ith ignoramuses and bores gave
him the repute of crustiness, which was redeemed by suavity enough
whenever he met with people of intelligence.

Gowans issued scores of catalogues of his stock, in which titles were
often illustrated by notes, always curious and often amusing, credited to
"Western Memorabilia," a work which no bookseller or man of letters had
ever heard of, but which was shrewdly suspected to have been a projected
scrap-book of the observations and opinions of William Gowans.

There was another eccentric book-dealer's shop in Nassau street kept by
one John Doyle, who aimed so high in his profession as to post over his
door a sign reading "The Moral Centre of the Intellectual Universe." This
establishment was notably full of old editions of books of English
history and controversial theology.

The most famous second-hand book-shop in Boston was Burnham's, whose
fore-name was Thomas Oliver Hazard Perry, shortened into "Perry Burnham"
by his familiars. He was a little, pale-faced, wiry, nervous man, with
piercing black eyes and very brusque manners. In old and musty books he
lived and moved and had his being, for more than a generation. He
exchanged a stuffy, narrow shop in Cornhill for more spacious quarters in
Washington street, near School street, where he bought and sold books
with an assiduous devotion to business, never trusting to others what he
could do himself. He was proud of his collection and its extent. He
bought books and pamphlets at auction literally by the cart-load, every
thing that nobody else wanted being bid off to Burnham at an
insignificant price, almost nominal. He got a wide reputation for
selling cheaply, but he always knew when to charge a stiff price for a
book, and to stick to it. Once when I was pricing a lot of miscellaneous
books picked out for purchase, mostly under a dollar a volume, we came to
a copy of "The Constitutions of the Several Independent States of
America," 1st edition, Philadelphia, 1781, of which two hundred copies
only were printed, by order of Congress. This copy was in the original
boards, uncut, and with the autograph of Timothy Pickering on the title
page. "If the Congress Library wants that book," said Mr. Burnham, "it
will have to pay eight dollars for it." I took it, well pleased to secure
what years of search had failed to bring. The next year my satisfaction
was enhanced when an inferior copy of the same book was offered at twenty
dollars.

Burnha