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old door, laid flat on crates—and running the length of this are the books—books that I have bought, found, begged throughout my life, ever since the morning when Carl and I were playing in a haunted house, and we broke into what appeared to be a secret closet, discovered a small decanter of medicated sherry, the remnants of a whalebone corset, and an old copy of T YPEE . We rescued the whalebone from the rotted cloth, drank the sherry, and spent the rest of the day devouring what the bookworms had left of T YPEE .
    Reaching the desk, I sit before it for a moment, uncritical, with perception undiminished, searching a balance.
                                             (Melville, W HITE -J ACKET , called to observe a flogging: “. . . balanced myself on my best centre.”
    There are the titles, the feel of an old binding: M ARDI , for example, an early edition, in two volumes, dark brown, maroon, and black, the backing ribbed, and inside, the marbled end-papers, and the Preface:
               “Not long ago, having published two narratives of voyages in the Pacific, which, in many quarters, were received with incredulity, the thought occurred to me, of indeed writing a romance of Polynesian adventure, and publishing it as such; to see whether, the fiction might not, possibly be received for a verity: in some degree the reverse of my previous experience.”
    Then, G RAY’S A NATOMY , Goss, Twenty-fifth Edition; and a disreputable copy of T HE H OOSIER S CHOOLMASTER , by Edward Eggleston. A thin, modern English book, C OSMOLOGY , by H. Bondi; T HE S EARCH F OR A TLANTIS , by Edwin Bjorkman; and a copy of N ATURAL H ISTORY , March, 1952, including an article,S HRUNKEN H EADS . A T EXTBOOK O F E MBRYOLOGY , by Jordon and Kindred; also, J OURNAL O F M ORPHOLOGY , Volume XLX , 1908, containing A S TUDY O F T HE C AUSES U NDERLYING T HE O RIGIN O F H UMAN M ONSTERS .
    Glancing upward, at the eight-inch rafters casting regular shadows across each other and across the roof boards, down the length of the attic, I am reminded
               of the forecastle of the Julia in O MOO , planted “right in the bows, or, as sailors say, in the very eyes of the ship . . .”
               “All over, the ship was in a most dilapidated condition; but in the forecastle it looked like the hollow of an old tree going to decay. In every direction the wood was damp and discoloured, and here and there soft and porous. Moreover, it was hacked and hewed without mercy, the cook frequently helping himself to splinters for kindling-wood from the bitts and beams.”
               and there was “that gloomy hole where we burrowed like rabbits,” in R EDBURN . . . as well as
               The Gunner in W HITE -J ACKET — “. . . among all the persons and things on board that puzzled me, and filled me most with strange emotions of doubt, misgivings, and mystery, was the gunner—a short, square, grim man, his hair and beard grizzled and singed, as if with gunpowder. His skin was of a flecky brown, like the stained barrel of a fowling-piece, and his hollow eyes burned in his head like blue-lights. He it was who had access to many of those mysterious vaults I have spoken of. Often he might be seen groping his way into them . . .”
    and
               “. . . he was, withal, a very cross, bitter, illnatured, inflammable little old man. So, too, were all the members of the gunner’s gang; including the two gunner’s mates, and all the quarter-gunners. Every one of them had the same dark brown complexion; all their faces looked like smoked hams. They were continuallygrumbling and growling about the batteries; running in and out among the guns; driving the sailors away from them; and cursing and swearing as if all their consciences had been powder-singed and made callous by their calling. Indeed they were a most unpleasant set of men; especially Priming, the