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The Bibliotaph’s major passion was for collecting books; but he had a minor passion, the bare mention of which caused people to lift their eyebrows suspiciously. He was a shameless, a persistent, and a successful hunter of autographs. His desire was for the signatures of living men of letters, though an occasional dead author would be allowed a place in the collection, provided he had not been dead too long. As a rule, however, the Bibliotaph coveted the ‘hand of write’ of the man who was now more or less conspicuously in the public eye. This autograph must be written in a representative work of the author in question. The Bibliotaph would not have crossed the street to secure a line from Ben Jonson’s pen, but he mourned because the autograph of the Rev. C. L. Dodgson was not forthcoming, nor likely to be. His conception of happiness was this: to own a copy of the first edition of Alice in Wonderland, upon the fly-leaf of which Lewis Carroll had written his name, together with the statement that he had done so at the Bibliotaph’s request, and because that eminent collector could not be made happy in any other Way.

The Bibliotaph liked the autograph of the modern man of letters because it was modern, and because there was a reasonable hope of its being genuine. He loved genuineness. Everything about himself was exactly what it pretended to be. From his soul to his clothing he was honest. And his love for the genuine was only surpassed in degree by his contempt for the spurious. I remember that some one gave him a bit of silverware, a toilet article, perhaps, which he next day threw out of a car window, because he had discovered that it was not sterling. He scouted the suggestion that possibly the giver may not have known. Such ignorance was inexcusable, he said. ‘The likelier interpretation was that the gift was symbolical of the giver.’ The act seemed brutal, and the comment thereon even more so. But to realize the atmosphere, the setting of the incident, one must imagine the Bibliotaph’s round and comfortable figure, his humorous look, and the air of genial placidity with which he would do and say a thing like this. It was as impossible to be angry with him in behalf of the unfortunate giver of cheap silver as to take offense at a tree or mountain. And it was useless to argue the matter—nay it was folly, for he would immediately become polysyllabic and talk one down.It was this desire for genuine things which made him entirely suspicious of autographs which had been bought and sold. He had no faith in them, and he would weaken your faith, supposing you were a collector of such things. Offer him an autograph of our first president and he would reply, ‘I don’t believe that it’s genuine; and if it were I shouldn’t care for it; I never had the honor of General Washington’s acquaintance.’ The inference was that one could have a personal relation with a living great man, and the chances were largely in favor of getting an autograph that was not an object of suspicion.

Few collectors in this line have been as happy as the Bibliotaph. The problem was easily mastered with respect to the majority of authors. As a rule an author is not unwilling to give such additional pleasure to a reader of his book as may consist in writing his name in the reader’s copy. It is conceivable that the author may be bored by too many requests of this nature, but he might be bored to an even greater degree if no one cared enough for him to ask for his autograph. Some writers resisted a little, and it was beautiful to see the Bibliotaph bring them to terms. He was a highwayman of the Tom Faggus type, just so adroit, and courteous, and daring. He was perhaps at his best in cases where he had actually to hold up his victim; one may imagine the scene,—the author resisting, the Bibliotaph determined and having the masterful air of an expert who had handled just such cases before.

A humble satellite who disapproved of these proceedings read aloud to the Bibliotaph that scorching little essay entitled Involuntary Bailees, written by perhaps the wittiest living English essayist. An involuntary bailee—as the essayist explains—is a person to whom people (generally unknown to him) send things which he does not wish to receive, but which they are anxious to have returned. If a man insists upon lending you a book, you become an involuntary bailee. You don’t wish to read the book, but you have it in your possession. It has come to you by post, let us suppose, ‘and to pack it up and send it back again requires a piece of string, energy, brown paper, and stamps enough to defray the postage.’ And it is a question whether a casual acquaintance ‘has any right thus to make demands on a man’s energy, money, time, brown paper, string, and other capital and commodities.’ There are other ways of making a man an involuntary bailee. You may ask him to pass judgment on your poetry, or to use his influence to get your tragedy produced, or to do any one of a half hundred things which he doesn’t want to do and which you have no business to ask him to do. The essayist makes no mention of the particular form of sin which the Bibliotaph practiced, but he would probably admit that malediction was the only proper treatment for the idler who bothers respectable authors by asking them to write their names in his copies of their books. For to what greater extent could one trespass upon an author’s patience, energy, brown paper, string, and commodities generally? It was amusing to watch the Bibliotaph as he listened to this arraignment of his favorite pursuit. The writer of the essay admits that there may be extenuating circumstances. If the autograph collector comes bearing gifts one may smile upon his suit. If for example he accompanies his request for an autograph with ‘several brace of grouse, or a salmon of noble proportions, or rare old books bound by Derome, or a service of Worcester china with the square mark,’ he may hope for success. The essayist opines that such gifts ‘will not be returned by a celebrity who respects himself.’ ‘They bless him who gives and him who takes much more than tons of manuscript poetry, and thousands of entreaties for an autograph.’

