Sometimes I added the labour of a porter to my fasting endured for the sake of books.  At the little shop near Portland Road Station I came upon a first edition of Gibbon, the price an absurdity—­I think it was a shilling a volume.  To possess those clean-paged quartos I would have sold my coat.  As it happened, I had not money enough with me, but sufficient at home.  I was living at Islington.  Having spoken with the bookseller, I walked home, took the cash, walked back again, and—­carried the tomes from the west end of Euston Road to a street in Islington far beyond the Angel.  I did it in two journeys—­this being the only time in my life when I thought of Gibbon in avoirdupois.  Twice—­three times, reckoning the walk for the money—­did I descend Euston Road and climb Pentonville on that occasion.  Of the season and the weather I have no recollection; my joy in the purchase I had made drove out every other thought.  Except, indeed, of the weight.  I had infinite energy, but not much muscular strength, and the end of the last journey saw me upon a chair, perspiring, flaccid, aching—­exultant!

The well-to-do person would hear this story with astonishment.  Why did I not get the bookseller to send me the volumes?  Or, if I could not wait, was there no omnibus along that London highway?  How could I make the well-to-do person understand that I did not feel able to afford, that day, one penny more than I had spent on the book?  No, no, such labour-saving expenditure did not come within my scope; whatever I enjoyed I earned it, literally, by the sweat of my brow.  In those days I hardly knew what it was to travel by omnibus.  I have walked London streets for twelve and fifteen hours together without ever a thought of saving my legs, or my time, by paying for waftage.  Being poor as poor can be, there were certain things I had to renounce, and this was one of them.

Years after, I sold my first edition of Gibbon for even less than it cost me; it went with a great many other fine books in folio and quarto, which I could not drag about with me in my constant removals; the man who bought them spoke of them as “tomb-stones.”  Why has Gibbon no market value?  Often has my heart ached with regret for those quartos.  The joy of reading the Decline and Fall in that fine type!  The page was appropriate to the dignity of the subject; the mere sight of it tuned one’s mind.  I suppose I could easily get another copy now; but it would not be to me what that other was, with its memory of dust and toil.

XIII.