As a class booksellers do not encourage the reading of other booksellers’ catalogues; this is, presumably, because they do not care to encourage buyers to buy of other sellers.  My bookseller, who in all virtues of head and heart excels all other booksellers I ever met with, makes a scrupulous practice of destroying the catalogues that come to his shop, lest some stray copy may fall into the hands of a mousing book-lover and divert his attention to other hunting-grounds.  It is indeed remarkable to what excess the catalogue habit will carry its victim; the author of ``Will Shakespeare, a Comedy,’’ has frequently confessed to me that it mattered not to him whether a catalogue was twenty years old—­so long as it was a catalogue of books he found the keenest delight in its perusal; I have often heard Mr. Hamlin, the theatre manager, say that he preferred old catalogues to new, for the reason that the bargains to be met with in old catalogues expired long ago under the statute of limitations.

Judge Methuen, who is a married man and has therefore had an excellent opportunity to study the sex, tells me that the wives of bibliomaniacs regard catalogues as the most mischievous temptations that can be thrown in the way of their husbands.  I once committed the imprudence of mentioning the subject in Mrs. Methuen’s presence:  that estimable lady gave it as her opinion that there were plenty of ways of spending money foolishly without having recourse to a book-catalogue for suggestion.  I wonder whether Captivity would have had this opinion, had Providence ordained that we should walk together the quiet pathway of New England life; would Yseult always have retained the exuberance and sweetness of her youth, had she and I realized what might have been?  Would Fanchonette always have sympathized with the whims and vagaries of the restless yet loyal soul that hung enraptured on her singing in the Quartier Latin so long ago that the memory of that song is like the memory of a ghostly echo now?

Away with such reflections!  Bring in the candles, good servitor, and range them at my bed’s head; sweet avocation awaits me, for here I have a goodly parcel of catalogues with which to commune.  They are messages from Methuen, Sotheran, Libbie, Irvine, Hutt, Davey, Baer, Crawford, Bangs, McClurg, Matthews, Francis, Bouton, Scribner, Benjamin, and a score of other friends in every part of Christendom; they deserve and they shall have my respectful—­nay, my enthusiastic attention.  Once more I shall seem to be in the old familiar shops where treasures abound and where patient delving bringeth rich rewards.  Egad, what a spendthrift I shall be this night; pence, shillings, thalers, marks, francs, dollars, sovereigns—­they are the same to me!

Then, after I have comprehended all the treasures within reach, how sweet shall be my dreams of shelves overflowing with the wealth of which my fancy has possessed me!

  Then shall my library be devote
      To the magic of Niddy-Noddy,
  Including the volumes which Nobody wrote
      And the works of Everybody.