A superficial examination of the Bibliotaph’s collection revealed the fact that he had either used necromancy or given many gifts. The reader may imagine some such conversation between the great collector and one of his dazzled visitors:—

‘Pray, how did you come by this?’‘His lordship has always been very kind in such matters.’

‘And where did you get this?’

‘I am greatly indebted to the Prime Minister for his complaisance.’

‘But this poet is said to abhor Americans.’

‘You see that his antipathy has not prevented his writing a stanza in my copy of his most notable volume.’

‘And this?’

‘I have at divers times contributed the sum of five dollars to divers Fresh Air funds.’

The Bibliotaph could not be convinced that his sin of autograph collecting was not venial. When authors denied his requests, on the ground that they were intrusions, he was inclined to believe that selfishness lay at the basis of their motives. Some men are quite willing to accept great fame, but they resent being obliged to pay the penalties. They wish to sit in the fierce light which beats on an intellectual throne, but they are indignant when the passers-by stop to stare at them. They imagine that they can successfully combine the glory of honorable publicity with the perfect retirement enjoyed only by aspiring mediocrity. The Bibliotaph believed that he was a missionary to these people. He awakened in them a sense of their obligations toward their admirers. The principle involved is akin to that enunciated by a certain American philosopher, who held that it is an act of generosity to borrow of a man once in a while; it gives that man a lively interest in the possible success or possible failure of your undertaking.

He levied autographic toll on young writers. For mature men of letters with established reputations he would do extraordinary and difficult services. A famous Englishman, not a novelist by profession, albeit he wrote one of the most successful novels of his day, earnestly desired to own if possible a complete set of all the American pirated editions of his book. The Bibliotaph set himself to this task, and collected energetically for two years. The undertaking was considerable, for many of the pirated editions were in pamphlet, and dating from twenty years back. It was almost impossible to get the earliest in a spotless condition. Quantities of trash had to be overhauled, and weeks might elapse before a perfect copy of a given edition would come to light. Books are dirty, but pamphlets are dirtier. The Bibliotaph declared that had he rendered an itemized bill for services in this matter, the largest item would have been for Turkish baths.

Here was a case in which the collector paid well for the privilege of having a signed copy of a well-loved author’s novel. He begrudged no portion of his time or expenditure. If it pleased the great Englishman to have upon his shelves, in compact array and in spotless condition, these proofs of what he didn’t earn by the publication of his books in America, well and good. The Bibliotaph was delighted that so modest a service on his part could give so apparently great a pleasure. The Englishman must have had the collecting instinct, and he must have been philosophical, since he could contemplate with equanimity these illegitimate volumes.

The conclusion of the story is this: The work of collecting the reprints was finished. The last installment reached the famous Englishman during an illness which subsequently proved fatal. They were spread upon the coverlid of the bed, and the invalid took a great and humorous satisfaction in looking them over. Said the Bibliotaph, recounting the incident in his succinct way, ‘They reached him on his death-bed,—and made him willing to go.’

