nounced that to-day was the fortieth anniversary of his shop and asked us to drink to its continued success. We arose and after drinking gave him three rousing cheers. Not a man there really believed that forty years had passed since he began business. Of all present Matthews had known him the longest, and later he told us he could remember first entering the shop some thirty-seven years before. The man at the head of the table seemed too young for such a long experience, too hale and hearty for all the sixty-five years he boasted. Our chattering was silenced by another raising of his hand. He then announced the sale of his business.

"Can you recall, in your very young life, the emotion on learning that some great and beloved belief was wrecked? The effect on the little group that sat about his table was greater than if the sentence of death had been passed on each one. For a few tense moments we sat without moving.

"It was Matthews who jumped up and said that if it were a matter of money No, it wasn't money.

"Then_bedlam broke loose. We protested. It was unheard of. Kenyon's with Kenyon in command to pass out of our lives? It might have given some of our womenfolks great pleasure but there was no joy in that little group. We protested and argued. Alternate plans that would keep him in the shop were suggested. All Kenyon would say was he was sorry but he had had the matter under consideration for over a year and he wanted his freedom. The shop would pass to the new owners within the month but the rooms would remain his property and these dinners could continue.

"Kenyon lifted his wine to his lips. Rising to his feet he replied in his graceful fashion telling us how much the demonstration had meant to him. Early in the evening he had hoped that the simple announcement of his retirement would be sufficient. Then he went on to give us his reason. I can't give it to you in his words nor can I ape his style.

"His father had been the respected agent of an English woollen manufacturing house with offices in New York. It was his custom to make yearly trips to the London office and when little Edwin

Kenyon was eight years old he accompanied his father on one of these trips. Business that usually consumed the better part of a month was completed in a fortnight and father and son spent the days sightseeing. One day while walking in the Strand they were hailed by a young man with rather long hair and dressed in velvet outer garments. The young man had cried excitedly, 'See, Maclise, it is little Paul Dombey come to life. must have them to lunch.' The young man presented his card to the astonished father and then introduced his friend. They were Charles Dickens and Daniel Maclise, the artist. All this was beyond the ken of little Kenyon, and his father explained to him that Mr. Dickens was a great man and it was quite an honor to be invited to his home.

We

"Once within the walls of Dickens's house the great writer's enthusiasm knew no bounds. He rushed for a copy of his latest work, 'Dombey and Son,' and reading from descriptive passages asked his friend to witness the fact that Little Edwin was the incarnation of his character of little Paul Dombey. The description, Maclise agreed, fitted the lad perfectly and the overjoyed Dickens wanted to take the lad around to meet Forster, who thought the picture overdrawn. Giving the lad a copy of the book he asked him to read a passage so that he might determine if the voices were the same. Alas, the poor lad was so flustered he was unable to read. Dickens misunderstood the boy's shyness as an inability to read the more difficult words and asked the senior Kenyon would he not bring the boy back the next day.

"The second day was much more than a repetition of the first. About the table were gathered Macready, Forster, Sergeant Talfourd, the inevitable Maclise, and others. The luncheon wound up by Dickens presenting to Edwin Kenyon a copy of 'Dombey and Son' in which all the words too difficult for young heads were made simple. So great were the changes that every page showed numerous interlineations in the author's holograph. On the title-page was inscribed Little Dombey's own copy from his friend' and here followed in graceful flourish Charles Dickens.'

The two

amazed Americans left promising they would return the following year.

"There was no next trip. Business, due to the financial conditions in 1849, was so bad that Kenyon senior had to forego his trip. In 1850 the firm failed and Kenyon's father, deeply involved and broken in health, never recovered. After his death his widow remarried and at sixteen Edwin Kenyon was apprenticed to a New York bookseller. During the events leading up to his apprenticeship his copy of 'Dombey and Son' had been lost. During his fifty years in the book business he had searched high and low for the book but had not found it. Every book, he maintained, returned again and again to the stalls and, even then, it must lie in some shop unknown to the proprietor. He had ascertained that it was in none of the great collections, public or private. Being free of the shop would give him more opportunities to seek in those fields that remained unexplored: the dirty little shops that infested the side streets of New York.

