In the middle years of the 1930s, when everyone was unhappy and the history books have pictures to prove it, my father rode the rails from coast to coast and town to town learning to hate the many and varied relations on whose charity he lived. He started out a boy of eight, holding onto a small sister with one hand and a smaller dog with the other, and ended a boy of twelve.

In bookselling, and in no other sphere of my life, I do believe in divine Providence. Bookselling is a petty god, but I am its favorite.