The Bibliotaph was true to the traditions of the book-collecting brotherhood, in that he read but little. His knowledge of the world was fresh from life, not ‘strained through books,’ as Johnson said of a certain Irish painter whom he knew at Birmingham. But the Bibliotaph was a mighty devourer of book-catalogues. He got a more complete satisfaction, I used to think, in reading a catalogue than in reading any other kind of literature. To see him unwrapping the packages which his English mail had brought was to see a happy man. For in addition to books by post, there would be bundles of sale-catalogues. Then might you behold his eyes sparkle as he spread out the tempting lists; the humorous lines about the corners of his mouth deepened, and he would take on what a little girl who watched him called his ‘pussy-cat look.’ Then with an indelible pencil in his huge and pudgy left fist (for the Bibliotaph was a Benjaminite), he would go through the pages, checking off the items of interest, rolling with delight in his chair as he exclaimed from time to time, ‘Good books! Such good books!’ Say to him that you yourself liked to read a catalogue, and his response was pretty sure to be, ‘Pleasant, isn’t it?’ This was expressive of a high state of happiness, and was an allusion. For the Bibliotaph was once with a newly-married man, and they two met another man, who, as the conversation proceeded, disclosed the fact that he also had but recently been wed. Whereupon the first bridegroom, marveling that there could be another in the world so exalted as himself, exclaimed with sympathetic delight, ‘And you, too, are married.’ ‘Yes,’ said the second, ‘pleasant, isn’t it?’ with much the same air that he would have said, ‘Nice afternoon.’ This was one of the incidents which made the Bibliotaph skeptical about marriage. But he adopted the phrase as a useful one with which to express the state of highest mental and spiritual exaltation.People wondered at the extent of his knowledge of books. It was very great, but it was not incredible. If a man cannot touch pitch without being defiled, still less can he handle books without acquiring bibliographical information. I am not sure that the Bibliotaph ever heard of that professor of history who used to urge his pupils to handle books, even when they could not get time to read them. ‘Go to the library, take down the volumes, turn over the leaves, read the title-pages and the tables of contents; information will stick to you’—this was the professor’s advice. Information acquired in this way may not be profound, but so far as it goes it is definite and useful. For the collector it is indispensable. In this way the Bibliotaph had amassed his seemingly phenomenal knowledge of books. He had handled thousands and tens of thousands of volumes, and he never relinquished his hold upon a book until he had ‘placed’ it,—until he knew just what its rank was in the hierarchy of desirability.

Between a diligent reading of catalogues and an equally diligent rummaging among the collections of third and fourth rate old book-shops, the Bibliotaph had his reward. He undoubtedly bought a deal of trash, but he also lighted upon nuggets. For example, in Leask’s Life of Boswell is an account of that curious little romance entitled Dorando. This so-called Spanish Tale, printed for J. Wilkie at the Bible in St. Paul’s Church-Yard, was the work of James Boswell. It was published anonymously in 1767, and he who would might then have bought it for ‘one shilling.’ It was to be ‘sold also by J. Dodsley in Pall Mall, T. Davies in Russell-Street, Covent Garden, and by the Book-sellers of Scotland.’ This T. Davies was the very man who introduced Boswell to Johnson. He was an actor as well as a bookseller. Dorando was a story with a key. Under the names of Don Stocaccio, Don Tipponi, and Don Rodomontado real people were described, and the facts of the ‘famous Douglas cause’ were presented to the public. The little volume was suppressed in so far as that was possible. It is rare, so rare that Boswell’s latest biographer speaks of it as the ‘forlorn hope of the book-hunter,’ though he doubts not that copies of it are lurking in some private collection. One copy at least is lurking in the Bibliotaph’s library. He bought it, not for a song to be sure, but very reasonably. The Bibliotaph declares that this book is good for but one thing,—to shake in the faces of Boswell collectors who haven’t it.

