incidents of life, none comes nearer me than to see the bookman's
wife pleading with him to remember his (once) prosperous home and his
(almost) starving children. And indeed if there be any other as
entirely affecting in this province, it is the triumphant cunning
with which the bookman will smuggle a suspicious brown paper parcel
into his study at an hour when his wife is out, or the effrontery
with which he will declare when caught, that the books have been sent
unbeknown to him, and he supposes merely for his examination. For,
like drink, this fearsome disease eats into the very fibre of
character, so that its victim will practise tricks to obtain books in
advance of a rival collector, and will tell the most mendacious
stories about what he paid for them.

Should he desire a book, and it be not a king's ransom, there is no
sacrifice he will not make to obtain it. His modest glass of
Burgundy he will cheerfully surrender, and if he ever travelled by
any higher class, which is not likely, he will now go third, and his
topcoat he will make to last another year, and I do not say he will
not smoke, but a cigar will now leave him unmoved. Yes, and if he
gets a chance to do an extra piece of writing, between 12 and 2 A.M.,
he will clutch at the opportunity, and all that he saves, he will
calculate shilling by shilling, and the book he purchases with the
complete price--that is the price to which he has brought down the
seller after two days' negotiations--anxious yet joyful days--will be
all the dearer to him for his self-denial. He has also anodynes for
his conscience when he seems to be wronging his afflicted family, for
is he not gathering the best of legacies for his sons, something
which will make their houses rich for ever, or if things come to the
worst cannot his collection be sold and all he has expended be
restored with usury, which in passing I may say is a vain dream? But