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235
The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft
·
George Gissing
37
Sacrifice--in
no
drawing-room
sense
of
the
word.
Dozens
of
my
books
were
purchased
with
money
which
ought
to
have
been
spent
upon
what
are
called
the
necessaries
of
life.
Many
a
time
I
have
stood
before
a
stall,
or
a
bookseller's
window,
torn
by
conflict
of
intellectual
desire
and
bodily
need.
At
the
very
hour
of
dinner,
when
my
stomach
clamoured
for
food,
I
have
been
stopped
by
sight
of
a
volume
so
long
coveted,
and
marked
at
so
advantageous
a
price,
that
I
could
not
let
it
go;
yet
to
buy
it
meant
pangs
of
famine.
My
Heyne's
Tibullus
was
grasped
at
such
a
moment.
It
lay
on
the
stall
of
the
old
book-shop
in
Goodge
Street--a
stall
where
now
and
then
one
found
an
excellent
thing
among
quantities
of
rubbish.
Sixpence
was
the
price--sixpence!
At
that
time
I
used
to
eat
my
mid-day
meal
(of
course
my
dinner)
at
a
coffee-shop
in
Oxford
Street,
one
of
the
real
old
coffee-shops,
such
as
now,
I
suppose,
can
hardly
be
found.
Sixpence
was
all
I
had--yes,
all
I
had
in
the
world;
it
would
purchase
a
plate
of
meat
and
vegetables.
But
I
did
not
dare
to
hope
that
the
Tibullus
would
wait
until
the
morrow,
when
a
certain
small
sum
fell
due
to
me.
I
paced
the
pavement,
fingering
the
coppers
in
my
pocket,
eyeing
the
stall,
two
appetites
at
combat
within
me.
The
book
was
bought
and
I
went
home
with
it,
and
as
I
made
a
dinner
of
bread
and
butter
I
gloated
over
the
pages.
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