"
As I have said, Cooper was not blind to the good he was doing. False
modesty was not one of his failings. He would continually have me admire
his bookshelves. The books he was proudest of were those he had lent or
given away.... "I have a larger number of books missing," he would
boast, "than any man of my acquaintance. This big hole here is my
Gibbon. I sent it to an interesting old chap I met at a public dinner
some years ago. He was a prosperous hardware merchant, self-made, and,
like all self-made men, a bit unfinished. He had read very little. I
don't recall how I happened to mention Gibbon or to send him the set. I
think I may have forgotten the first volume at his office the next
morning. He devoured Gibbon. From him he went to Tacitus. He has since
read hundreds of books on the Roman empire and he has other hundreds of
volumes waiting to be read. But somehow he has never thought of sending
me back my shabby old Gibbon. And that was the way with my
Montaigne--gone. And here were two editions of Gulliver. I lent one to a
nephew of the Harringtons and the other to a rather prim young lady from
Boston who impressed me as having had too much Emerson.
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