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