"Book-collectors are selfish. Even after this confession many were loath to let him go on with his announced intentions. There were many little gaps in their own collections which needed filling and only Kenyon could fill them. Old Christie, who, next to Kenyon, was the greatest man I ever knew, and still is, for that matter, made an appropriate speech. He made several suggestions one of which was that we resolve ourselves into a searching party and help Kenyon locate his book. Then, to keep on with the good work already begun, he proposed that we continue to meet here every Thursday evening and enjoy the company of the greatest bookseller who ever lived. Then he called for a toast to the everlasting success of 'Little Dombey, a name, gentlemen, that is more appropriate than the one God gave him and the one by which, it is my earnest hope, Mr. Kenyon will henceforth be known to the members of this group and to this group alone. Let it be our password.'

"Old Christie's wish became our law and the name of Little Dombey has outlasted that of Edwin Payson Kenyon.

"To get back to Kenyon. From that time we saw little of him. True he was

present at our weekly dinners but it was a different Kenyon, in fact, it wasn't Kenyon at all. Kenyon was a bookseller, our bookseller. Kenyon's was a bookshop and still was a book-shop. It had been moved over to the more fashionable Union Square and the books that had been shelved in our shop were now known as an old and rare department. For us Kenyon and Kenyon's had passed. We had lost our bookseller but had gained a greater collector than any of us.

"Kenyon had changed in more ways than merely his cognomen. He daily dressed in his best: I think it was Old Christie who insisted that he read Dickens to his tailor and then insisted upon being dressed after the fashion of Dombey senior. Save for the weekly meeting he had lost touch with us and his former interest in our collections had given way to an acceptance of his position as a fellow collector. Where before he had been the guiding spirit he became but one of ourselves. Old Christie, still a comparatively young man, that is, he was younger than myself and much younger than Little Dombey, became the active leader. Little Dombey sat at the head of the table and officiated but Old Christie, considering his connection with Crother's, had the conversational edge due to his knowledge of our most recent acquisitions. Little Dombey each year took on more and more the appearance of a venerated and superannuated patriarch.

"He would be found at times grubbing through piles of dusty books in the rear of some filthy book-shop, poring over the top shelves from the highest step of a ladder, or begging a cheap, ready-money bookseller's permission to explore his cellar. That the book was still in existence he was certain. It was to be found only through perseverance. Were he a modern collector he would have called his agents provocateurs and sent them hither and thither: he would have said 'Find,' and they would have found and brought to him the thing of his desire. But he was a collector of the old school who did his own collecting and got real joy in doing it. He knew, better than any one else, that the collector is at heart an idealist who is searching for some great object and that his strength comes from

the hunt. Possession was the reward of the hunt, the brush, so to speak. To have a much-desired item presented to him by an agent would, he felt, have been robbing him of the chase.

"His search carried him everywhere. From time to time he would bring us little trophies he had found in his hunt: little items that helped make our own collections richer. When we offered to pay him liberally he would laugh and tell us he had picked it from a stand for a dime. He may have been aging, but his eyes were still sharper than ours.

"Little Dombey's days began with a perusal of his mail. It must have been prodigious. He was in active touch with all the booksellers of the world: their catalogues came to him as issued. Old Christie, after he had relinquished control of Crother's, had opened a shop wherein he held auction sales-little cheap, 'take it for cash' sales that were not at all in accord with the class of business he conducted. Auction fever must be a terrible thing: I cannot tell, for I never could endure them.

"One morning toward the end of the season a catalogue came to him from Old Christie's with the legend 'marked copy' stamped on its label. When he opened it he found written on the cover 'See page 16, item number 182.' Turning to the page indicated he found a brief description of his long-lost book.

"If you should come to me and poke under my nose a very rare and desirable piece of Johnsoniana and give me five minutes to decide whether I would purchase it or not I might inquire the price and if it were within reach of my purse take it, but that is the way of the housewife with her green-grocer. After I had purchased the item you had forced upon me I would probably find I did not want it at any price, or that I had overestimated my purse. Such is the way of auctions. One gets their catalogues a week in advance of the sale; there is no indication of the prices the books will bring. There are the price guides and market values of many of the better-known rarities, but if two rich fools come to arms over the same item the true collector may as well pick up his hat and leave; there is nothing in the law to prevent two such

men from raising the price to an unheardof level. God only is their judge: we book-lovers must be the witnesses of their folly.

"The morning that Little Dombey got his catalogue there was no notable change in his procedure. He dressed as carefully as ever and grasping his stick he tapped the top of his beaver and was off to Old Christie's, the mid-Victorian gallant to the end. He was just as chipper when he entered the auction rooms as he was the day he was twenty-one. Whatever his emotions were I cannot tell. I had this part of the story from Old Christie himself. He may have been younger but he never was happier.

