All books should be in one volume. I always thought so, but now I know. The reason why I know is because I possess two or three thousand books, and I have recently moved into a new house, and the books were at first put on the shelves indiscriminately as they came out of the packing cases. And how better spend a wet bank holiday than in arranging them properly—bringing parted couples together, adjusting involuntary divorces, reuniting the separated members of families and tribes?

This is the merciful work on which Parolles and I have been engaged for too long. (I call her Parolles because she is so fond of words of which neither the meaning nor pronunciation has quite been mastered.) We meet each other all over the house with pathetic inquiries, "Have you seen Volume IV. of Dumas' Memoirs?" "No, but have you noticed Volume I. of Fors Clavigera?" It is like a game of "Families."

The worst of the game is that one cannot concentrate. I may ascend the stairs bent wholly upon securing Volume III. of Prothero and Coleridge's Byron, and then chancing to observe Volume II. of Ingpen's Boswell I leap at it in ecstasy and, forgetting all about the noble misanthrope, hasten back with this prize and join it to its lonely mate.

My Dictionary of National Biography, for all its fifty-eight volumes, not counting Supplements or Errata, was simple, on account of its size and unusual appearance. But what word can I find to express the annoyance and trouble given us by a small Pope in sheepskin? We roamed the house together—there are shelves in every room—striving to collect this family; but three of them are still on the loose. There is a Balzac, too, in a number of volumes not mentioned on any title-page and not numbered individually, so that time alone can tell whether that group is ever fully assembled. But as we placed them side by side we could almost hear them sigh after their long separation—though whether with satisfaction or annoyance who shall say? Volumes, may be, can get as tired of their companions as human beings can.

During such an occupation as this a vast deal of time vanishes also in trying to remember where it was that I saw that copy of Friendship's Garland, so as to place it with the other Arnolds. Even more time goes in dipping into books which I had clean forgotten I possessed, such as The Cricketers' Manual, by "Bat," in which my eyes alighted upon this excellent story:

"The Duchess de Berri, being present at a match between two clubs of Englishmen at Dieppe [in 1824], looked on very attentively for nearly three hours, then, turning to one of her attendants, said, 'Mais, quand est-ce que le jeu va commencer?'" But the time which I have frittered away in this frivolity is as nothing compared with that wasted by Parolles, who has a way of subsiding upon the ground wherever she may happen to be and instantly becoming absorbed in the printed page. It is not as if she exercised any selective power, as I do. All books are the same to her in that they contain type on which the eye can fasten to the detriment of her labour. In every room I have stumbled over her long black legs as she thus abused her trust.

And not only has she read more than I have, but she has become steadily dirtier than I, too; partly because of a native flair for whatever makes smears and smudges, and partly because, her hair being long and falling on the page, owing to her crouched attitude when perusing, it has to be swept back, and each sweep leaves its mark. Considering how they set themselves up to be superior and instruct, books are curiously grubby things.

And, as I said before, they should be in one volume.