The Bibliotaph had many literary heroes. Conspicuous among them were Professor Richard Porson and Benjamin Jowett, the late master of Balliol. The Bibliotaph collected everything that related to these two men, all the books with which they had had anything to do, every newspaper clipping and magazine article which threw light upon their manners, habits, modes of thought. He especially loved to tell anecdotes of Porson. He knew many. He had an interleaved copy of J. Selby Watson’s Life of Porson into which were copied a multitude of facts not to be found in that amusing biography. The Bibliotaph used to say that he would rather have known Porson than any other man of his time. He used to quote this as one of the best illustrations of Porson’s wit, and one of the finest examples of the retort satiric to be found in any language. One of Porson’s works was assailed by Wakefield and by Hermann, scholars to be sure, but scholars whose scholarship Porson held in contempt. Being told of their attack Porson only said that ‘whatever he wrote in the future should be written in such a way that those fellows wouldn’t be able to reach it with their fore-paws if they stood on their hind-legs to get at it!’

The Bibliotaph gave such an air of contemporaneity to his stories of the great Greek professor that it seemed at times as if they were the relations of one who had actually known Porson. So vividly did he portray the marvels of that compound of thirst and scholarship that no one had the heart to laugh when, after one of his narrations, a gentleman asked the Bibliotaph if he himself had studied under Porson.‘Not under him but with him,’ said the Bibliotaph. ‘He was my coeval. Porson, Richard Bentley, Joseph Scaliger, and I were all students together.’

Speaking of Jowett the Bibliotaph once said that it was wonderful to note how culture failed to counteract in an Englishman that disposition to heave stones at an American. Jowett, with his remarkable breadth of mind and temper, was quite capable of observing, with respect to a certain book, that it was American, ‘yet in perfect taste.’ ‘This,’ said the Bibliotaph, ‘is as if one were to say, “The guests were Americans, but no one expectorated on the carpet.”’ The Bibliotaph thought that there was not so much reason for this attitude. The sins of Englishmen and Americans were identical, he believed, but the forms of their expression were different. ‘Our sin is a voluble boastfulness; theirs is an irritating, unrestrainable, all-but-constantly manifested, satisfied self-consciousness. The same results are reached by different avenues. We praise ourselves; they belittle others.’ Then he added with a smile: ‘Thus even in these latter days are the Scriptures exemplified; the same spirit with varying manifestations.’

He was once commenting upon Jowett’s classification of humorists. Jowett divided humorists ‘into three categories or classes; those who are not worth reading at all; those who are worth reading once, but once only; and those who are worth reading again and again and for ever.’ This remark was made to Swinburne, who quotes it in his all too brief Recollections of Professor Jowett. Swinburne says that the starting-point of their discussion was the Biglow Papers, which ‘famous and admirable work of American humour’ Jowett placed in the second class. Swinburne himself thought that the Biglow Papers was too good for the second class and not quite good enough for the third. ‘I would suggest that a fourth might be provided, to include such examples as are worth, let us say, two or three readings in a life-time.’

The Bibliotaph made a variety of comments on this, but I remember only the following; it is a reason for not including the Biglow Papers in Jowett’s third and crowning class. ‘Humor to be popular permanently must be general rather than local, and have to do with a phase of character rather than a fact of history; that is, it must deal in a great way with what is always interesting to all men. Humor that does not meet this requirement is not likely, when its novelty has worn off, to be read even occasionally save by those who enjoy it as an intellectual performance or who are making a critical study of its author.’ The observation, if not profound, is at least sensible, and it illustrates very well the Bibliotaph’s love of alliteration and antithesis. But it is easier to remember and to report his caustic and humorous remarks.

The Country Squire had a card-catalogue of the books in his library, and he delighted to make therein entries of his past and his new purchases. But it was not always possible to find upon the shelves books that were mentioned in the catalogue. The Bibliotaph took advantage of a few instances of this sort to prod his moneyed friend. He would ask the Squire if he had such-and-such a book. The Squire would say that he had, and appeal to his catalogue in proof of it. Then would follow a search for the volume. If, as sometimes happened, no book corresponding to the entry could be found, the Bibliotaph would be satirical and remark:—

‘I’ll tell you what you ought to name your catalogue.’

‘What?’

‘Great expectations!’

