This Book-Collecting Game

I

FIRST, let me say that our English cousins would not understand this title. ‘Game’ to them means something quite different from what it does to us — to them it suggests something tricky. A London policeman, seeing two or three rather disreputable-looking characters acting suspiciously on a street corner, will approach them with ‘What’s your little game?’ He may say ‘gaime’; in any event, he will tell them to ‘move h’on’ or ‘be h’off.’ We, on the other hand, say that a man on leaving college is going into the electrical game, meaning thereby that he has adopted the electrical business as his profession, and that he intends to play it with what skill he has.

I have been playing this bookcollecting game for forty years; it is, indeed, the only game I thoroughly enjoy. I remember perfectly how it happened that I began to play it. For a boy, I was a sturdy reader: at school — before I ran away therefrom and never went back — I read Napoleon, having, as a small boy, consumed the ‘Rollo’ books, The Swiss Family Robinson, Sandford and Merton, Robinson Crusoe, and Great Expectations. But Napoleon as portrayed by Abbott enthralled me, and finally I came to have some twenty or thirty volumes about him — quite a lot for a lad. Then one day I awoke from my trance and saw Napoleon — as I still believe him to be — a monster in human form; whereupon I trudged off to Leary’s, that famous secondhand bookshop in Philadelphia, and sold the lot, and was ready to begin what I was pleased to think was my intellectual life over again.

Then, just at the proper moment, I fell under the sway of a man old enough to be my father, who, without consciously intending to do so, undertook to direct my reading and suggested that I form a library. ‘ It will be a great delight to you when you are older,’ he said. ‘Fine,’ I replied, ‘but where shall I begin?’ ‘At the beginning,’ he said. ‘With Homer, Pope’s translation: the Iliad; afterward read the Odyssey, which you’ll like better.’ I bought the books and have them still: two volumes, Bohn’s edition, in faded green cloth; they are the corner stones of my library. Subsequently, at my mentor’s suggestion, I read The Cloister and the Hearth and The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini. These led me to Motley and Prescott; by that time I was twenty, and had read Boswell’s Johnson, had been in London, and my education — such as it was — was complete. Certainly this education might have been better, but then it might have been worse.

In between what I may have thought was my ‘heavy reading,’ I read Dickens, Thackeray, Scott, and Charles Reade. Then the problems of life began to press rather firmly upon my shoulders, but I managed to get some reading done; and someone was good enough to tell me when I bought a book always to get, if possible, a first edition. And when I inquired why, I was told that if I ever wanted to sell my books I might get my money back if I had first editions; whereas, if I had not, I should be pretty sure not to.

Years passed: I bought what books I could; finally got married, bought a home, had children, and came to feel the need of some sort of place in the country for the summer months. It seemed, at the moment, more important to have a place in the country than to have a few hundred first editions, and as it was perfectly clear to me that I could not have both, I decided to part with some of my books. After some discussion and correspondence, carried on through a third party, I decided to sell at auction in New York, and — to save money — to make and print the catalogue myself. And I still have a copy of the slender pamphlet in which were bound up my hopes and fears. There were in all two hundred and forty-six items. I had made my notes as interesting as I could, and on the afternoon of Monday, May 18, 1896, with my catalogue in my pocket and my heart in my mouth, I climbed up the shabby stairs that led to Bangs and Company’s in lower Fifth Avenue, where the sale was to take place. One or two people nodded to me as I entered the room, but no one knew that the books were mine. On the other hand, I knew to a penny what each item cost, and to keep up appearances I bought one or two books that were going for less than they were worth; but I had to be careful, for the sale must net me twenty-five hundred dollars. And it did. As I remember, I ultimately got a check for something like twenty-seven hundred dollars; with which amount I built the cottage in the country in which I still live — with such more substantial additions as I have been able to make as I got a lead on the sheriff.

It was several years before my affairs permitted me to think seriously of again collecting books; meantime I had the mistakes to make that a city man always makes when finally, for good and all, he transfers himself to the country. How we raised every animal that could be raised — in adversity — and grew everything that refused to grow, until with increase of fortune we discovered that only the very rich could afford to milk their own cow and grow their own vegetables — of what interest is this to any man? Books are my theme.

