THE LOVE AFFAIRS OF A BIBLIOMANIAC



BY EUGENE FIELD



Introduction


The determination to found a story or a series of sketches on the
delights, adventures, and misadventures connected with
bibliomania did not come impulsively to my brother. For many
years, in short during the greater part of nearly a quarter of a
century of journalistic work, he had celebrated in prose and
verse, and always in his happiest and most delightful vein, the
pleasures of book-hunting. Himself an indefatigable collector of
books, the possessor of a library as valuable as it was
interesting, a library containing volumes obtained only at the
cost of great personal sacrifice, he was in the most active
sympathy with the disease called bibliomania, and knew, as few
comparatively poor men have known, the half-pathetic,
half-humorous side of that incurable mental infirmity.

The newspaper column, to which he contributed almost daily for
twelve years, comprehended many sly digs and gentle scoffings at
those of his unhappy fellow citizens who became notorious,
through his instrumentality, in their devotion to old
book-shelves and auction sales. And all the time none was more