e great bargains which lay the
foundations of our careers as book-hunters.

It is this sad truth which fosters in most of us the belief that we live
in a decadent age, and that the days of our youth were infinitely more
seemly than those which we now endure. But it is we who have changed: the
bargains are still there, and may still be had at the cost of youthful
energy and enthusiasm.

'Ah, but you can't get the bargains nowadays that you could when I was a
young man,' says the elderly bookseller, with a knowing shake of his
head. Can't you! Then mankind must have changed strangely since the
period of this sage's youth. Bargains, and rich ones too, in everything
that is bought and sold, are made every day and will continue to be made
so long as human nature endures, bargains in books no less among them.

The rich finds of which the aged bookseller dreams are bargains only in
the light of present-day prices. As a matter of fact, the great majority
of them were not really bargains at all. He may bitterly lament having
parted with a copy of the first edition of the 'Compleat Angler,' in the
'sixties for twenty guineas, but he overlooks the fact that that was then
its market value. Had he asked a thousand pounds for it, his sanity would
certainly have been open to question. 'Why, when I was a boy,' he says,
'you could buy first editions of Shelley, Keats, or Scott for pence.'
Precisely: which was their current value; by no stretch of the
imagination can they be considered bargains. His business is, and has
always been, to buy and sell; not to hoard books on the chance that they
will become valuable 'some day.' Neither can it be urged that 'people'
(by which he means collectors) 'did not know so much about books fifty
years ago.' Collectors know, and have ever known, all that they need for
the acquisition of their particular _desiderata_. If they were ignorant
of the prices which volumes common in their day would realise at some
future period, why, so were the dealers and every one else concerned!
Judging by analogy, we have every reason to believe that many volumes
which we come across almost daily on the bookstalls, marked, perhaps, a
few pence, will be fought for one day across the auction-room table.

The chief reason why the elderly bookseller no longer comes across these
advantageous purchases is that he has passed the age (though he does not
know it) at which bargains are to be had. But bargains are not
encountered