II

A permanent bent had been given to my life and interests by my first visit to London. Its individuality was greater forty years ago than to-day: something — maybe it is democracy — is tending to make most of us colorless and uninteresting. In an effort to recreate myself in a less commonplace world, I became a reader of biography. Of soldiers and soldiering I had had enough; for politicians, playing their crooked and sordid games, I had — and still have — a feeling of abhorrence. The lives of actors and actresses always promise to be interesting but seldom are. My great regret is that, as a young man, I was never led to read Shakespeare, almost to the exclusion of everything else. But he once seemed too remote for me; and this feeling led me to neglect the seventeenth century; in the eighteenth I found the leisure which was lacking in my own. I became, ex officio, a member of the Johnson circle. I exchanged — happy exchange — my perplexities for those of Oliver Goldsmith: what shall be the name of the new play? — which was to deal a body blow to the artificial comedies of Congreve, the plots of which no man can follow without a compass. How will it be received? Under what circumstances and difficulties was The Rivals produced? And The School for Scandal? I had never seen The Critic, but I could read it; I owned a copy, for I had discovered — and it was the only discovery I ever made — that any book worth reading was worth owning. Almost unconsciously I began to buy books again: once more I was a book-collector.

I have followed the course of many book-collectors. If he be a rich man he begins by buying subscription books in binding, and if he continues to play the game he will come to hate them. If he be young, he will begin with some modern author, Dickens, or Stevenson, or Kipling, perhaps with Bret Harte; but it makes little difference where one begins, if one keeps on: sooner or later he will wish to own the masterpieces of literature in first editions, and will buy them if he can. The longing I had for a first Vicar of Wakefield is not to be expressed. And a professed lover of Boswell should have a first edition of his great biography, uncut and in boards, especially as a fine copy was then to be had for fifty dollars. A good resolution is never to be satisfied with a poor copy of a book at any price; a superlatively fine copy of a great book is always cheap.

I have referred to book-collccting as a game: it is, and a pleasant one, calling for all the skill you may acquire and as much money as you can afford to spend. If you play it with the ‘rigour’ that Sarah Battle enjoined when playing whist with Charles Lamb, it will take more money than you can afford — then it will prove positively exciting. I shall assume in this paper that if, and when, you stop collecting, should you decide to dispose of your collection, you will have no objection to getting your money back. To do this, you must not ride your hobby too far off the beaten track. Let me explain what I mean.

Let us assume that you have decided to make a collection of Kipling — the greatest English author now living, with the exception of Thomas Hardy. You may begin where you will, as your purse and opportunity afford. You may decide to buy a copy of Schoolboy Lyrics — his first book, if book it may be called — a tiny pamphlet, in brown paper covers, of which fifty copies were printed by his father; it is now worth fifteen hundred dollars. Or you may start with that excellent story, Captains Courageous, the manuscript of which has recently passed into the Pierpont Morgan Library, and of which three first editions are known: namely, the S. S. McClure edition, of which only five copies were published to secure the copyright, the edition published in New York in 1897 by the Century Company, and the edition published that same year in London; either of these last you can get for five dollars. It would, of course, be nice to have the edition of which only five copies were printed, rather than either the first American or the first English edition; but in any case a good beginning has been made, for these, any of them, are books. An article in a magazine is a different matter: it is practically impossible and almost useless to follow an author through the magazines. And, unless it is your purpose to present your collection of an author to some library or institution, stop with the important books and the important waifs and strays — if this contradictory phrase may be allowed. Otherwise, one’s time and money are spent in an exhaustive search for an item hardly worth having when found. Long before the possibilities of Kipling are exhausted, I should turn my attention to some other author of equal distinction of the same period: in the case we are imagining, it would be Thomas Hardy.

Why, do you say? For this reason. Let us suppose an auction sale at which three or four hundred items of one subject are to be disposed of. Kipling does not fit into everyone’s collection; not everyone — not even the booksellers, who are certain to be present — knows as much about the subject as a man who has for years specialized upon it, and it may happen that a unique item which may have cost you a lot of money will be knocked down for a song. Another reason: there is such a thing as ‘sales fatigue.’ It is difficult for the auctioneer to keep his customers’ interest from flagging at a long sale in wdiich there is no variety: variety is the spice of life, and nowhere is it more necessary than in the auction room.

