. Addison, Magd. Coll:
The name occurred eight times. The dejected collector had found a
clean and uncut copy of those two volumes of contemporary Latin verse
compiled by Joseph Addison, when he was a young man at Oxford, and
printed at the Sheldonian Theatre. Addison contributed eight poems to
the second volume. The bookseller was willing to take seventy-five
cents for the set, and told the gentleman as he did up the package
that he was a comfort to the trade.

That night the gentleman read _The Battle of the Pigmies and the
Cranes_, while his wife read the evening edition of the _Lurid
Paragraph_. Now he says to his friends, 'Hunt books in the most
unpromising places, but make a thorough search. You may not discover a
Koh-i-noor, but you will be pretty sure to run upon some desirable
little thing which gives you pleasure and costs but a trifle.'

One effect of this adventure upon himself is that he cannot pass a
volume which is tied with a string. He spends his days and Saturday
nights in tying and untying books with broken covers. Even the
evidence of a clearly-lettered title upon the back fails to satisfy
him. He is restless until he has made a thorough search in the body of
the volume.

The Bibliotaph's own best strokes of fortune were made in
out-of-the-way places. But some god was on his side. For at his
approach the bibliographical desert blossomed like the rose. He used
to hunt books in Texas at one period in his life; and out of Texas
would he come, bringing, so it is said, first editions of George
Borrow and Jane Austen. It was maddening to be with him at such times,
especially if one had a gift for envy.

Yet why should one envy him his money, or his unerring hand and eye?
He paid for the book, but it was yours to read and to caress so long
as you would. If he took it from you it was only that he might pass it
on to some other friend. But if that volume once started in the
direction of the great tomb of books in Westchester County, no power
on earth could avail to restore it to the light of day.

It is pleasant to meditate upon past journeys with the Bibliotaph. He
was an incomparable traveling companion, buoyant, philosophic,
incapable of fatigue, and never ill. Yet it is a tradition current,
that he, the mighty, who called himself a friend to physicians,
because he never robbed them of their time either in or out of
office-hours, once succumbed to that irritating little malady known as
car-sickness.