think it was my imagination rather than avarice that led me to pay a fancy price for a book which some day when I am not "among those present" will fetch

The Constitution of the United States. like the constitution of every living state, grows and is altered by force of circum. Stamer and changes in affairs. The effect of a written constitution is

only

to

runder the growth more subite, more

studiis, more Conservation, mon a

Thing

of carefully, almost unconsciously, wrought Sequences. Our statuimen must, in the Endst of origination, have the spirit of

lawgen

Pornccton, 18 Oct, 09.

as many thousands as I paid hundreds. In 1909, when the inscription was written, its author was a relatively unimportant man - to-day he is known throughout the world and is in a position to influence its destinies as no other man has ever been.

No paper dealing with the prices of books would be complete without the remark that condition is everything. Any rare book is immensely more valuable if in very fine condition. Imagine for a moment a book worth, say, six hundred dollars in good condition, -for example, the "Vicar of Wakefield," and then imagine - if you can - a copy of this same book in boards uncut. Would twenty-five hundred dollars be too high a price for such a copy? I think

not.

Another point to be remembered is that the price of a book depends, not only on its scarcity, but also on the universality of the demand for it. And once again I may take the "Vicar" as an example of what I mean. The "Vicar" is not a scarce book. For from six to eight hundred dollars, dependent upon condition, one could, I think, lay his hands on as many as ten copies in as many weeks. It is what the trade call a bread-and-butter book- a staple. There is always a demand for it and always a supply at a price; but try to get a copy of Fanny Burney's "Evelina," and you may have to wait a year or more for it. It was the first book of an unknown young lady; the first edition was very small, it was printed on poor paper, proved to be immensely popular, and was immediately worn out in the reading; but there is no persistent demand for it as there is for the "Vicar," and it costs only half as much.

In reading over whatever I have written on the subject of the prices of rare books, I am aware that

a

my remarks may sound to some like a whistle whistle to keep up my courage at the thought of the prices I am paying. But so long as the "knockout" does not get a foothold in this country, and it would immediately be the subject of investigation if it did, and be stopped, as other abuses have been, the prices of really great books will always average higher and higher. "Of the making of many books there is no end," nor is there an end to the prices men will be willing to pay for them.

V

“WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN"

ON a cold, raw day in December, 1882, there was laid to rest in Brompton Cemetery, in London, an old lady, an actress, whose name, Frances Maria

Kelly, meant little to the generation of theatre-goers, then busy with the rising reputation of Henry Irving and Ellen Terry. She was a very old lady when she died-ninety-two, to be exact; she had outlived her fame and her friends, and few followed her to her grave.

I have said that the day was cold and raw. I do not know certainly that it was so; I was not there; but for my sins I have passed many Decembers in London, and take the right, in Charles Lamb's phrase, to damn the weather at a venture.

Fanny Kelly, as she was called by the generations that knew her, came of a theatrical family, and most of her long life had been passed on the stage. She was only seven when she made her first appearance at Drury Lane, at which theatre she acted for some thirty-six years, when she retired; subsequently she established a school of dramatic art and gave from time to time what she termed "Entertainments," in which she sometimes took as many as fourteen different parts in a single evening. With her death the last link connecting us with the age of Johnson was

broken. She had acted with John Philip Kemble and with Mrs. Siddons. By her sprightliness and grace she had charmed Fox and Sheridan and the generations which followed, down to Charles Dickens, who had acted with her in private theatricals at her own private theatre in Dean Street, - now the Royalty, - taking the part of Captain Bobadil in Every Man in his Humor.

Nothing is more evanescent than the reputation of an actor. Every age lingers lovingly over the greatness of the actors of its own youth; thus it was that the theatre-goer of the eighteen-eighties only yawned when told of the grace of Miss Kelly's Ophelia, of the charm of her Lydia Languish, or of her bewitchingness in "breeches parts." To some she was the old actress for whom the government was being solicited to do something; a few thought of her as the old maiden lady who was obsessed with the idea that Charles Lamb had once made her an offer of marriage.

It was well known that, half a century before, Lamb had been one of her greatest admirers. Every reader of his dramatic criticisms and his letters knew that; they knew, too, that in one of his daintiest essays, perhaps the most exquisite essay in the language, "Dream Children, A Reverie," Lamb, speaking apparently more autobiographically than usual even for him, says:

"Then I told how, for seven long years, in hope sometimes, sometimes in despair, yet persisting ever,