which does honor to any collection. Although it is the original draft, there are very few corrections or interlineations, the page reproduced (see next page) being fairly representative.

Only those who are trying to complete their sets of Hardy know how difficult it is to find "Desperate Remedies" and "Under the Greenwood Tree" "in cloth as issued."

My love for book-collecting and my love for London have gone hand in hand. From the first, London with its wealth of literary and historic interest has held me; there has never been a time, not even on that gloomy December day twenty years ago, when, with injuries subsequently diagnosed as a "compound comminuted tibia and fibula," I was picked out of an overturned cab and taken to St. Bartholomew's Hospital for repairs, that I could not say with Boswell, "There is a city called London for which I have as violent an affection as the most romantic lover ever had for his mistress."

The book-shops of London have been the subject of many a song in prose and verse. Every taste and pocket can be satisfied. I have ransacked the wretched little shops to be found in the by-streets of Holborn one day, and the next have browsed in the artificially stimulated pastures of Grafton Street and Bond Street, and with as much delight in one as in the other.

I cannot say that "I was 'broke' in London in the fall of '89," for the simple reason that I was not in

years older than Oaks

que

be called a small schner clock: in other words it hday was a watch as to shape & intention, & a small clock as to size. This instrument, being several grandfather, had the pouchants of going when too fast or not at all. He smaller of it's hands, too, occasionally shipped rond on the furot, & thus, though the muntes were told with the greatest. precision, nobody could be quite certain hour they belonged to. He & stopping peculiarity of his watch Oak remedied by thumps & shakes, whe it always ment on again immediated, she escaped any consequences from the the two defects by constant comparisons with of observations of the sun & stares, & by pressing his face close to the glen of his neighton's winding when passing by their houses, with he could discem the home marked by the greas. faced timcheepers within.. It may green-faced withing omentioned that Ock's fob, being painfully difficult of access it's somewhat high situation in the waisthand of

reason of

wil

his trousers (which also be

at a remote haght under his

waistcoat) he watch was as a

6a mere mass of wrinkles

recessity pulled out

ク

throwing the body extremely to one side, compressing be on axions the vertion refined, having

mouth & face on

op he watch by di chains, wke a bucket from a will.

But some thoughtful persons, who had seen his walking across one of his pelas oh

on a certam December

Summy, & exceptionally mild

might

have refunded
Gabriel Oak

FACSIMILE OF A PAGE OF HARDY'S "FAR FROM THE MADDING
CROWD," MUCH REDUCED IN SIZE

"The extensive literature of catalogues is probably little known to most readers. I do not pretend to claim a thorough acquaintance with it but I know the luxury of reading good catalogues and such are those of Bernard Quaritch." - OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES

NEW YORK

PUBLIC LIBRARY

ASTOR, LENOX TILDEN FOUNDATIONS

London that year; but I am never long in London without finding myself as light in heart and pocket as Eugene Field - the result of yielding to the same temptations.

I knew the elder Quaritch well, and over a cup of tea one winter afternoon years ago, in a cold, dingy little room filled with priceless volumes in the old shop in Piccadilly, he confided to me his fears for his son Alfred. This remarkable old man, who has well been called the Napoleon of booksellers, was certain that Alfred would never be able to carry on the business when he was gone. "He has no interest in books, he is not willing to work hard as he will have to, to maintain the standing I have secured as the greatest bookseller in the world." Quaritch was very proud, and justly, of his eminence.

How little the old man knew that this son, when the time came, would step into his father's shoes and stretch them. Alfred, when he inherited the business, assumed his father's first name and showed all his father's enthusiasm and shrewdness. He probably surprised himself, as he surprised the world, by adding lustre to the name of Bernard Quaritch, so that, when he died, the newspapers of the English-speaking world gave the details of his life and death as matters of general interest.

The book-lovers' happy hunting ground is the Charing Cross Road. It is a dirty and sordid street, too new to be picturesque; but almost every other shop on both sides of the street is a bookshop, and the