“My regular customers, people who buy constantly whenever I have something to offer them in their special line, are not the movie millionaires you can meet in the art shops and book shops on Fifth Avenue. They are usually retired business men, and physicians, well-to-do or of moderate means, university professors who have to save in order to be able to buy autographs. Every one of them has made a study of some literary or political celebrity, or is interested in some period of our own history. All documents or letters needed to complete their collections are welcome. But I also count among my patrons of long standing, poor men whose only property in this world are their collections of autographs, and they actually often suffer privations rather than part with their treasures.
“Some people are greatly interested in minor literary men of bygone days, whose autographs were never thought worth saving. I have a search department for such cases, and I am often curiously successful.
“You would be surprised to find how almost anything you may want can be found if you do not tire in looking for it and if you know how and where to advertise.
“I advertise everywhere, and constantly. The smallest country paper sometimes means more to my business than the big city paper.
“I have bought many trunks of valuable documents and letters in the garrets of old homesteads in towns whose names you have never heard of—called there by some heir, who read my advertisement in the paper and who preferred to sell the literary remains of his grandfather to me rather than to the ragman!
“And here is the secret of success in this business: constant and wise advertising.
“Of course the autographs of our best writers are in constant demand. They have a market price, a price, however, which fluctuates almost from day to day.
“For instance, if a man dies, his value goes up instantly, if his fame has not been an overnight popularity. On the other hand, the signature of the favorite actress will lose all value at her death and will be forgotten by the public as well as by the autograph dealer.
“On the very day that James Whitcomb Riley was prostrated by a paralytic stroke and it became known that he would never be able to use his right hand again, the prices of his manuscripts and letters almost doubled.
“Living English authors, like Kipling or Wells or Chesterton, fetch higher prices here than in England. Kipling especially brings almost five times as much here as he does in his own country.