And there the matter now stands.
XXV—”HAPPY THE HOME WHERE BOOKS ARE FOUND”
By way of egging people on to buy Dr. Eliot’s Five Foot Shelf of books, the publishers are resorting to an advertisement in which are depicted two married couples, one reading together by the library table, the other playing some two-handed game of cards which is evidently boring them considerably. The query is “Which One of These Couples Will be the Happier in Five Years?” the implication being that the young people who buy Dr. Eliot’s books will, by constant reading aloud to each other from the works of the world’s best writers, cement a companionship which will put to shame the illiterate union of the young card players.
Granted that most two-handed games of cards are dull enough to result in divorce at the end of five years, they cannot be compared to co-operative family reading as a system of home-wrecking. If this were a betting periodical, we would have ten dollars to place on the chance of the following being the condition of affairs in the literary family at the end of the stated time:
(The husband is reading his evening newspaper. The wife appears, bringing a volume from the Five Foot Shelf. Tonight it is Darwin’s “Origin of Species.”)
WIFE: Hurry up and finish that paper. We’ll never get along in this Darwin if we don’t begin earlier than we did last night.
HUSBAND: Well, suppose we didn’t get along in it. That would suit me all right.
WIFE: If you don’t want me to read it to you, just say so … (after-thought) if it’s so far over your head, just say so.
HUSBAND: It’s not over my head at all. It’s just dull. Why don’t you read some more out of that Italian novel?
WIFE: Ugh! I hate that. I suppose you’d rather have me read “The Sheik.”
HUSBAND (nastily): No-I-wouldn’t-rather-have-you-read-“The Sheik.” Go on ahead with your Darwin. I’m listening.
WIFE: It’s not my Darwin. I simply want to know a little something, that’s all. Of course, you know everything, so you don’t have to read anything more.
HUSBAND: Go on, go on.
WIFE: That last book we read was so far over—
HUSBAND: Go on, go on.
WIFE: (reads in an injured tone one and a half pages on the selective processes of pigeons): You’re asleep!
HUSBAND: I am not. The last words you read were “to this conclusion.”
