Have you forgotten?"
"The Sears-Roebuck catalogue? I get a copy every season, to renew the
old thrill."
"What a romanticist you are!" said she softly. "Couldn't you write an
editorial about it?"
"Couldn't I? Try me. Come up to the den."
He led the way to the remote austerities of the work-room. From a shelf
he took down the fat, ornate pamphlet, now much increased in bulk over
its prototype of the earlier years. With random finger he parted the
leaves, here, there, again and still again, seeking auguries.
"Ready?" he said. "Now, I shut my eyes--and we're in the shack
again--the clean air of desert spaces--the click of the transmitter in
the office that I won't answer, being more importantly engaged--the
faint fragrance of _you_ permeating everything--youth--the unknown
splendor of life--Now! Go!"
Of that editorial, composed upon the unpromising theme of mail-order
merchandising, the Great Gaines afterward said that it was a
kaleidoscopic panorama set moving to the harmonic undertones of a song
of winds and waters, of passion and the inner meanings of life, as if
Shelley had rhapsodized a catalogue into poetic being and glorious
significance. He said it was foolish to edit a magazine when one
couldn't trust a cheap newspaper not to come flaming forth into
literature which turned one's most conscientious and aspiring efforts
into tinsel.
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