It will be seen that I am at the moment writing from the point of view of the seller; from the buyer’s point of view, these long and wearisome sales afford excellent opportunities for strengthening one’s collection. And here let it be said that if the average man seeks to make a representative collection of a fairly voluminous author one subject will serve to occupy him for several years: occasionally it will occupy a lifetime. I have in mind the collection of The Dance of Death, the most remarkable of its kind ever formed, which was assembled by Miss Susan Minns of Boston. It was sold several years ago by the American Art Association in New York, and in the introduction to the excellent sales catalogue Miss Minns tells how she put the collection together, piece by piece, over many years. In dispersing it she sportily said: ‘I have had the pleasure of collecting: let others have the same.’ I applaud the sentiment, but the collection should have been kept together as a monument to the lady’s unrivaled knowledge and industry. A bore once asked Oliver Herford what he would like most to see; after a pause he replied: ‘I should like to see you throw a raw egg into an electric fan.’ Now, were the question put to me, I should say I should like to see the ordinarily well-informed man, not knowing of Miss Minns’s hobby, start telling her something about The Dance of Death.

III

To return to Thomas Hardy. His first book was Desperate Remedies, published anonymously, by Tinsley Brothers, in three volumes: in those days all novels were published in three volumes, and it was usual for the circulating libraries to buy a certain number of every novel when it came out, few people caring to venture thirty shillings — the established price — upon a work of fiction, especially if the author were unknown. Hence it is that almost all copies of an author’s first book (I am speaking of novels) are know as ‘exlibrary’ copies, meaning that a library label has been pasted upon the binding, leaving a stain if removed, and accounting for other damage. From this it will be seen how difficult it is to come across a fine copy in cloth. Bound copies make, of course, a fine appearance on one’s shelves, but fastidious collectors have declared for original cloth, or boards with the paper labels, as the case may be, and are prepared to back their fancy to a pretty steep figure. Even as I write there comes to my table a catalogue from Walter M. Hill of Chicago, whose catalogues, by the way, always deserve careful reading. Note how lovingly he describes this item: —

AUSTEN (Jane). Sense and Sensibility; a novel. In three Volumes. By a Lady. London. Printed for the author and published by T. Egerton, 1811. First Edition. $900.00

In the original blue boards and with the paper labels, and in perfect state. No foreign element has entered into the physical condition of the copy. A most unusual book in the most desirable and rare state of perfection.

I need it to complete my set. The temptation to buy it is almost irresistible, but one can’t have everything.

Of Jane Austen, Mr. R. W. Chapman, the Secretary of the Oxford University Press, one night, not long ago, told me an interesting story. A friend of his, dining with Lord Rosebery, was asked by the noble lord what was the second-best novel in the language. ‘We are agreed, I take it, that Tom Jones stands first.’ ‘We are,’ replied the guest, ‘and I should say that the second-best was Emma.' ‘You are right,’ said Lord Rosebery. The noble lord spoke positively; I am not quite so sure myself, but then I am not a noble lord.

We were speaking of the difficulty of getting first editions in their original cloth or boards. The moment a book is rebound it must be viewed with suspicion. Half titles are frequently lacking, or, if present, may have been taken from second or later editions. Or it may be that some ignorant bookseller has taken upon himself to add a half title to a book which in its first state had none. Too much is quite as bad as too little: anything more or less than the book in the condition its author gave it to the world is not now favorably regarded. If you ask me ‘Why?’ let me say that what an expert binder can do to a book would make your eyes pop out of your head. A title-page, or any other page, can be reproduced so that even experts have been deceived. And it has always been so. A century ago, in London, a man named Harris supplied complicated title-pages with such skill as resulted in their being shown, for years, as original in the British Museum before detection. The ‘recasing’ of books, which sometimes extends to ‘resewing,’ the use of new end papers, and such sophistications, are pitfalls which should be avoided; I infinitely prefer to have the leaves of a book not overclean rat her than ‘washed,’ because the process of washing involves the use of chemicals, some of which may remain in the paper, ultimately making it brittle.

And, obviously, rebinding a book, unless it is done carefully, usually means the reduction of margins — and size is a matter of the utmost consideration in buying a book. Binders, all of them, deserve to be hung by the feet until they are dead for the offenses their ancestors in the trade have committed. The nonchalance with which a binder put a book under a knife and removed a substantial fraction of its margins is now recognized as a crime. Every important library contains numbers of rare volumes which, had they been allowed to remain in their original condition, tied up with a bit of string if the leaves were loose, would to-day be priceless; as it is, they may indeed be so, but how much more valuable would they be had they not been subjected to the process of cropping!

