Davis, Clyde Brion. The Anointed (New York: Farrar & Rinehart, 1937) 277 p.

After sailing all over the world a young man settles in San Francisco with a librarian named Marie.

So here I was looking at this stone building much larger than a warehouse. And all of a sudden I stopped stock-still with the thought that this tremendous big building was full of nothing but books. Thousands—hundreds of thousands—of books in there. Most of the smart men that had lived for centuries had written down the things they had studied out and these things had been printed in books.

The thought of it made me gasp like falling into cold water. (p. 229-230).