Unique Books of Travel.
GEORGE EYRE-TODD’S The Clans of the Scottish Highlands. By an authority on Scots lore.
VAUGHAN CORNISH’S A Geography of the Great Capitals, from the “capital” of the Iroquois Indians, marked by a sacred fire, to the capitals of government, such as Rome and London, or of commerce, such as New York, and including vanished cities as well as existing ones.
THOMAS NELSON PAGE’S Washington and Its Romance, really a historical work. Mr. Page had been engaged upon it for several years before his death and left completed his account of the city’s early days.
S. R. ROGET’S Travel in the Two Last Centuries of Three Generations, a remarkable history, vivid, personal and interesting, derived from the records and letters of a single family and showing what rapid changes transportation underwent in the short period of two hundred years.
B. W. MATZ’S Dickensian Inns and Taverns, and his The Inns and Taverns of Pickwick, and also CECIL ALDRIN’S magnificent Old Inns—for all who hear the post horns blow and the stage coach drive up to the door.
STEPHEN GRAHAM’S Tramping With a Poet in the Rockies, the description of a vagabondage with Vachel Lindsay, with a report of many conversations which left the ground.
3. A Breathless Chapter
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WHAT actually took my breath away (in the first place) was an inspection of the “general catalogue” of one of our publishing houses, and a discovery therein. Now, a general catalogue, showing all the books published by a particular house and “in print”—that is, procurable new—is in itself a species of adventure. I admit all that Mr. A. Edward Newton puts forward as to the amenities of book collecting—by which, I take it, he means the joys, the sorrows, the moments of irony and the moments of amusement which fall to the lot of the collector of rare books. The quest of the book that is out of print, and must be had at second hand by diligent search and patient waiting, is an exceptional delight. Nevertheless, a special and more accessible pleasure lies in the catalogue, whether of a publisher or a bookshop. All but a handful of us are certain to come upon titles that kindle the imagination or rekindle the memory. Both were lit for me by the entry: