Poor Poll left a fortune proved she read all the books in the London Library

This is how it all came about. Six or seven of us were sitting one day
after tea.

Some were gazing across the street into the windows of a
milliner's shop where the light still shone brightly upon scarlet
feathers and golden slippers. Others were idly occupied in building
little towers of sugar upon the edge of the tea tray.

After a time, so
far as I can remember, we drew round the fire and began as usual to
praise men--how strong, how noble, how brilliant, how courageous, how
beautiful they were--how we envied those who by hook or by crook managed
to get attached to one for life--when Poll, who had said nothing, burst
into tears. Poll, I must tell you, has always been queer. For one thing
her father was a strange man. He left her a fortune in his will, but on
condition that she read all the books in the London Library.

We
comforted her as best we could; but we knew in our hearts how vain it
was. For though we like her, Poll is no beauty; leaves her shoe laces
untied; and must have been thinking, while we praised men, that not one
of them would ever wish to marry her.

At last she dried her tears. For
some time we could make nothing of what she said. Strange enough it was
in all conscience. She told us that, as we knew, she spent most of her
time in the London Library, reading. She had begun, she said, with
English literature on the top floor; and was steadily working her way
down to the _Times_ on the bottom. And now half, or perhaps only a
quarter, way through a terrible thing had happened. She could read no
more. Books were not what we thought them. "Books," she cried, rising to
her feet and speaking with an intensity of desolation which I shall
never forget, "are for the most part unutterably bad

extract from virginia woolfs monday or tuesday

available of project gutenberg