A small man with a shy, walruslike look came to see me one day in Philadelphia. His meek appearance was in marked contrast to the determined manner with which he greeted me. He introduced himself as a piano tuner from Harrisburg.
“I have here, doctor,” he said, pulling out of an inner pocket a blue envelope, “something which will interest you. I found it in a secondhand-furniture store among a bundle of papers on its way to the pulp mill. I rescued it.” He opened the envelope and drew out a pamphlet in brown paper wrappers. It was Poe’s Prose Romances. No. I. Containing The Murders in the Rue Morgue, published in Philadelphia in 1843. There are only three or four copies known to exist.
“What do you want for it?” I asked him.
“Three thousand eight hundred,” he said quite calmly. Naturally I was surprised that a man who made his living tinkering with refractory pianos should know the value of this work. In answer to further questions, he told me that he spent all his evenings and some of his days browsing in secondhand stores, in the hope of making a book find.
“And now my dream’s come true. I’m always picking up old books. It makes my wife wild. She always nags me. Wasting time and throwing away good cash, she calls it!”
ORIGINAL MANUSCRIPT OF OSCAR WILDE’S SONNET,
“ON THE SALE BY AUCTION OF KEATS’ LOVE-LETTERS”
CHRISTOPHER MORLEY
I had to have this book. While I wrote out the check I asked him why he wanted this peculiar sum, and what he would do with it. He answered without hesitation.