iated beauty,
the unset gem that glitters on no woman's hand; but what of the book that
eats its heart out in the threepenny box, the remainders that are sold
ignominiously in job lots by ignorant auctioneers? Have we no feeling for
them?

Over-production, in both men and shirts, is the evil of the day. The world
has neither enough food, nor enough love, for the young that are born into
it. We have more mouths than we can fill, and more books than we can buy.
Well, the publisher and collector of limited editions aim, in their small
corner, to set a limit to this careless procreation. They are literary
Malthusians. The ideal world would be that in which there should be at
least one lover for each woman. In the higher life of books the ideal is
similar. No book should be brought into the world which is not sure of
love and lodging on some comfortable shelf. If writers and publishers
only gave a thought to what they are doing when they generate such large
families of books, careless as the salmon with its million young, we
should have no such sad alms-houses of learning as Booksellers' Row, no
such melancholy distress-sales of noble authors as remainder auctions. A
good book is beyond price; and it is far easier to under than over sell
it. The words of the modern minor poet are as rubies, and what if his sets
bring a hundred guineas?--it is more as it should be, than that any
sacrilegious hand should fumble them for threepence. It recalls that
golden age of which Mr. Dobson has sung, when--

'... a book was still a Book,
Where a wistful man might look,
Finding something through the whole
Beating--like a human soul';

days when for one small gilded manuscript men would willingly exchange
broad manors, with pasture--lands, chases, and blowing woodlands; days
when kings would send anxious embassies across the sea, burdened with
rich gifts to abbot and prior, if haply gold might purchase a single
poet's book.

But, says the scoffer, these limited editions and so forth foster the vile
passions of competition. Well, and if they do? Is it not meet that men
should strive together for such possessions? We compete for the allotments
of shares in American-meat companies, we outbid each other for tickets 'to
view the Royal procession,' we buffet at the gate of the football field,
and enter into many another of the ignoble rivalries of peace; and are not
books worth a scrimmage?--books that are all those wonder