Blessings upon the head of Daniel Charles Solander, a botanist of distinction, who after extensive travels became a ‘Keeper’ in the British Museum. He invented the leather case which bears his name. It is a box in the exact shape of a book, in which some precious volume may be kept, and which, when placed upon one’s shelves, has the appearance of a book. Such cases are usually made of morocco, sometimes covering asbestos boards, which render them practically fireproof. I almost never have a book bound: the moment one does so, some question arises which could perhaps have been settled if the book had not been tampered with. Many collectors, in binding their books or in having slip cases made for them, — a slip case being a simpler form of case, — have their novels bound in one color, their poetry in another, and so on. This adds variety and beauty to one’s books and makes it easier to recognize some particular volume when sought. After Solander’s death in 1782, it was sought to honor him in some way, and a small island somewhere in the Pacific was named after him; but a ‘Solander case’ is more frequently referred to than the island, I am quite certain of it.

I have not animadverted upon the collection of books in sets. Let me explain what I mean. Certain sets one must have; no gentleman’s library is complete without them: sets of Dickens, and Scott, or Parkman, or Motley, and hundreds of others. These are backbone books — one must have them; but their possession confers upon their owner no more distinction than a pair of pants. There are, however, other books which give perpetual delight; these vary with the wealth and learning of the collector. In my own case a fine copy of Benjamin Franklin’s Cato Major in original binding, the first classic translated and published in America (in Philadelphia in 1744), would do it; whereas Mr. Henry E. Huntington would have to produce the original manuscript of Franklin’s Autobiography — and he could do it, too.

IV

The only ‘set’ of first editions I ever bought, complete, in binding, is my set of Trollope. I bought it years ago before the renaissance of this great Victorian had set in. I am glad to have it, — many of the books are practically unobtainable in their original condition, — but it gives me no feeling of pride. When, not long ago, Michael Sadleir, an ardent English Trollopean, wrote to ask me a question as to the original binding of one of Trollope’s early books, I was obliged to confess that as my set was in binding I could not answer his question.

I like to think that I am responsible in some measure for Trollope’s present vogue, both with readers and with collectors. I have always delighted in him because of his humor, and his marvelous pictures of nineteenthcentury English life. After his death a quietus was put to his fame by the publication of his Autobiography. In it he described the perfunctory way in which he wrote his novels, and, his own generation of readers dying with him, the next would have nothing to do with him. ‘How can novels so produced be anything but stupid? it was said. Years ago I wrote a small paper on the genius of Trollope, being led to do so by the appearance of a silly article in an English magazine to the effect that Trollope was as dead as Cæsar. And about the same time Professor Phelps of Yale wrote in his book on the English novel that ‘no one would dare call Trollope a genius’; whereupon I rose and said, ‘I do.’ To-day Trollopeans are everywhere, even in England. He has more firstrate novels to his credit than any other writer. A complete set of his writings runs to sixty-eight titles, one hundred and thirty-four volumes! Anyone who wishes to spend a delightful evening or two with this novelist will read his Autobiography. And would you read an excellent novel? Try The Eustace Diamonds.

I sometimes think that the greatest joy that comes from playing this book-collecting game is the delightful acquaintances one makes — tastes in common soon flower into friendships. Through my interest in William Blake I came to meet and know intimately Graham Robertson — an English authority and collector of that fascinating man. It happened in this way: I was in the British Museum one day, talking to Laurence Binyon. He asked me if I knew Robertson, and I replied, ‘No, but I should like to.’ ‘I think I can arrange it,’ said Binyon; and a few days later I received a letter saying that Mr. Robertson was out of town, but if I would call at a certain house in Knightsbridge his housekeeper would show me his collection of paintings. I did so, and saw some wonderful paintings, — they are now in the Tate Gallery, — and when subsequently I wrote Mr. Robertson thanking him for his courtesy I remarked that we had other tastes in common; and I mentioned Gilbert and Sullivan and Irving and Terry. Whereupon I received another letter from Robertson, saying that if I, in addition to being a Blake collector, was a Gilbert and Sullivan and an Irving and Terry enthusiast, he wished I would come down into the country and spend a day with him; that all his best Blakes were in the country, and that he himself had not been in his London house for several years. He said that he would meet me at the railway station; that I could not miss him, as he was a plain-looking old man, but that he would be accompanied by the finest sheep dog in England. I went, met Mr. Robertson without difficulty, spent a happy day with a most delightful gentleman; and I have never since gone to England without spending a day in his company, and his letters to me are a joy. And, of course, I know well Geoffrey Keynes, the splendid young surgeon of ‘Barts.,’ whose bibliographical studies of Blake would seem to be the last word on the subject — at least the Grolier Club thought so when it brought out its splendid volume.

