Every librarian carries a pencil. Almost every page is cacophony, but now and then the cacophony breaks for a word — whole, bounded, set down by no hand. The pencil marks it. At six letters the reader is asked for a name, and the name stands beside the word for ever.
The ledger holds only what was come upon. A page reached by search, or by an address handed to you, is read and not recorded: the library will put any text on a real page, so a page that holds a word is never proof of a find. The walk is the proof.
A word of five letters falls on one page in 68. Of six, one in 1,130. Of seven, one in 21,459. Of eight, one in 500,000. Of nine, one in 20,000,000.