicately find out his preferences, or if he had none, would try to inspire him with a curiosity concerning these or those new books.

"Now, grandfather," she began, "you know I always give you a Christmas present."

"Yes, my dear," the old gentleman patiently assented, "I know you do. You are very thoughtful."

"Not at all. If there is anything I hate, it is being thoughtful. What I like is being spontaneous."

"Well, then, my dear, I don\'t mind saying you are very spontaneous."

"And I detest surprises. If any one wishes to make a lasting enemy of me, let him surprise me. So I am going to tell you now what I am going to give you. Do you like that?"

"I like everything you do, my child."

"Well, this time you will like it better than ever. I am going to give you books. And in order not to disappoint you by giving you books that you have read before, I want to catechise you a little. Shall you mind it?"

"Oh no, but I\'m afraid you won\'t find me very frank."

"I shall make you be. If you are not frank, there is no fun in not surprising you, or in not giving you books that you have read."

"There is something in that," her grandfather assented. "But now, instead of finding out what I have read, or what I like, why not tell me what I ought to read and to like? I think I have seen a vast deal of advice to girls about their reading: why shouldn\'t the girls turn the tables and advise their elders? I often feel the need of advice from girls on all sorts of subjects, and you would find me very grateful, I believe."

The girl\'s eyes sparkled and then softened toward this docile ancestor. "Do you really mean it, grandfather? It would be fun if you did."

"But I should want it to be serious, my dear. I should be glad if your good counsel could include the whole conduct of life, for I am sensible sometimes of a tendency to be silly and wicked, which I am sure you could help me to combat."

"Oh, grandfather," said the girl, tenderly, "you know that isn\'t true!"

"Well, admit for the sake of argument that it isn\'t. My difficulty in regard to reading remains, and there you certainly could help me. At moments it seems to me that I have come to the end of my line."

The old gentleman\'s voice fell, and she could no longer suspect him of joking. So she began, "Why, what have you been reading last?"

"Well, my dear, I have been looking into the Spectator a little."

"The London Spectator? Jim says they have it at the club, and he swears by it. But I mean, what books; and that\'s a weekly newspaper, or a kind of review, isn\'t it?"

"The Spectator I mean was a London newspaper, and it was a kind of review, but it was a daily. Is it possible that you\'ve never heard of it?" The young girl shook her head thoughtfully, regretfully, but upon the whole not anxiously; she was not afraid that any important thing in literature had escaped her. "But you\'ve heard of Addison, and Steele, and Pope, and Swift?"

"Oh yes, we had them at school, when we were reading Henry Esmond; they all came into that. And I remember, now: Colonel Esmond wrote a number of the Spectator for a surprise to Beatrix; but I thought it was all a make-up."

"And you don\'t know about Sir Roger de Coverley?"

"Of course I do! It\'s what the English call the Virginia Reel. But why do you ask? I thought we were talking about your reading. I don\'t see how you could get an old file of a daily newspaper, but if it amuses you! Is it so amusing?"

"It\'s charming, but after one has read it as often as I have one begins to know it a little too well."

"Yes; and what else have you been reading?"

"Well, Leigh Hunt a little lately. He continues the old essayist tradition, and he is gently delightful."

"Never heard of him!" the girl frankly declared.

"He was a poet, too, and he wrote the Story of Rimini—about Paolo and Francesca, you know."

"Oh, there you\'re away off, grandfather! Mr. Philips wrote about them; and that horrid D\'Annunzio. Why, Duse gave D\'Annunzio\'s play last winter! What are you thinking of?"

"Perhaps I am wandering a little," the grandfather meekly submitted, and the girl had to make him go on.

"Do you read poetry a great deal?" she asked, and she thought if his taste was mainly for poetry, it would simplify the difficulty of choosing the books for her present.

"Well, I\'m rather returning to it. I\'ve been looking into Crabbe of late, and I have found him full of a quaint charm."

"Crabbe? I never heard of him!" she owned as boldly as before, for if he had been worth hearing of, she knew that she would have heard of him. "Don\'t you like Kipling?"

"Yes, when he is not noisy. I think I prefer William Watson among your very modern moderns."

"Why, is he living yet? I thought he wrote ten or fifteen years ago! You don\'t call him modern! You like Stevenson, don\'t you? He\'s a great stylist; everybody says he is, and so is George Meredith. You must like him?"

"He\'s a great intellect, but a little of him goes almost as long a way as a little of Browning. I think I prefer Henry James."

"Oh yes, he\'s just coming up. He\'s the one that has distinction. But the people who write like him are a great deal more popular. They have all his distinction, and they don\'t tax your mind so much. But don\'t let\'s get off on novelists or there\'s no end to it. Who are really your favorite poets?"

"Well, I read Shakespeare rather often, and I read Dante by fits and starts; and I do not mind Milton from time to time. I like Wordsworth, and I like Keats a great deal better; every now and then I take up Cowper with pleasure, and I have............