Let me mention another man, John Burns, England’s one-time Labor leader, and one of the most brilliant men I ever met. His acquaintance I made in Sawyer’s bookshop. The Honorable John is self-educated, but what an education! He has half a dozen degrees from as many universities. What are his interests? Well, in addition to statistics on every conceivable subject, I should say they are Politics, London, History, Architecture, Town Planning, and Sir Thomas More, of whom he has the finest collection in the world. He is a seasoned book-hunter, has a wonderful library, and a memory which is bewildering to a man who, like myself, was born with a complete forgettery in place of that useful organ. He does not believe in war, gave up office and five thousand pounds a year for conscience’ sake; but, England once in, he did what he could himself, saw his son and only child go, — never to come back, — and now, with his very charming wife, he lives in semiretirement, with his books.

Through book-collecting I came to meet and know that rare personality, Amy Lowell, and, through her, Professor Palmer of Harvard. The meeting with him came about in this way. I had been spending some weeks visiting friends ‘down east,’ and when I got to Boston one hot August day I said to myself, ‘Well, it’s been a pleasant holiday, but it’s over now: all my friends will be out of town. Ellery Sedgwick I know is away, and Amy Lowell will be rusticating somewhere. Nevertheless, I’ll go through the motions of calling them up.’ I was right as to Sedgwick, but wrong as to Miss Lowell. After the usual delays came the rich, wellrounded voice over the telephone (the voice I shall, alas! never hear again): ‘What brings you to these parts? Certainly you may come to dinner. I ’ll send the motor for you. You ’ll find a dear old gentleman in it: Professor Palmer. He’s dining with me; he’s a book-collector too.’ ‘Why, he’s the very man I came to Boston to see,’ I replied. ‘You did!’ cried Miss Lowell. ‘I supposed you had come to see me! However, come to dinner and I ’ll show Professor Palmer to you.’ Now Professor Palmer not only teaches philosophy — he practises it; his chief claim to distinction, however, is his knowledge of Greek. He has translated Homer’s Odyssey into a ‘best seller.’ ‘When ’Omer smote ’is blooming lyre,’ as Kipling says, I wonder what he would have thought had he been told that some three thousand years later, in a world to him unknown, and in a manner to him unsuspected, a fellow by the name of Palmer would sing his songs, in a barbarous tongue, to an audience of over a quarter of a million people.

That evening when Miss Lowell’s motor called for us we found Professor Palmer ensconced therein, and I soon discovered that a fine bibliographical evening was in contemplation; for the dear old man had with him a green baize bag, such as Philadelphia lawyers used to carry, full of rare books to show to Miss Lowell, in exchange for which she was to show him her wonderful Keats collection, which is now one of the treasures of Harvard. There is a fine spirit of rivalry among collectors, and I said to myself that there would probably be some exhibition riding of hobbyhorses, and I had a feeling of satisfaction in the belief that, although my nag might stumble once or twice, it would not get altogether out of hand.

That evening was one to be remembered. Miss Lowell was in fine form: she radiated hospitality as she welcomed us at the door of her stately mansion in its park of green velvet, studded with fine old trees — which I should describe as elms but for a story I once heard. A little girl was visiting at an English country house situated in a park famous for its fine old trees. As she strolled around with her host after dinner, knowing that she was expected to remark upon their beauty, she exclaimed, ‘How beautiful those old elms are! If they could speak, what would they say?’ To which her host replied quietly, ‘They would say, I think, “We are oaks.”’ Anxious to avoid the chance of a tart correction from Miss Lowell, I content myself with describing her trees as stately, and let them go at that.

I soon discovered that poetry was to be the subject of the evening. Out of Mr. Palmer’s green bag came one rare volume after another: Herrick, and Herbert, and Blake, and Milton; giants, housed in tiny volumes, one after another, all to be matched by Miss Lowell. And as I was not called upon to prove possession, it was easy enough for me to say, ‘I have that, too.’ Finally I said to Mr. Palmer, ‘Let us see your Lovelace Lucasta; mine is in old sheep.’ Out of the bag it came, but, unluckily, in a modern binding. ‘I have you both there,’ said Miss Lowell, displaying, with glee, her copy of the rare little volume; ‘look at the title-page.’ We looked, and found thereon the inscription, ‘Ex dono authoris.’ It was as pretty a game of ‘authors’ as I have ever seen played, and the sport continued till after midnight, at which time it was agreed that I should witness a game of what might be called ‘solitaire’ as played by Mr. Palmer in his library next morning.