Another time he said, ‘This is not a list of your books, this is a list of the things that you intend to buy;’ or he would suggest that the Squire would do well to christen his catalogue Vaulting Ambition. Perhaps the variation might take this form. After a fruitless search for some book, which upon the testimony of the catalogue was certainly in the collection, the Bibliotaph would observe, ‘This catalogue might not inappropriately be spoken of as the substance of things hoped for, and the evidence of things not seen.’ Another time the Bibliotaph said to the Squire, calling to mind the well-known dictum as to the indispensableness of certain books, ‘Between what one sees on your shelves and what one reads in your card-catalogue one would have reason to believe that you were a gentleman.’

Once the Bibliotaph said to me in the presence of the Squire: ‘I think that our individual relation to books might be expressed in this way. You read books but you don’t buy them. I buy books but I don’t read them. The Squire neither reads them nor buys them,—only card-catalogues them!’

To all this the Squire had a reply which was worldly, emphatic, and adequate, but the object of this study is not to exhibit the virtues of the Squire’s speech, witty though it was.

One of the Bibliotaph’s friends began without sufficient provocation to write verse. The Bibliotaph thought that if the matter were taken promptly in hand the man could be saved. Accordingly, when next he gave this friend a book he wrote upon a fly-leaf: ‘To a Poet who is nothing if not original—and who is not original!’ And the injured rhymester exclaimed when he read the inscription: ‘You deface every book you give me.’

He could pay a compliment, as when he was dining with a married pair who were thought to be not yet disenchanted albeit in the tenth year of their married life. The lady was speaking to the Bibliotaph, but in the eagerness of conversation addressed him by her husband’s first name. Whereupon he turned to the husband and said: ‘Your wife implies that I am a repository of grace and a bundle of virtues, and calls me by your name.’

He once sent this same lady, apropos of the return of the shirt-waist season, a dozen neckties. In the box was his card with these words penciled upon it: ‘A contribution to the man-made dress of a God-made woman.’

The Squire had great skill in imitating the cries of various domestic fowl, as well as dogs, cats, and children. Once, in a moment of social relaxation, he was giving an exhibition of his power to the vast amusement of his guests. When he had finished, the Bibliotaph said: ‘The theory of Henry Ward Beecher that every man has something of the animal in him is superabundantly exemplified in your case. You, sir, have got the whole Ark.’

There was a quaint humor in his most commonplace remarks. Of all the fruits of the earth he loved most a watermelon. And when a fellow-traveler remarked, ‘That watermelon which we had at dinner was bad,’ the Bibliotaph instantly replied: ‘There is no such thing as a bad watermelon. There are watermelons, and better watermelons.’I expressed astonishment on learning that he stood six feet in his shoes. He replied: ‘People are so preoccupied in the consideration of my thickness that they don’t have time to observe my height.’

Again, when he was walking through a private park which contained numerous monstrosities in the shape of painted metal deer on pedestals, pursued (also on pedestals) by hunters and dogs, the Bibliotaph pointed to one of the dogs and said, ‘Cave cast-iron canem!’

He once accompanied a party of friends and acquaintances to the summit of Mt. Tom. The ascent is made in these days by a very remarkable inclined plane. After looking at the extensive and exquisite view, the Bibliotaph fell to examining his return coupon, which read, ‘Good for one Trip Down.’ Then he said: ‘Let us hope that in a post-terrestrial experience our tickets will not read in this way.’

He was once ascending in the unusually commodious and luxurious elevator of a new ten-story hotel and remarked to his companion: ‘If we can’t be carried to the skies on flowery beds of ease, we can at least start in that direction under not dissimilar conditions.’ He also said that the advantage of stopping at this particular hotel was that you were able to get as far as possible from the city in which it was located.

He studied the dictionary with great diligence and was unusually accurate in his pronunciation. He took an amused satisfaction in pronouncing exactly certain words which in common talk had shifted phonetically from their moorings. This led a gentleman who was intimate with the Bibliotaph to say to him, ‘Why, if I were to pronounce that word among my kinsfolk as you do they’d think I was crazy.’ ‘What you mean,’ said the Bibliotaph, ‘is, that they would look upon it in the light of supererogatory supplementary evidence.’

