Rickmans.
There was Mr. Rickman of the front shop and second-hand department,
known as "our Mr. Rickman." The shop was proud of him; his appearance
was supposed to give it a certain _cachet_. He neither strutted nor
grovelled; he moved about from shelf to shelf in an absent-minded
scholarly manner. He served you, not with obsequiousness, nor yet with
condescension, but with a certain remoteness and abstraction, a noble
apathy. Though a bookseller, his literary conscience remained
incorruptible. He would introduce you to his favourite authors with a
magnificent take-it-or-leave-it air, while an almost imperceptible
lifting of his eyebrows as he handed you _your_ favourite was a subtle
criticism of your taste. This method of conducting business was called
keeping up the tone of the establishment. The appearance and
disappearance of this person was timed and regulated by circumstances
beyond his own control, so that of necessity all the other Mr.
Rickmans were subject to him.
For there was Mr. Rickman the student and recluse, who inhabited the
insides of other men's books. Owing to his habitual converse with
intellects greater--really greater--than his own, he was an
exceedingly humble and reverent person. A high and stainless soul. You
would never have suspected his connection with Mr. Rickman, the Junior
Journalist, the obscure writer of brilliant paragraphs, a fellow
destitute of reverence and decency and everything except consummate
impudence, a disconcerting humour and a startling style.
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