I have recently been in the throes1 of a double removal， and in the course of the operation comments were made by one person or another concerned in it on the prominence of books in my belongings. The van-man， with a large experience of removals， paid the tribute of astonishment at the spectacle， and the people who came to look at the house gaped at the books as though they were the last thing they expected to see in a decent suburban residence. Hitherto I had been rather ashamed of my library. In the course of a longish life I have accumulated some 2，000 books. There is not much rubbish among them， for I have thinned them out periodically， but there are shameful blanks that are unfilled， and it had never occurred to me to think that they formed an unusual collection for a middle-class household.

我最近为搬出旧居迁入新宅忙得够呛，其间有一两个相关人员，见我的个人物品中书籍多得格外醒目，便议论了几句。货车司机呢，搬家经验丰富，面对满屋书籍的壮观景象，惊讶之余表示敬佩。前来看房的人目瞪口呆，仿佛怎么也料想不到会在一座雅致的郊区住宅里见到这么多的书。迄今为止，我一直为我的书房感到害臊。在稍显漫长的一生中，我积累了大约2000本书。其中，末流低劣的读物倒是不多，因为我会定期淘汰掉它们，但书架仍未摆满，令我为之蒙羞，而且我从没想过，对于一个中产阶级家庭而言，这样的藏书量已是异乎寻常了。

But the inquiries I have made since lead me to the conclusion that they do， and that in the average suburban home the last thing that is thought about is the furnishing of a library. People who will spend many hundreds and even thousands of pounds in the course of years in making their house beautiful never give a serious thought to books. They will ransack London for suitable fittings， for rugs and hangings， china and cut-glass， mirrors and what-nots， but the idea of providing themselves with a moderate and well-selected library does not occur to them. If they gather books at all， they gather them haphazard and without thought. A well-known publisher told me the other day that he was recently asked to equip a library in a new house in North London， and the instruction he received was to provide books that would fit the shelves which had been fixed. It was not the contents of the books that mattered， but the size.

然而，此后经过数次问询，我得出结论：这样的藏书量的确异乎寻常，而且在地处郊区的一般家庭里，布置书房是人们最不情愿考虑的问题。经年累月舍得花费数百甚至数千英镑把房子装得漂漂亮亮的人，从来不会认真考虑买几本书。他们会逛遍伦敦，挑选心仪的家具配件、地毯、挂饰、瓷器、雕花玻璃器皿、镜子等等，却从未想过精挑细选一些书籍，为自己布置一间舒适的书房。即便真的添置书籍，他们也是不假思索地随意搜罗几本。前几天，一位著名的出版商告诉我，最近有人要他为自己伦敦北部新居里的书房配备书籍，而他收到的指示是，挑选的书要能正好放进安装好的书架。重要的不是书的内容，而是大小。

This was no doubt an exceptional case， but it does represent something of the attitude of the average man to books. People who will spend one hundred and fifty pounds on a piano as a matter of course will not spend ten pounds a year or even five pounds a year in enriching their homes with all the best thought of all time. Go into any average provincial town and the last thing you will find is a decent book-shop. I recall more than one great industrial town of a population of over a hundred thousand which has only one such shop， and that is generally kept going by the sale of school-books. It is not because we cannot afford to buy books. We spend two hundred million sterling a year on beer， and I doubt whether we spend two hundred million pence on literature. Many people can afford to buy motor-cars at anything from two hundred pounds who would be aghast at the idea of spending half a guinea2 occasionally on a book. They think so meanly of their minds as that.

此例实属罕见，但确实多少反映了普通人对待书籍的态度。