Title:  In Luck at Last

Author:  Walter Besant

Release Date:  June 25, 2005 [EBook #16129]

Language:  English

Character set encoding:  ASCII

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Inluck at last.

ByWalter Besant.

NewYork: 
George MUNRO’S sons, publishers,
17 to 27 Vandewater street.

CHAPTER I.

WITHIN THREE WEEKS

If everyone were allowed beforehand to choose and select for himself the most pleasant method of performing this earthly pilgrimage, there would be, I have always thought, an immediate run upon that way of getting to the Delectable Mountains which is known as the Craft and Mystery of Second-hand Bookselling.  If, further, one were allowed to select and arrange the minor details—­such, for instance, as the “pitch” and the character of the shop, it would seem desirable that, as regards the latter, the kind of bookselling should be neither too lofty nor too mean—­that is to say, that one’s ambition would not aspire to a great collector’s establishment, such as one or two we might name in Piccadilly, the Haymarket, or New Bond Street; these should be left to those who greatly dare and are prepared to play the games of Speculation and of Patience; nor, on the other hand, would one choose an open cart at the beginning of the Whitechapel Road, or one of the shops in Seven Dials, whose stock-in-trade consists wholly of three or four boxes outside the door filled with odd volumes at twopence apiece.  As for “pitch” or situation, one would wish it to be somewhat retired, but not too much; one would not, for instance, willingly be thrown away in Hoxton, nor would one languish in the obscurity of Kentish Town; a second-hand bookseller must not be so far removed from the haunts of men as to place him practically beyond the reach of the collector; nor, on the other hand, should he be planted in a busy thoroughfare—­the noise of many vehicles, the hurry of quick footsteps, the swift current of anxious humanity are out of harmony with the atmosphere of a second-hand bookshop.  Some suggestion of external repose is absolutely necessary; there must be some stillness in the air; yet the thing itself belongs essentially to the city—­no one can imagine a second-hand bookshop beside green fields—­so that there should be some murmur and perceptible hum of mankind always present in the ear.  Thus there are half-a-dozen bookshops in King William Street, Strand, which seem to enjoy every possible advantage