il when he recalls that weakness--the one
weakness in all my career.

No, I have not forgotten that time; I look back upon it with a shudder
of horror, for wretched indeed would have been my existence had I
carried into effect the project I devised at that remote period!

Dr. O'Rell has an interesting theory which you will find recorded in
the published proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (vol.
xxxiv., p. 216). Or, if you cannot procure copies of that work, it may
serve your purpose to know that the doctor's theory is to this
effect--viz., that bibliomania does not deserve the name of bibliomania
until it is exhibited in the second stage. For secondary bibliomania
there is no known cure; the few cases reported as having been cured
were doubtless not bibliomania at all, or, at least, were what we of
the faculty call false or chicken bibliomania.

"In false bibliomania, which," says Dr. O'Rell, "is the primary stage
of the grand passion--the vestibule to the main edifice--the usual
symptoms are flushed cheeks, sparkling eyes, a bounding pulse, and
quick respiration. This period of exaltation is not unfrequently
followed by a condition of collapse in which we find the victim pale,
pulseless, and dejected. He is pursued and tormented of imaginary
horrors, he reproaches himself for imaginary crimes, and he implores
piteously for relief from fancied dangers. The sufferer now stands in
a slippery place; unless his case is treated intelligently he will
issue from that period of gloom cured of the sweetest of madnesses, and
doomed to a life of singular uselessness.

"But properly treated," continues Dr. O'Rell, "and particularly if his
spiritual needs be ministered to, he can be brought safely through this
period of collapse into a condition of reenforced exaltation, which is
the true, or secondary stage of, bibliomania, and for which there is no
cure known to humanity."

I should trust Dr. O'Rell's judgment in this matter, even if I did not
know from experience that it was true. For Dr. O'Rell is the most
famous authority we have in bibliomania and kindred maladies. It is he
(I make the information known at the risk of offending the ethics of
the profession)--it is he who discovered the bacillus librorum, and,
what is still more important and still more to his glory, it is he who
invented that subtle lymph which is now everywhere employed by the
profession as a diagnostic where the presence of the germs o