with amorously for an hour or two, the Object (as in the inferior
passion aforesaid) takes its destined place on the shelf -- where it
stays. And this saith the scoffer, is all; but even he does not fail
to remark with a certain awe that the owner goeth thereafter as one
possessing a happy secret and radiating an inner glow. Moreover, he is
insufferably conceited, and his conceit waxeth as his coat, now
condemned to a fresh term of servitude, groweth shabbier. And shabby
though his coat may be, yet will he never stoop to renew its pristine
youth and gloss by the price of any book. No man -- no human,
masculine, natural man -- ever sells a book. Men have been known in
moments of thoughtlessness, or compelled by temporary necessity, to
rob, to equivocate, to do murder, to commit what they should not, to
``wince and relent and refrain'' from what they should: these things,
howbeit regrettable, are common to humanity, and may happen to any of
us. But amateur bookselling is foul and unnatural; and it is
noteworthy that our language, so capable of particularity, contains no
distinctive name for the crime. Fortunately it is hardly known to
exist: the face of the public being set against it as a flint -- and
the trade giving such wretched prices.

In book-buying you not infrequently condone an extravagance by the
reflection that this particular purchase will be a good investment,
sordidly considered: that you are not squandering income but sinking
capital. But you know all the time that you are lying. Once possessed,
books develop a personality: they take on a touch of warm human life
that links them in a manner with our kith and kin. Non angli sed
Angeli was the comment of a missionary (old style) on the small human
duodecimos exposed for sale in the Roman market-place; and many a
buyer, when some fair-haired little chattel passed into his
possession, must have felt that here was something vendible no more.