A Find - or Two

It's a red letter day when you find a new bookshop opening, rather than an old one closing down (I mean of course second-hand bookshops- I'm afraid I don't have much to do with the other kind these days). It happened to me this morning. I was walking past what used to be a thoroughly uninviting house clearance business and noticed there were a few bookstalls outside - but that was just the beginning; the inside was full of books - very full, and only partly organised. The pleasant young man in charge (who had been talking rather intensely with a woman, and pressed a book on her as she left) told me he'd just opened and was still getting things properly shelved, classified and alphabetised - but from what was already on show it was clear that this was a shop well worth browsing in, with a rich mixed stock which I shall certainly be examining in more depth soon. In the meanwhile, I pounced on an edition (a wartime reprint on thin paper) of Logan Pearsall Smith's All Trivia, his collected short aphoristic prose pieces. Who could resist a volume prefaced thus? -
'THE AUTHOR
These pieces of moral prose have been written, dear Reader, by a large Carnivorous Mammal, belonging to that sub-order of the Animal Kingdom which includes also the Orang-outang, the tusked Gorilla, the Baboon with his bright blue and scarlet bottom, and the gentle Chimpanzee.'