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Letters on Literature by Andrew Lang
page 64 of 112 (57%)



TO A YOUNG AMERICAN BOOK-HUNTER


_To Philip Dodsworth, Esq., New York_.

Dear Dodsworth,--Let me congratulate you on having joined the army of
book-hunters. "Everywhere have I sought peace and found it nowhere,"
says the blessed Thomas a Kempis, "save in a corner with a book." Whether
that good monk wrote the "De Imitatione Christi" or not, one always likes
him for his love of books. Perhaps he was the only book-hunter that ever
wrought a miracle. "Other signs and miracles which he was wont to tell
as having happened at the prayer of an unnamed person, are believed to
have been granted to his own, such as the sudden reappearance of a lost
book in his cell." Ah, if Faith, that moveth mountains, could only bring
back the books we have lost, the books that have been borrowed from us!
But we are a faithless generation.

From a collector so much older and better experienced in misfortune than
yourself, you ask for some advice on the sport of book-hunting. Well, I
will give it; but you will not take it. No; you will hunt wild, like
young pointers before they are properly broken.

Let me suppose that you are "to middle fortune born," and that you cannot
stroll into the great book-marts and give your orders freely for all that
is rich and rare. You are obliged to wait and watch an opportunity, to
practise that maxim of the Stoic's, "Endure and abstain." Then abstain
from rushing at every volume, however out of the line of your literary
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