"He found the books to be sold at auction neatly arranged in the rolling bookcases. Number 182 was missing. Summoning an attendant he inquired its location. Yes, Number 182 was in the rooms but was in the safe. Too valuable to place in an unguarded case. Far too valuable, thought Little Dombey, but not for his hands, the hands in which the book had been placed some seventy years previous by the God-blessed writer himself. The book was brought to him and placed again in his hands while the attendant stood watchfully by.

"Yes, it was his book, the selfsame copy, with the inscription and all the emendations. Old Christie came up from behind and whispered:

"Your copy, I believe, sir. Little Dombey's own copy I read on the titlepage.'

666

bey.

'My copy it is,' echoed Little Dom

"I tried to purchase it to your account outside the rooms. An estate, you see, and the executors realizing the worth of the book insisted on a public sale so that it might bring the highest price.'

"Yes, it was his book. A little the worse for wear but like an old friend capable of standing a lot more wear. He took a chair near-by and began reading. Old Christie motioned the attendant away and let it be understood that Mr. Kenyon was not to be disturbed. There he sat the best part of the day lost in the pages of his book; reading the words he thought had been seared in his mind. Their freshness amazed him as did the

art with which the author had simplified the words for his young mind.

Closing time found him still deep in his book. The working force of Christie's silently tiptoed out as if they were leaving the sacred presence. At last only Little Dombey remained, Little Dombey and Old Christie. Old Christie was a bookman of the old school. He recognized the great thrill of a real collector and respected it. He had experienced the same thrill and knew in his heart of hearts he was witnessing a phenomenon that was fast disappearing before the approach of modern business . . . disappearing because modern business demanded action and speed and profit. Sentiment was ruinous. Mass production: big sales and small profits. Organized selling. No place for sentiment. Sentiment was for women and they were fast ridding themselves of the curse. Every modern element was at work to destroy the emotions that Little Dombey was experiencing.

"There was no suggestion that closing time had passed such as happened at Caulfield's this evening. Old Christie would have sat the night out had it been necessary rather than disturb Little Dombey. It was not necessary: Little Dombey came to with a start and looking at his watch discovered it was late and recalled that he had been without food since breakfast. He asked Old Christie had he any idea the price the book would bring. "Hard telling, my dear friend. When you lost it it was worth say ten dollars at the most. To-day, well, there is no other piece of Dickensiana to compare it with save a manuscript. It is worth all it will bring, which I estimate will be about a thousand dollars.'

"Your bookseller of the old school could not tell his friend he had an unlimited bid from an out-of-town customer. That would have been unethical. It was not unethical, however, for Old Christie to write a letter to the bidder and tell him that should another such bid come in the price he would have to pay would be left to the discretion of the auctioneer who might take such an opportunity to boost his own stock by making the bidder pay an unheard-of price.

"Little Dombey returned home as one

in a dream. A thousand dollars was well within his limit; he would pay ten times that sum to regain possession of the book that belonged to him.

"His search ended, as he thought, he returned to his rooms and began making preparations for the return of the book. There would be a dinner such as the club had never known. Wine, from a cellar that had existed long before we were born, was brought out. The time until Thursday, the day of the sale, was spent in preparing for the event, which I can assure you, Gregory, was to be a gala one. Little Dombey had to this end secured, during his years of search, items of intimate importance to all of us. Beside each plate was to be placed a gift for each member. You can judge, my dear Gregory, what it meant to us when I tell you that that night I ate from the very plate, sir, that Sam Johnson had eaten from when he dined at Mrs. Thrale's. Matthews there was an original sketch by Thackeray and in front of Old Christie's plate was a copy of the catalogue of the auction sale of the library of Joseph Addison, together with an old hand-bill advertising the date and place of the sale. The gifts for the other members were of equal importance and interest.

For

Sam Johnson said, 'panting time toileth after him in vain.' Thursday, the day of the sale must have travelled with laggard feet for Little Dombey. Just as Judgment Day is promised and will eventually arrive so did the day of the sale.

"The usual clan was gathered about the rostrum of the auctioneer. The sale was already under way when I entered. Before I could find a seat Old Christie called me to one side and told me that the unlimited bid had been withdrawn and replaced with one of seven hundred and fifty dollars. Then he went on to outline a plan to which I agreed.

"To me auctions are stupid affairs. The auctioneer droned on with his interminable bids of any amount from twentyfive cents to five dollars. A flick of a catalogue, the lifting of a finger, the winking of an eye might mean a dollar or it might mean a hundred dollars. The freemasonry of the salesroom is beyond my ken.

"Number 182 came to the block at