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Updated: May 29, 2025
He had handled thousands and tens of thousands of volumes, and he never relinquished his hold upon a book until he had 'placed' it, until he knew just what its rank was in the hierarchy of desirability. Between a diligent reading of catalogues and an equally diligent rummaging among the collections of third and fourth rate old book-shops, the Bibliotaph had his reward.
The corner of the shop where the great collector's accumulations were piled up was a centre of mirth and conversation if he himself chanced to be in town. Men dropped in for a minute and stayed an hour. In some way time appeared to broaden and leisure to grow more ample. Life had an unusual richness, and warmth, and color, when the Bibliotaph was by.
At the house of the Country Squire the Bibliotaph was able to gratify his passion for croquet, and verily he was a master. But it was vastly more amusing to watch him than to play with him. He had a devil 'most undoubted. Only with the help of black art and by mortgaging one's soul would it have been possible to accomplish some of the things which he accomplished.
For the Bibliotaph was once with a newly-married man, and they two met another man, who, as the conversation proceeded, disclosed the fact that he also had but recently been wed.
It was in the Country Squire's library that the Bibliotaph first met that actor with whom he became even more intimate than with the Squire himself. The closeness of their relation suggested the days of the old Miracle plays when the theatre and the Church were as hand in glove.
When advised of some new illustration of the divine's uncertainty of attitude, the Bibliotaph merely said, 'He's more of a chameleon than he is a clergyman. That Bostonian would be deficient in wit who failed to enjoy this remark. Speaking of the characteristics of American cities, the Bibliotaph said, 'It never occurs to the Hub that anything of importance can possibly happen at the periphery.
Having reached this point in his philosophizing the Bibliotaph's player-friend became sentimental and quoted a great comedian to the effect that 'a dead actor was a mighty useless thing. 'Certainly, said the Bibliotaph, 'having exhausted the life that now is, and having no hope of the life that is to come.
It was a remote village in Virginia where there was a girls' seminary, the catalogue of which set forth among advantages of location this: that the town was one to which the traveling lecturer and the circus never came. The Bibliotaph said, 'I should go there. For I am the one when I am on the platform, and by the unanimous testimony of all my friends I am the other when I am off.
The Bibliotaph was mightily pleased with both: the one, he said, appealed to him æsthetically, the other dietetically.
To all this the Squire had a reply which was worldly, emphatic, and adequate, but the object of this study is not to exhibit the virtues of the Squire's speech, witty though it was. One of the Bibliotaph's friends began without sufficient provocation to write verse. The Bibliotaph thought that if the matter were taken promptly in hand the man could be saved.
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