id to the cabby.

Instanter he was whirled around into Winter Street, where stands one of
Boston's most famous literary distributing centers.

"Have you 'The City of Credit'?" he asked the salesman.

"I think we have a copy in stock," replied the latter. "If we haven't,
we can get it for you."

"Do so, please," said Van Buren. "I want a dozen copies--send them by
express to Charles H. Harney, The Helicon Club, New York. How much?"

"It's a dollar and a half book, I think," said the clerk. "The
discount will make it $1.20--a dozen, did you say? Twenty-five cents
expressage--that will make it $14.65."

Van Buren paid up without a whimper. Once in the hansom again, he
called up through the little hole in the top.

"Isn't there any other book-shop in town where I can get what I want?"
he demanded.

"There's a dozen of 'em," replied the cabby.

"Then go to them all," said Van Buren.

That night when Van Buren started for New York he had purchased a
hundred and fifty copies of "The City of Credit," and had ordered them
all to be addressed to the clerk at the Helicon Club, with whom, upon
his arrival in town, he arranged for their immediate reshipment to the
Harrison Safety Deposit Storage Company on Forty-second Street.

"I'm going to have my happiness, if I have to buy it," Van Buren
muttered doggedly, as he crept into bed shortly after midnight. And
then, tossing sleeplessly in his bed and at last rejoicing in the
possession of his late father's millions to back him in his enterprise,
he laid the foundations of a plan comparable only to that of the Wheat
King who corners the market, or the man of Cotton who loads himself up
with more bales of that useful commodity than all the fertile acres of
the South could raise in seven seasons. Orders were despatched by wire
and by mail to all the booksellers in the land whose names and
addresses Van Buren could get hold of. Department stores were put
under contribution and their stock commandeered, and one of the biggest
booms in the whole history of literature set in.

"The City of Credit" went into its second, fifth, twentieth, fiftieth
large edition. Hutchins & Waterbury wrote Van Buren stating that a
sudden turn in the market had made his book one of the six best sellers
not only of this century but of all centuries. Their presses were
seething to the point of white heat with the copies of "The City of
Credit" needed to supply the demand; their binders wer