In these later days I often hear this man or that sneered at because, forsooth, he collects books without knowing what the books are about.  But for my part, I say that that man bids fair to be all right; he has made a proper start in the right direction, and the likelihood is that, other things being equal, he will eventually become a lover, as well as a buyer, of books.  Indeed, I care not what the beginning is, so long as it be a beginning.  There are different ways of reaching the goal.  Some folk go horseback via the royal road, but very many others are compelled to adopt the more tedious processes, involving rocky pathways and torn shoon and sore feet.

So subtile and so infectious is this grand passion that one is hardly aware of its presence before it has complete possession of him; and I have known instances of men who, after having associated one evening with Judge Methuen and me, have waked up the next morning filled with the incurable enthusiasm of bibliomania.  But the development of the passion is not always marked by exhibitions of violence; sometimes, like the measles, it is slow and obstinate about ``coming out,’’ and in such cases applications should be resorted to for the purpose of diverting the malady from the vitals; otherwise serious results may ensue.

Indeed, my learned friend Dr. O’Rell has met with several cases (as he informs me) in which suppressed bibliomania has resulted fatally.  Many of these cases have been reported in that excellent publication, the ``Journal of the American Medical Association,’’ which periodical, by the way, is edited by ex-Surgeon-General Hamilton, a famous collector of the literature of ornament and dress.

To make short of a long story, the medical faculty is nearly a unit upon the proposition that wherever suppressed bibliomania is suspected immediate steps should be taken to bring out the disease.  It is true that an Ohio physician, named Woodbury, has written much in defence of the theory that bibliomania can be aborted; but a very large majority of his profession are of the opinion that the actual malady must needs run a regular course, and they insist that the cases quoted as cured by Woodbury were not genuine, but were bastard or false phases, of the same class as the chickenpox and the German measles.

My mania exhibited itself first in an affectation for old books; it mattered not what the book itself was—­so long as it bore an ancient date upon its title-page or in its colophon I pined to possess it.  This was not only a vanity, but a very silly one.  In a month’s time I had got together a large number of these old tomes, many of them folios, and nearly all badly worm-eaten, and sadly shaken.

One day I entered a shop kept by a man named Stibbs, and asked if I could procure any volumes of sixteenth-century print.

``Yes,’’ said Mr. Stibbs, ``we have a cellarful of them, and we sell them by the ton or by the cord.’’