Page:My Dear Cornelia (1924).pdf/29

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
II
I Meditate, in Front of a Bookcase, on Scott, Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë, and the Good Victorians

When I returned to my study, I dropped into a chair which frequently invites meditation, before a case containing current fiction. My eyes glanced swiftly along the rows of Wells, Galsworthy, Bennett, Beresford, and Walpole, lingering an extra moment on Ann Veronica, The Dark Flower, and The Pretty Lady; visited with slow interrogative scrutiny the "colorful" assemblage of Hergesheimer, D. H. Lawrence, Rebecca West, May Sinclair, W. L. George, James Joyce, Cabell, Sinclair Lewis, Sherwood Anderson, Charles G. Norris, Ben Hecht, and Waldo Franck; then fluttered to rest upon a half-dozen miscellaneous recent arrivals—Meredith Nicholson's Broken Barriers, Mrs. Gerould's Conquistador, Maxwell's Spinster of This Parish, Willa Cather's The Lost Lady, G. F. Hummel's After All, and West of the Water Tower.

Here, I said to myself, is material enough to prove Cornelia's case, if she has a case. Among