The determination to found a story or a series of sketches on thedelights, adventures, and misadventures connected with bibliomania didnot come impulsively to my brother. For many years, in short duringthe greater part of nearly a quarter of a century of journalistic work,he had celebrated in prose and verse, and always in his happiest andmost delightful vein, the pleasures of book-hunting. Himself anindefatigable collector of books, the possessor of a library asvaluable as it was interesting, a library containing volumes obtainedonly at the cost of great personal sacrifice, he was in the most activesympathy with the disease called bibliomania, and knew, as fewcomparatively poor men have known, the half-pathetic, half-humorousside of that incurable mental infirmity.
The newspaper column, to which he contributed almost daily for twelveyears, comprehended many sly digs and gentle scoffings at those of hisunhappy fellow citizens who became notorious, through hisinstrumentality, in their devotion to old book-shelves and auctionsales. And all the time none was more assiduous than this samegood-natured cynic in running down a musty prize, no matter what itscost or what the attending difficulties. "I save others, myself Icannot save," was his humorous cry.
In his published writings are many evidences of my brother'sappreciation of what he has somewhere characterized the "soothingaffliction of bibliomania." Nothing of book-hunting love has been morehappily expressed than "The Bibliomaniac's Prayer," in which thetroubled petitioner fervently asserts:
"But if, O Lord, it pleaseth Thee
To keep me in temptation's way,
I humbly ask that I may be
Most notably beset to-day;
Let my temptation be a book,
Which I shall purchase, hold and keep,
Whereon, when other men shall look,
They'll wail to know I got it cheap."
And again, in "The Bibliomaniac's Bride," nothing breathes better thespirit of the incurable patient than this:
"Prose for me when I wished for prose,
Verse when to verse inclined,—
Forever bringing sweet repose
To body, heart and mind.
Oh, I should bind this priceless prize
In bindings full and fine,
And keep her where no human eyes
Should see her charms, but mine!"
In "Dear Old London" the poet wailed that "a splendid Horace cheap forcash" laughed at his poverty, and in "Dibdin's Ghost" he revelled inthe delights that await the bibliomaniac in the future state, wherethere is no admission to the women folk who, "wanting victuals, make afuss if we buy books instead"; while in "Flail, Trask and Bisland" isthe very essence of bibliomania, the unquenchable thirst forpossession. And yet, despite these self-accusations, bibliophily ratherthan bibliomania would be the word to characterize his conscientiouspurpose. If he purchased quaint and rare books it was to own them tothe full extent, inwardly as well as outwardly. The mania for bookskept him continually buying; the love of books supervened to make thema part of himself and his life.
Toward the close of August of the present year my brother wrote thefirst chapter of "The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac." At that timehe was in an exhausted physical condition and apparently unfit for anyprotracted literary labor. But th