My visit to Professor Palmer will ever be remembered: he is a past master in the art of book-collecting, and has since my first visit to him given his fine collection of first editions of English poetry to Wellesley College in memory of his wife, the late Alice Freeman Palmer. He accompanied his gift with an excellent catalogue, — a large volume, well printed, and substantially bound, — and he has also printed a slender little volume, Notes on a Collection of English Poetry, of which he had thirty copies struck off at the Riverside Press at Cambridge, one of which is before me. Immediately following the title-page is a quotation from the famous translation of The Ship of Fooles, reading, —

and more to the same effect.

Then follows, after his explanation of how the collection came to be formed, the considered judgment of so fine a scholar and so eminent a collector that I cannot do better than to quote it: ‘It is easy to overestimate the value of old books . . . their shape is often unhandy, their type and paper poor; they usually abound in typographical errors, and they are not supplied with such notes and introductions as enable a reader to stand where the printer stood. . . . But they have a sentimental value as having been used by contemporaries of the author, perhaps by the author himself. . . . In my feeling, the presence of the poet is there, as it cannot be in later issues.’ He then goes on to say, ‘The cost of such books is very great and it constantly and rapidly rises. A narrowing supply makes this inevitable. Every time such books are sold a good proportion of them go into some public library, from which they never emerge. Each year, therefore, diminishes the number open to purchase, while the desire to possess them grows with the spread of wealth and refinement. A few rich men have doubled their permanent price in a single year.’ It would not be easy to better this explanation. And I am entirely in accord with Professor Palmer’s ideas as to the best arrangement of books in their places on the shelves. He says, ‘Ease of access is the first end of classification,’ but he prefers, as I do, the chronological rather than the alphabetical arrangement. It offends him to see Crashaw follow Crabbe, or Burns follow Browning: ‘When I go to a shelf I wish to find there the men who worked together, to sec the little imitators gathered about their master mind. We view our poets, then, as living social beings each among his fellows. This is the instinctive order, setting forth relationships even to the casual eye.’

As I walked away through Harvard Yard after my delightful visit, my thoughts were of the not very Reverend Laurence Sterne who invented the hobbyhorse: the hobby — not the thing itself, but the name for it. Somewhere in Tristram Shandy are lines to this effect: ‘Have not the wisest men of all ages had their hobbyhorses, their running horses, their cockleshells, their drums, their trumpets, their fiddles, their books, or their butterflies, and as long as a man rides his hobbyhorse peacefully and quietly along the King’s highway and compels neither you nor me to get up behind him, why should we complain?’ Why indeed! But that when one sees a fellow creature toiling along life’s highway, going in our direction, should we not give him a lift? Especially if the horse we are riding will safely carry two; and it may happen, when ‘your brother man’ or ‘gentler sister woman’ gets up beside you, that you discover one having like tastes with yourself: if so, I say, the journey’s as good as over.

A man without a hobby is to be pitied and avoided: if he is not exactly looking for trouble, he is, at least, willing to meet it halfway; he gets no joy out of life and he has little sympathy for those who do. I don’t much care what a man’s hobby is: he is a better fellow for having one. The name of Harry Worcester Smith occurs to me; he is a hobby-rider if I know one (he took his hunting stable and a pack of hounds to Ireland and gave good sport). Ask him to put a sentiment in his delightful Sporting Tour, in two fine volumes, in which his experiences in the old country are narrated, and he will write: ‘A sporting life is sometimes checkered but never dull. ’ His presence in your house at breakfast is as exhilarating as champagne at midnight. He never stops to inquire whither you are going and whether you expect to be happy when you get there: he is content to take a chance and join you; for him the destination is not so important as the sense of progress.

Sometimes, when people see the pleasure I get out of my efforts to escape the monotony of life, I am asked: ‘What hobby shall I ride? What shall I collect?’ But to answer this question I have to know what you have in mind when you say ‘collecting’: whether it be merely for the sake of killing time — of all things in the world the most valuable — or whether, perchance, some one thing, some man or woman, or period in history, or thing accomplished by the sons of Adam, interests you enormously: in that case, that is it.

