|
Main
- books.jibble.org
My Books
- IRC Hacks
Misc. Articles
- Meaning of Jibble
- M4 Su Doku
- Computer Scrapbooking
- Setting up Java
- Bootable Java
- Cookies in Java
- Dynamic Graphs
- Social Shakespeare
External Links
- Paul Mutton
- Jibble Photo Gallery
- Jibble Forums
- Google Landmarks
- Jibble Shop
- Free Books
- Intershot Ltd
|
books.jibble.org
Previous Page
| Next Page
Page 32
Of these three classes the third is least worthy of our
consideration, although it includes very many lovers of books,
and consequently very many friends of mine. I have actually
known men to hesitate, to ponder, to dodder for weeks, nay,
months over the purchase of a book; not because they did not want
it, nor because they deemed the price exorbitant, nor yet because
they were not abundantly able to pay that price. Their hesitancy
was due to an innate, congenital lack of determination--that same
hideous curse of vacillation which is responsible for so much
misery in human life.
I have made a study of these people, and I find that most of them
are bachelors whose state of singleness is due to the fact that
the same hesitancy which has deprived them of many a coveted
volume has operated to their discomfiture in the matrimonial
sphere. While they deliberated, another bolder than they came
along and walked off with the prize.
One of the gamest buyers I know of was the late John A. Rice of
Chicago. As a competitor at the great auction sales he was
invincible; and why? Because, having determined to buy a book,
he put no limit to the amount of his bid. His instructions to
his agent were in these words: ``I must have those books, no
matter what they cost.''
An English collector found in Rice's library a set of rare
volumes he had been searching for for years.
``How did you happen to get them?'' he asked. ``You bought them
at the Spencer sale and against my bid. Do you know, I told my
buyer to bid a thousand pounds for them, if necessary!''
``That was where I had the advantage of you,'' said Rice,
quietly. ``I specified no limit; I simply told my man to buy the
books.''
The spirit of the collector cropped out early in Rice. I
remember to have heard him tell how one time, when he was a young
man, he was shuffling over a lot of tracts in a bin in front of a
Boston bookstall. His eye suddenly fell upon a little pamphlet
entitled ``The Cow-Chace.'' He picked it up and read it. It was
a poem founded upon the defeat of Generals Wayne, Irving, and
Proctor. The last stanza ran in this wise:
And now I've closed my epic strain,
I tremble as I show it,
Lest this same warrior-drover, Wayne,
Should ever catch the poet.
Rice noticed that the pamphlet bore the imprint of James
Rivington, New York, 1780. It occurred to him that some time
this modest tract of eighteen pages might be valuable; at any
rate, he paid the fifteen cents demanded for it, and at the same
time he purchased for ten cents another pamphlet entitled ``The
American Tories, a Satire.''
Twenty years later, having learned the value of these exceedingly
rare tracts, Mr. Rice sent them to London and had them bound in
Francis Bedford's best style--``crimson crushed levant morocco,
finished to a Grolier pattern.'' Bedford's charges amounted to
seventy-five dollars, which with the original cost of the
pamphlets represented an expenditure of seventy-five dollars and
twenty-five cents upon Mr. Rice's part. At the sale of the Rice
library in 1870, however, this curious, rare, and beautiful
little book brought the extraordinary sum of seven hundred and
fifty dollars!
The Rice library contained about five thousand volumes, and it
realized at auction sale somewhat more than seventy-two thousand
dollars. Rice has often told me that for a long time he could
not make up his mind to part with his books; yet his health was
so poor that he found it imperative to retire from business, and
to devote a long period of time to travel; these were the
considerations that induced him finally to part with his
treasures. ``I have never regretted having sold them,'' he said.
``Two years after the sale the Chicago fire came along. Had I
retained those books, every one of them would have been lost.''
Mrs. Rice shared her husband's enthusiasm for books. Whenever a
new invoice arrived, the two would lock themselves in their room,
get down upon their knees on the floor, open the box, take out
the treasures and gloat over them, together! Noble lady! she was
such a wife as any good man might be proud of. They were very
happy in their companionship on earth, were my dear old friends.
He was the first to go; their separation was short; together once
more and forever they share the illimitable joys which await all
lovers of good books when virtue hath mournfully writ the
colophon to their human careers.
Previous Page
| Next Page
|
|