present writer has picked up some rare and
curious books in that locality during the past ten years, and others
have doubtless done the same. Not so very long ago a volume with the
autograph of Drayton was secured for one penny, certainly not an
extravagant price.

[Illustration: _A Book-barrow in Farringdon Road._]

For some years Farringdon Road has enjoyed the distinction of being the
best locality in London for bookstalling. Its stalls are far more
numerous, and the quality of the books here exposed for sale is of a
much higher class, than those which are to be met with in other places.
There are between thirty and forty bookstalls or barrows here, and the
place has what we may describe as a bibliopolic history, which goes back
for a period of twenty years. The first person to start in the
bookselling line was a coster of the name of Roberts, who died somewhat
suddenly either in December of 1894 or early in January of the present
year. Roberts appears to have been a fairly successful man at the trade,
and had a fairly good knowledge of cheap books. The _doyen_ of the
Farringdon Road bibliopoles is named Dabbs--a very intelligent man, who
started first in the hot-chestnut line. Mr. Dabbs has generally a fairly
good stock of books, which varies between one and two thousand volumes,
a selection of which are daily displayed on four or five barrows, and
varying from two a penny ('You must take two') up to higher-priced
volumes. Curiously enough, he finds that theological books pay the best,
and it is of this class that his stock chiefly consists. Just as
book-hunters have many 'finds' to gloat over, so perhaps booksellers
have to bewail the many rarities which they have let slip through their
fingers. It would be more than could be expected of human nature, as it
is at present constituted, to expect booksellers to make a clean or even
qualified confession in this respect. Our friend Dabbs, however, is not
of this hypersensitive type, and he relates, with a certain amount of
grim humour, that his greatest lost opportunity was the selling of a
book for 1s. 6d. which a few days afterwards was sold in Paris for L50.
He consoles himself with the reflection that at all events _he_ made a
fair profit out of this book. If we could all be as philosophical as
this intelligent book-barrow-keeper, doubtless the slings and arrows of
outrageous Fortune would impress fewer wrinkles on our brows, and help
us to think kindly of the frie