[quote=Terry Buffum]Mark,
Are you about through with the stock making book you borrowed from me?
ON THE RETURN OF A BOOK
LEANT TO A FRIEND
I GIVE humble and hearty thanks for the safe return
of this book which having endured the perils of my
friend’s bookcase, and the bookcases of my friend’s
friends, now returns to me in reasonably good con-
dition.
I GIVE humble and hearty thanks that my friend did
not see fit to give this book to his infant as a play-
thing, nor use it as an ash-tray for his burning cigar,
nor as a teething-ring for his mastiff.
WHEN I lent this book I deemed it as lost: I was re-
signed to the bitterness of the long parting: I never
thought to look upon its pages again,
BUT NOW that my book is come back to me, I re-
joice and am exceeding glad! Bring hither the fatted
morocco and let us rebind the volume and set it on
the shelf of honor: for this my book was lent, and
is returned again.
PRESENTLY, therefore, I may return some of the
books that I myself have borrowed.
Christopher Morley