He himself indulged overmuch in alliteration, but it was with humorous intent; and critics forgave it in him when they would have reprehended it in another. He had no notion that it was fine. Taken, however, in connection with his emphatic manner and sonorous voice he produced a decided and original effect. Meeting the Squire’s wife after a considerable interval, I asked whether her husband had been behaving well. She replied ‘As usual.’ Whereupon the Bibliotaph said, ‘You mean that his conduct in these days is characterized by a plethora of intention and a paucity of performance.’

He objected to enlarging the boundaries of words until they stood for too many things. Let a word be kept so far as was reasonable to its earlier and authorized meaning. Speaking of the word ‘symposium,’ which has been stretched to mean a collection of short articles on a given subject, the Bibliotaph said that he could fancy a honey-bee which had been feasting on pumice until it was unable to make the line characteristic of its kind, explaining to its queen that it had been to a symposium; but that he doubted if we ought to allow any other meaning.

The Bibliotaph got much amusement from what he insisted were the ill-concealed anxieties of his friend the actor on the subject of a future state. ‘He has acquired,’ said the Bibliotaph, ‘both a pathetic and a prophetic interest in that place which begins as heaven does, but stops off monosyllabically.’

The two men were one day discussing the question of the permanency of fame, how ephemeral for example was that reputation which depended upon the living presence of the artist to make good its claim; how an actor, an orator, a singer, was bound to enjoy his glory while it lasted, since at the instant of his death all tangible evidence of greatness disappeared; he could not be proven great to one who had never seen and heard him. Having reached this point in his philosophizing the Bibliotaph’s player-friend became sentimental and quoted a great comedian to the effect that ‘a dead actor was a mighty useless thing.’ ‘Certainly,’ said the Bibliotaph, ‘having exhausted the life that now is, and having no hope of the life that is to come.’

Sometimes it pleased the Bibliotaph to maintain that his friend of the footlights would be in the future state a mere homeless wanderer, having neither positive satisfaction nor positive discomfort. For the actor was wont to insist that even if there were an orthodox heaven its moral opposite were the desirable locality; all the clever and interesting fellows would be down below. ‘Except yourself,’ said the Bibliotaph. ‘You, sir, will be eliminated by your own reasoning. You will be denied heaven because you are not good, and hell because you are not great.’

On the whole it pleased the Bibliotaph to maintain that his friend’s course was downward, and that the sooner he reconciled himself to his undoubted fate the better. ‘Why speculate upon it?’ he said paternally to the actor, ‘your prospective comparisons will one day yield to reminiscent contrasts.’

The actor was convinced that the Bibliotaph’s own past life needed looking into, and he declared that when he got a chance he was going to examine the great records. To which the Bibliotaph promptly responded: ‘The books of the recording angel will undoubtedly be open to your inspection if you can get an hour off to come up. The probability is that you will be overworked.’

The Bibliotaph never lost an opportunity for teasing. He arrived late one evening at the house of a friend where he was always heartily welcome, and before answering the chorus of greetings, proceeded to kiss the lady of the mansion, a queenly and handsome woman. Being asked why he—who was a large man and very shy with respect to women, as large men always are—should have done this thing, he answered that the kiss had been sent by a common friend and that he had delivered it at once, ‘for if there was anything he prided himself upon it was a courageous discharge of an unpleasant duty.’

Once when he had been narrating this incident he was asked what reply the lady had made to so uncourteous a speech. ‘I don’t remember,’ said the Bibliotaph, ‘it was long ago; but my opinion is that she would have been justified in denominating me by a monosyllable beginning with the initial letter of the alphabet and followed by successive sibilants.’

One of the Bibliotaph’s fellow book-hunters owned a chair said to have been given by Sir Edwin Landseer to Sir Walter Scott. The chair was interesting to behold, but the Bibliotaph after attempting to sit in it immediately got up and declared that it was not a genuine relic: ‘Sir Edwin had reason to be grateful to rather than indignant at Sir Walter Scott.’

