gain; but he took little pride in them. Collectors of
county histories, however, and genealogy-hunters and their kind, knew
that at Emblem's, where they would be most likely to get what they
wanted, they would have to pay the market price for it.

There is no patience like the patience of a book-collector; there is
no such industry given to any work comparable with the thoughtful and
anxious industry with which he peruses the latest catalogues; there is
no care like unto that which rends his mind before the day of auction
or while he is still trying to pick up a bargain; there are no eyes so
sharp as those which pry into the contents of a box full of old books,
tumbled together, at sixpence apiece. The bookseller himself partakes
of the noble enthusiasm of the collector, though he sells his
collection; like the amateur, the professional moves heaven and earth
to get a bargain: like him, he rejoices as much over a book which has
been picked up below its price, as over a lost sheep which has
returned into the fold. But Emblem is now old, and Emblem's shop is no
longer what it was to the collector of the last generation.

It was an afternoon in late September, and in this very year of grace,
eighteen hundred and eighty-four. The day was as sunny and warm as any
of the days of its predecessor Augustus the Gorgeous, but yet there
was an autumnal feeling in the air which made itself felt even in
streets where there were no red and yellow Virginia creepers, no
square gardens with long trails of mignonette and banks of flowering
nasturtiums. In fact, you cannot anywhere escape the autumnal feeling,
which begins about the middle of September. It makes old people think
with sadness that the grasshopper is a burden in the land, and that
the almond-tree is about to flourish; but the young it fills with a
vinous and intoxicated rejoicing, as if the time of feasting, fruits,
harvests, and young wine, strong and fruity, was upon the world. It
made Mr. James--his surname has never been ascertained, but man and
boy, Mr. James has been at Emblem's for twenty-five years and
more--leave his table where he was preparing the forthcoming
catalogue, and go to the open door, where he wasted a good minute and
a half in gazing up at the clear sky and down the sunny street. Then
he stretched his arms and returned to his work, impelled by the sense
of duty rather than by the scourge of necessity, because there was no
hurry about the catalogue and