title: Old Books, Rare Friends: Two Literary Sleuths and Their Shared Passion
author: Madeline B. Stern
description: Like <i>84, Charing Cross Road</i>, Leona Rostenberg and Madeleine Stern's charming bibliocentric memoir is as much about relationships as it is about books. <i>Charing Cross</i> chronicled the decades-long epistolary friendship between American book lover Helene Hanff and Frank Doel, the equally devoted British bookseller in the London shop from whom she bought many of her treasures. Rostenberg and Stern's book once again proves how a passion for great literature can make for fast friends. And in their case, these two octogenarians occupy the same geographical space, sharing both their professional and private lives.
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  # The Third Person
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### Henry James
  
  
  This page copyright © 2002 Munsey's.
  
  
  http://www.munseys.com
  
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  ### 1
  
  
  
  
  
    
  
  
    
  When, a few years since, two good ladies, previously not intimate
  
  
  nor indeed more than slightly acquainted, found themselves domiciled
  
  
  together in the small but ancient town of Marr, it was as a result,
  
  
  naturally, of special considerations. They bore the same name and were
  
  
  second cousins; but their paths had not hitherto crossed; there had
  
  
  not been coincidence of age to draw them together; and Miss Frush, the
  
  
  more mature, had spent much of her life abroad. She was a bland, shy,
  
  
  sketching person, whom fate had condemned to a monotony — triumphing
  
  
  over variety — of Swiss and Italian _pensions_ ; in any one of
  
  
  which, with her well-fastened hat, her gauntlets and her stout boots,
  
  
  her camp-stool, her sketch-book, her Tauchnitz novel, she would have
  
  
  served with 