"Not at all. Just human, common sense."
"But your creed as you've just given it, the rules of the game and that;
that's precisely the Bible formula, I believe."
"How do you know?" she caught him up. "You haven't a Bible in the place,
so far as I've noticed."
"No; I haven't."
"You should have."
"Probably. But I can't, somehow, adjust myself to that advice as coming
from you."
"Because you don't understand what I'm getting at. It isn't religious
advice."
"Then what is it?"
"Literary, purely. You're going to write, some day. Oh, don't look
doubtful! That's foreordained. It doesn't take a seeress to prophesy
that. And the Bible is the one book that a writer ought to read every
day. Isaiah, Psalms, Proverbs. Pretty much all the Old Testament, and a
lot of the New. It has grown into our intellectual life until its
phrases and catchwords are full of overtones and sub-meanings. You've
got to have it in your business; your coming business, I mean. I know
what I'm talking about, Mr. Errol Banneker--_moi qui parle_. They
offered me an instructorship in Literature when I graduated. I even
threatened to take it, just for a joke on Dad. _Now_, will you be good
and accept my fully explained and diagrammed Bible without fearing that
I have designs on your soul?"
"Yes.
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