strange interlude

Not that I have any issues with Nook or Kindle -- I love them like I've loved every minute of the Internet Age -- but there are just so many used books on real paper out there from years gone by and they're still hard to resist.  They may be mildewed or dog-eared or stained with coffee, or they smell like someone's basement or attic or are full of crazy scrawled notes in the margins; they may have ridiculously dated cover art or the name of a total stranger written on the cover page -- but that's why they're irresistible.  They've been on mysterious journeys, traveled on planes and trains, ended up in yard sales or at thrift shops or -- if they're lucky -- at a good old-fashioned secondhand or rare bookstore. 

This particular book is really the play Strange Interlude by Eugene O'Neil in book form, published by Boni & Liveright in 1928.  Albert Boni and Horace Liveright re-energized American publishing in the early part of the 20th century by printing works by then-modernist authors like O'Neil and also Theodore Dreiser, Ernest Hemingway and William Faulker -- to name a few.  This edition of Strange Interlude has an inscription as you can see:

Charlotte

from 
Madge & Roy
-- Xmas 1928

You have to wonder who Charlotte was, along with Madge & Roy.  My guess is that they probably weren't too traditional since they were reading Boni & Liveright and because Xmas is used, something that wasn't too common back in the 1920s, i.e., leaving the Christ out of Christmas.  Otherwise the book cover is falling off of the binding and there seems to be a pawprint on the inside leaf.  Strange Interlude was found in a box of wayward books at a church sale, and I think it cost about 50 cents.

ACT ONE/SCENE:  The library of PROFESSOR LEEDS' home in a small university town in New England...a small room with a low ceiling.  The furniture has been selected with a love for old New England pieces.  The walls are lined almost to the ceiling with glassed-in bookshelves....