There are rules for collectors, of course, but the exceptions are numerous and brilliant. We are told, for instance, that collectors should begin young, and some, no doubt, do. About a year ago I received a note, written from New York, reading thus: ‘I have read your books and have enjoyed them very much, hence I do not hesitate to ask you for your autograph. I am now eleven years old. When I get to be a man I am going to have a library like J. P. Morgan.’ I shrieked for joy, to find, at last, a person not afraid to give Mr. Morgan a run for his money; and in my enthusiasm, after I had answered the letter, I sent it over to Miss Belle da Costa Greene, the librarian of the Morgan Library, saying that after she had worked herself out of a job there was another awaiting her — and such jobs do not grow on trees. In due course I heard the sequel: how Miss Greene had written my young friend a note telling him that if he seriously intended to form a library like Mr. Morgan’s it was high time he got started, and asking him to call on a particular day and hour. The day and hour came, and the lad; Miss Greene was waiting. The boy was not overcome, as I was when first I entered that noble and beautiful building, filled with some of the greatest bibliographical treasures in the world; but, walking up to Miss Greene, he introduced himself, and, in answer to her question, explained that at present his means would not permit of his buying any books, but that he was making a collection of catalogues of Mitchell Kennerley’s Anderson Galleries, and the American Art Association, and that he had priced copies of the more important sales of the past year. Miss Greene does not often meet her match, but she did then, and when, to hide her confusion, she asked him if he wanted to see any particular book, he replied, ‘Yes, I should like to see the first book printed, the Gutenberg Bible.’ It was brought him, whereupon he at once began to count the lines to discover whether the first pages were of the forty or the forty-two line issue. And this at the age of eleven! On the other hand, Mr. Huntington, who has formed tHe most important library of modern times, did not begin until he was a man of middle age. One reads of an automobile in five seconds getting up to a speed of twenty-five miles: this is nothing to the speed that Mr. Huntington has developed.

V

After a man has rowed his way across a river, it is hardly worth while for him to regret that he has not crossed by the bridge; he has arrived, that is the important thing. But I cannot free my mind from the belief that if I had my life to live over again I should take on ‘Americana.’ There is no element of ‘fad’ about it, as there may be about Conrad or Stevenson, for instance. It has come to stay, but it is now too late for me to get up any interest in a badly printed tract describing what is now Virginia, or to go into an ecstasy at the sight of a map, which at a glance one can tell is a gigantic error, simply because I am told it is the first map of what is now North America. But other men, wiser than I, not only can but do. I spent some hours a year ago in the William L. Clements Library, which is now a part of the University of Michigan, and I have read with interest Mr. Clements’s admirable volume describing his books, which accompanied his gift to that university. It is a remarkable book for a business man to write, and it only goes to prove how entirely mistaken are those who think that American business men are without ideals: the very reverse is the fact.

Visit Ann Arbor and see the simple but beautiful temple which contains the books which were, a short time since, the hobby of a busy man of affairs. Read Mr. Clements’s modest but scholarly essay in which he says: ‘All collections must have their beginnings, and in 1903 the foundation of this one was made by the purchase . . . of a library of about a thousand volumes.’ I would not say that his account of the growth of his collection is as fascinating as a romance, but anyone who cares to read about books relating to the discovery of North America and its development from nothing to that great nation that we call the United States — the greatest romance in the world — will find that a new planet has swum into his ken. That the custodian, Randolph Adams, practically grew up in my library suggests that he is a book-lover; his admirable little book, The Whys and Wherefores of the William L. Clements Library, or a Brief Essay on Book Collecting as a Fine Art, is an excellent treatise written by a scholar whose proper subject is American history. And when I read the excellent reviews that Adams’s History of the Foreign Policy of the United States is receiving I was thankful that I did what I could to persuade him to become a happy and useful citizen rather than to attempt to make a living by practising what is called ‘the law,’ which — I agree with Bernard Shaw — is not a profession but a conspiracy. I was amazed to learn from Adams that the United States had a ‘foreign policy’: it certainly did not have under Bryan.

