I own a book,' he thought, delighted (Paolini 291).

ON THE RETURN OF A BOOK
LENT 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 condition.

I GIVE humble and hearty thanks that my friend did not see fit to give this book to his infant as a plaything, 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 resigned 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 rejoice and am exceeding glad! Bring hither the fatted morocco and let us rebind the volume and set it on the shelf of honour: for this my book was lent, and is returned again.

PRESENTLY, therefore, I may return some of the books that I myself have borrowed.

I went ahead and read all of George Bernard Shaw’s plays for my own pleasure, because I liked the cut of his beard.

En cierta obra de un hombre célebre preferiría leer lo que tachó que lo que dejó.

By and bye he wrote two letters. One was to a bookseller in the city, asking him to send (at once) one copy of Dr. Holt's book on the Care and Feeding of Children, and a well-illustrated edition of Mother Goose. The other was to Mr. Poodle, asking him to fix a date for the christening of Mr. Gissing's three small nephews, who had come to live with him.

Finishing a good book is like leaving a good friend.

When an Englishman wants something, George Bernard Shaw observed, he never publicly admits to his wanting it; instead, his want is expressed as ‘a burning conviction that it is his moral and religious duty to conquer those who possess the thing he wants’. Durant is scathing about this pretence: ‘Hypocrisy was added to brutality, while the robbery went on.’ And

Very briefly, the man who sees the consistency in things is a wit — and a Calvinist. The man who sees the inconsistency in things is a humorist — and a Catholic. However this may be, Bernard Shaw exhibits all that is purest in the Puritan; the desire to see truth face to face even if it slay us, the high impatience with irrelevant sentiment or obstructive symbol; the constant effort to keep the soul at its highest pressure and speed. His instincts upon all social customs and questions are Puritan. His favourite author is Bunyan.

"I am enclosing two tickets to the first night of my new play; bring a friend ... if you have one."
<i> — George Bernard Shaw, playwright (to Winston Churchill)</i>
"Cannot possibly attend first night; will attend second, if there is one."
<i> — Churchill's response</i>

"The bookshop of Kipps is on the left-hand side of the Hythe High Street coming from Folkestone, between the yard of the livery stable and the shop-window full of old silver and such like things — it is quite easy to find — and there you may see him for yourself and speak to him and buy this book of him if you like. He has it in stock, I know. Very delicately I've seen to that. His name is not Kipps, of course, you must understand that, but everything else is exactly as I have told you. You can talk to him about books, about politics, about going to Boulogne, about life, and the ups and downs of life. Perhaps he will quote you Buggins — from whom, by the bye, one can now buy everything a gentleman's wardrobe should contain at the little shop in Rendezvous Street, Folkestone. If you are fortunate to find Kipps in a good mood he may even let you know how he inherited a fortune "once." "Run froo it," he'll say with a not unhappy smile. "Got another afterwards — speckylating in plays. Needn't keep this shop if I didn't like. But it's something to do."...

Or he may be even more intimate. "I seen some things," he said to me once. "Raver! Life! Why! once I — I 'loped! I did — reely!"

(Of course you will not tell Kipps that he is "Kipps," or that I have put him in this book. He does not know. And you know, one never knows how people are going to take that sort of thing. I am an old and trusted customer now, and for many amiable reasons I should prefer that things remained exactly on their present footing.)"

If now a friend denies not what was given him in trust,
If he restores an ancient purse with all its coins and rust,
This prodigy of honesty deserves to be enrolled
In Tuscan books, and with a sacrificial lamb extolled.

But even the longest dedication is too short and too commonplace to honor a friendship so uncommon. When I try to define this asset which has been mine now for years, I tell myself that such a privilege, however rare it may be, is surely not unique; that in the whole adventure of bringing a book successfully to its conclusion, or even in the entire life of some fortunate writers, there must have been sometimes, in the background, perhaps, someone who will not let pass the weak or inaccurate sentence which we ourselves would retain, out of fatigue; someone who would re-read with us for the twentieth time, if need be, a questionable page; someone who takes down for us from the library shelves the heavy tomes in which we may find a helpful suggestion, and who persists in continuing to peruse them long after weariness has made us give up; someone who bolsters our courage and approves, or sometimes disputes, our ideas; who shares with us, and with equal fervor, the joys of art and of living, the endless work which both require, never easy but never dull; someone who is neither our shadow nor our reflection, nor even our complement, but simply himself; someone who leaves us ideally free, but who nevertheless obliges us to be fully what we are. Hospes Comesque.

This was what he had once upon a time expected and hoped of all books that he opened, that each be the one book he required, his own book.

And George H. W. Bush did it. He delivered the message to Senator Glenn Beall, who then relayed that pressure to his brother George. George Beall donated his papers to Frostburg State University in Maryland. In those records is an official “memo to file” from July 1973, acknowledging the attempted intervention. “With respect to conversations with my brother Glenn,” Beall writes, “the discussions were most superficial and very guarded. He occasionally mentioned to me the names of persons who had been to see him or who had called him with respect to the Baltimore County investigation. Names of persons that I remember him telling me about included Vice President Agnew, [the engineer] Allen Greene [sic] and George Bush….The only specific information that he passed along to me that I can recall related to a complaint that he had heard from Bush to the effect that attorneys in this office were said to be harassing persons who had been questioned by us in the Baltimore County investigation.