"They are not particularly interesting," remarked the guide, "but their punishment will appeal to you."
As we passed them I shuddered to see that they were all engaged in filing catalogue cards in alphabetical order.
"How long do they have to keep that up?" was my question, and I was horrified to learn that the terms varied from twenty to thirty-five years.
"Why, that is the most damnable thing I ever heard," I said—"the sticky fly-paper folks were nothing to this!"
The guide shrugged his shoulders—"It's the rule," he said.
The next lot of people we came on were curiously engaged. Long lines of bookshelves were set up about them, and they wandered up and down, forever taking a book from the shelf, only to sigh and put it back again. As we came amongst them I could see the cause of their weariness. The shelves seemed to be lined with the most brilliant looking books in handsome bindings. They were lettered in gold: "Complete Works of Charles Dickens," "Works of Dumas, Edition de Luxe," "Works of Scott," and so on. Yet when I took one of the books in my hand to look at it, it was no book at all, but just a wooden dummy, painted on the back, but absolutely blank everywhere else. They were like the things used by furniture dealers to put in a bookcase to make it look as if it were full of books, or those used on the stage, when a library setting is required. There were many cords of wood, but there was not a real book in any of the cases.
I asked one of the sufferers why he was doing this, and he stopped for a moment his patrol, and turned his weary eyes upon me.
"We are all alike," he said, indicating his associates. "We are the literary bluffers. Most of us were rich—I was, myself," and he groaned heavily. "We bought books by the yard—expensive ones, always—editions de luxe, limited editions—limited to ten thousand sets and each set numbered, of which this is No. 94," he added in a dull, mechanical fashion, as though he were repeating a lesson. "We were easy marks for all the dealers and agents. Especially illustrated editions, with extra copies of the engravings in a portfolio; bindings in white kid, or any other tomfool nonsense was what we were always looking for. And they saw that we got them. Whispered information that this set of Paul de Kock or Balzac was complete and unexpurgated, and that if we would buy it for $125, the publishers would throw in an extra volume, privately printed, and given away to purchasers, since it was against the law to sell it—this was the sort of bait we always bit at—cheerily! And now here we are!"
And he began again his tramp up and down, taking down the wooden dummies and putting them back again, with dolorous groans.