CHAPTER I.

WITHIN THREE WEEKS


If everyone were allowed beforehand to choose and select for himself
the most pleasant method of performing this earthly pilgrimage, there
would be, I have always thought, an immediate run upon that way of
getting to the Delectable Mountains which is known as the Craft and
Mystery of Second-hand Bookselling. If, further, one were allowed to
select and arrange the minor details--such, for instance, as the
"pitch" and the character of the shop, it would seem desirable that,
as regards the latter, the kind of bookselling should be neither too
lofty nor too mean--that is to say, that one's ambition would not
aspire to a great collector's establishment, such as one or two we
might name in Piccadilly, the Haymarket, or New Bond Street; these
should be left to those who greatly dare and are prepared to play the
games of Speculation and of Patience; nor, on the other hand, would
one choose an open cart at the beginning of the Whitechapel Road, or
one of the shops in Seven Dials, whose stock-in-trade consists wholly
of three or four boxes outside the door filled with odd volumes at
twopence apiece. As for "pitch" or situation, one would wish it to be
somewhat retired, but not too much; one would not, for instance,
willingly be thrown away in Hoxton, nor would one languish in the
obscurity of Kentish Town; a second-hand bookseller must not be so far
removed from the haunts of men as to place him practically beyond the
reach of the collector; nor, on the other hand, should he be planted
in a busy thoroughfare--the noise of many vehicles, the hurry of quick