The Kennewick courier-reporter. [volume] (Kennewick, Wash.) 1914-1938, 1936-12-31
Nv KATHLEEN NORRIS

By KATHLEEN NORRIS
~ ONT overlook, as one OF the
legitimate joys Of increas-
ing years, the charms OF the
secondhand bookstores.
Some of the happiest moments OF
my life have been spent in them;
among the few possessions I should
really hate to lose are the treasures
have found there. ...-s
Yet their possibilities are even
now so little appreciated by some
women that only a few days ago a
friend could seriously say to me,
as I paused at one of the long street
tables engagingly marked "35c.
each-Three for a dollar" and say
reproachfully, "Oh, come now. You
can afford to buy new books!'S
BY which remark she betrayed
the dreadful truth that she didn't
know anything about those fascinat-
ing dark lairs where the backwash
of all the volumes that ever have
been written are continually churn-
ing about, bringing to the surface
now a battered old volume Of one
Of ''the Duchess" novels, now Stir
ling's long-lost study of Carlisle, or
"Our Mutual Friend with Cruik-
shank illustrations and Dickens
own signature in it.
My own early impression OF Sec
ond-hand bookstores was that they
were shops, usually dirty, disorder
" and filed with cheap socialistic
pamphlets to which one went when
one positively couldn't afford new
book, or even a magazine. 1t was
a great San Francisco lawyer who
presently introduced me to the de-
lights of them. He met me in low
er Broadway one sunny morning,
when was idly walking and he
browsing over the inexhaustible
stalls. He said he always wished
that he had lifetime for the old
bookstores. For the first time I
heard the words "Elzivir" and "col-
lector's item" Won to a surprised
interest I bought the life of Eliza
beth Prentice for &c., because I
had battened on her Stepping
Heavenward" as a young girl. I
also bought for 15c. book about
the Martinique volcano. This vol
ume, incidentally, is now listed at
$4,000, and is unprocurable.
That was the beginning. Since
then never have passed a second
hand bookstore unless entering it
was absolutely out of the question.
The children of the family have
been nourished upon rows of shabby
old books; they have found favor
ties of my own childhood at which
to laugh and wonder, ''Dotty Dim
ple," 'The Lamplighter," 1.-THE
Wide, Wide World -...-'.- ri.
In my own special biography IL
brary there are more than two
thousand volumes; four-fifths of
them have come from the old book
stores of San Francisco, Los Ange-
les, Washington, New York, Boston.
London. There are blocks of Char
ing Cross Road, where it departs
at tangent from the busy Strand,
that are lined with tables, with
book-enclosed doorways, with en-
chantment and ravishment for low
ers of books. East Fifty-ninth Street
is another haunt where you can
buy "Othello'' for ten cents or for
hundreds of dollars. s.-s.
A woman's simple story of her
escape from Gwalior started me
into the long list Of the Sepoy Mutt
ny books; soldiers stories, wom-
ems stories, good and bad, rare
and ordinary, there must have been
flood of them in the Eighteenth
ties. all out Of print now, but all
wonderful reading. k#...s g. .t
Then there are the missionary BIZ
ographies. They sound so dull; they
are so thrilling! Just the diaries
OF the quiet good women who went
forth from New England homes into
the unknown jungles of Africa,
frightened, honesick, seasick, suf-
Tered from pestilences and savage
uprisings and heat and insects;
mixed difficult childbearing, the
terror Of tom-toms and jungle
sweats in with the teaching Of the
Word, and presently came home
Older and wiser and tired to write
Our Years in Sarawak" and sell
the volume for thirty-fve cents to
pay for the carpet in some New
hampshire church. One woman
came home childless, although she
mad born seven children in ten
years among the savages. ''The
little flowers all faded along our
nard, hot road" she explains it
patiently. In waffle huts upon fes-
terlng rivers, with the yells of
head-hunters or the growl of beasts
In their ears, they remembered the
quiet elm-shaded streets of home,
tne big clean kitchens where bread