Introduction
The determination to found a story or a series of sketches on the
delights, adventures, and misadventures connected with bibliomania did
not come impulsively to my brother. For many years, in short during the
greater part of nearly a quarter of a century of journalistic work, he had
celebrated in prose and verse, and always in his happiest and most
delightful vein, the pleasures of book-hunting. Himself an indefatigable
collector of books, the possessor of a library as valuable as it was
interesting, a library containing volumes obtained only at the cost of great
personal sacrifice, he was in the most active sympathy with the disease
called bibliomania, and knew, as few comparatively poor men have known,
the half-pathetic, half-humorous side of that incurable mental infirmity.
The newspaper column, to which he contributed almost daily for
twelve years, comprehended many sly digs and gentle scoffings at those of
his unhappy fellow citizens who became notorious, through his
instrumentality, in their devotion to old book-shelves and auction sales.
And all the time none was more assiduous than this same good- natured
cynic in running down a musty prize, no matter what its cost or what the
attending difficulties. ``