I have not suggested that every state in the Union offers a fair field for the collector; that the subject will continue to grow in interest and importance; and that the time will come when books which can now be had for a few dollars will be worth hundreds, perhaps thousands of dollars. I am sure of it. ‘What books?’ you say. Ah! I do not know. Ask the college professors who are working in the subject, or Lathrop Harper of New York, a most reliable guide; ask Dr. Rosenbach, who only a few days ago exchanged a monarch’s ransom for a small specimen; ask my friend J. Christian Bay, who is now lecturing on the ‘Incunabula of Chicago,’ — delicious title, — meaning, thereby, books printed in Chicago before the fire! And then think that there are thousands of men who were not children when that city was still smouldering in ashes. The growth of Chicago is the measure by which we should judge the interest in Americana.

Book-collecting is a great sport; every day new players are joining in the game; we amateurs are playing it against professionals, and sometimes it costs us money, but not so much as one might suppose. To play against Dr. Rosenbach is like trying to break the bank at Monte Carlo; yet even he has sold me items which he would now take off my hands at three or four times what I paid for them. A rare book should, and usually does, advance in value, but it is a good deal more fun to anticipate the rise than to buy it at a high price after it has risen. There are thousands of excellent books by important authors which will never be ‘collected,’ for the reason that the first edition was so large. The books to collect are those the success of which was at one time problematical, or those which the subsequent work of an author has made important: these constantly rise in value. Of books of yesterday: de la Mare’s Songs of Childhood, Masefield’s Salt Water Ballads, Housman’s Shropshire Lad, Sheila Kaye-Smith’s Tramping Methodist, Morley’s Parnassus on Wheels, keep on advancing in price, to the bewilderment of their authors. How long they will hold their present value, or whether they will go still higher, nobody knows; but it would seem safe to say that an author’s first book, if his subsequent work survives the critics, could be bought with impunity. Collectors of modern books now have excellent bibliographies to guide them: these were entirely lacking when I first began to play the game. Some of these are monuments of bibliographical exactness, others are of errors all compact; but, good or bad, as Dr. Johnson says of dictionaries, the worst is better than none.

VI

In the book market I have seen many changes: no longer is London, or indeed England, the only market in which to buy books. For almost a century we have been drawing on that great reservoir, and the level of the supply is permanently lowered; there are now more good booksellers in England than there are good books. There is a glamour, a romance, about prowling around in the bookshops of the old country, but the best picking is now to be had at home, especially in New York City. The book-collector, early in the game, will do well to attract the attention of some good bookseller. This is easy: half a dozen purchases and as many intelligent questions will do it. But he should also study the catalogues, which, once his name gets on the booksellers’ lists, will come to him by every mail, and the auction sales should always be kept in mind. It is great fun going to book auctions, and the auctioneers’ catalogues are mines of information. In the auction room in New York a great book will always bring what it is worth, and frequently more. Not long ago a copy of Milton’s Comus brought twenty-one thousand, five hundred dollars. Now I don’t mean to say that it is not worth what it fetched, for where will you find another? And if and when you do, it will bring more. But less famous books, equally scarce, frequently bring less than they are worth. The fact is,— and I state it reluctantly, — we collectors do not know our literature as well as we should; we concentrate our attention too much on star items. This makes the market ‘spotty,’ as the stockbrokers say. These are facts to be reckoned with, and one must remember that scarcity alone will not make a book sell at a high price; or, to state the matter another way, it is always unwise to wrench a book out of its natural habitat. A book much sought in Paris, sold at auction in New York, may bring little or nothing.

Let us not neglect the wood for the trees. What a glorious thing is English literature! The man who elects to study it in first editions is riding a noble hobby. Consider its venerable age, its unbroken continuity, its tremendous range. We have the greatest poetry, and drama, and fiction in the world; in essays we yield the palm only to Montaigne, and we have the only biography worth speaking of. What a variety! We book-collectors each of us can ride an animal differing, in some respect, from every other animal; but we are alike in this: that as we put it through its paces and explain its good points to our auditor — when we can find one — we are enjoying life to a degree that a man without a hobby knows nothing of. The exercise keeps the breath of life in us long after we have outlived our usefulness. Whether this be a good thing or not, let our heirs, executors, administrators, and assigns say. I once knew a Philadelphian, Ferdinand J. Dreer, who retired from business before he was forty to prepare himself for death, which he thought imminent. To occupy his mind he began to collect autographs, and lived to the age of eighty, forming one of the finest collections ever made in this country. At his death he bequeathed his priceless collection to the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, and his name will ever be remembered. May it not be said of the accomplished hobbyrider, as Johnson said of Shakespeare, that panting Time toils after him in vain?