He said of a highly critical person that if that man were to become a minister he would probably announce as the subject of his first sermon: ‘The conditions that God must meet in order to be acceptable to me.’ He said of a poor orator who had copyrighted one of his most indifferent speeches, that the man ‘positively suffered from an excess of caution.’ He remarked once that the great trouble with a certain lady was ‘she labored under the delusion that she enjoyed occasional seasons of sanity.’

The nil admirari attitude was one which he never affected, and he had a contempt for men who denied to the great in literature and art that praise which was their due. This led him to say apropos of an obscure critic who had assailed one of the poetical masters: ‘When the Lord makes a man a fool he injures him; but when He so constitutes him that the man is never happy unless he is making that fact public, He insults him.’

He enjoyed speculating on the subject of marriage, especially in the presence of those friends who unlike himself knew something about it empirically. He delighted to tell his lady acquaintances that their husbands would undoubtedly marry a second time if they had the chance. It was inevitable. A man whose experience has been fortunate is bound to marry again, because he is like the man who broke the bank at Monte Carlo. A man who has been unhappily married marries again because like an unfortunate gamester he has reached the time when his luck has got to change. The Bibliotaph then added with a smile: ‘I have the idea that many men who marry a second time do in effect what is often done by unsuccessful gamblers at Monte Carlo; they go out and commit suicide.’

The Bibliotaph played but few games. There was one, however, in which he was skillful. I blush to speak of it in these days of much muscular activity. What have golfers, and tennis-players, and makers of century runs to do with croquet? Yet there was a time when croquet was spoken of as ‘the coming game;’ and had not Clintock’s friend Jennings written an epic poem upon it in twelve books, which poem he offered to lend to a certain brilliant young lady? But Gwendolen despised boys and cared even less for their poetry than for themselves.

At the house of the Country Squire the Bibliotaph was able to gratify his passion for croquet, and verily he was a master. He made a grotesque figure upon the court, with his big frame which must stoop mightily to take account of balls and short-handled mallets, with his agile manner, his uncovered head shaggy with its barbaric profusion of hair (whereby some one was led to nickname him Bibliotaph Indetonsus), with the scanty black alpaca coat in which he invariably played—a coat so short in the sleeves and so brief in the skirt that the figure cut by the wearer might almost have passed for that of Mynheer Ten Broek of many-trowsered memory. But it was vastly more amusing to watch him than to play with him. He had a devil ‘most undoubted.’ Only with the help of black art and by mortgaging one’s soul would it have been possible to accomplish some of the things which he accomplished. For the materials of croquet are so imperfect at best that chance is an influential element. I’ve seen tennis-players in the intervals of their game watch the Bibliotaph with that superior smile suggestive of contempt for the puerility of his favorite sport. They might even condescend to take a mallet for a while to amuse him; but presently discomfited they would retire to a game less capricious than croquet and one in which there was reasonable hope that a given cause would produce its wonted effect.

The Bibliotaph played strictly for the purpose of winning, and took savage joy in his conquests. In playing with him one had to do two men’s work; one must play, and then one must summon such philosophy as one might to suffer continuous defeat, and such wit as one possessed to beat back a steady onslaught of daring and witty criticisms. ‘I play like a fool,’ said a despairing opponent after fruitless effort to win a just share of the games. ‘We all have our moments of unconsciousness,’ purred the Bibliotaph blandly in response. This same despairing opponent, who was an expert in everything he played, said that there was but one solace after croquet with the Bibliotaph; he would go home and read Hazlitt’s essay on the Indian Jugglers.

Here ends the account of the Bibliotaph. From these inadequate notes it is possible to get some little idea of his habits and conversation. The library is said to be still growing. Packages of books come mysteriously from the corners of the earth and make their way to that remote and almost inaccessible village where the great collector hides his treasures. No one has ever penetrated that region, and no one, so far as I am aware, has ever seen the treasures. The books lie entombed, as it were, awaiting such day of resurrection as their owner shall appoint them. The day is likely to be long delayed. Of the collector’s whereabouts now no one of his friends dares to speak positively; for at the time when knowledge of him was most exact THE BIBLIOTAPH was like a newly-discovered comet,—his course was problematical.