And as a rule they are far more careless than ordinary merchants about getting or securing their pay
To be sure it is rather ignoble for the painter of a picture, or the chiseller of a statue, or the vender of a fine book, to affect the acuteness of tradesmen in the matter of compensation. The excellent bookseller takes it for granted, if he stoops to think about it, that if a man orders a Caxton or a Grolier he will pay for it, at his convenience. It was this unthinking liberality which led a New York bookseller to give credit to a distinguished person—afterwards a candidate for the Presidency—to a considerable amount, and to let the account stand until it was outlawed, and his sensibilities were greviously shocked, when being compelled to sue for his due, his debtor pleaded the statute of limitations! His faith was not restored even when the acute buyer left a great sum of money by his will to found a public library, and the legacy failed through informality.
have only one complaint to make against booksellers. They should teach their clerks to recognize The Book-Worm at a glance
It is very annoying, when I go browsing around a book-shop, to have an attendant come up and ask me, who have bought books for thirty years, if he can “show me anything”—just as if I wanted to see anything in particular—or if “anybody is waiting on me”—when all I desire is to be let alone. Some booksellers, I am convinced, have this art of recognition, for they let me alone, and I make it a rule always to buy something of them, but never when their employees are so annoyingly attentive. I do not object to being watched; it is only the implication that I need any assistance that offends me. It is easy to recognize the Book-Worm at a glance by the care with which he handles the rare books and the indifference with which he passes the standard authors in holiday bindings.
nce I had a bookseller who had a talent for drawing, which he used to exercise occasionally on the exterior of an express package of books. One of these wrappings I have preserved, exhibiting a pen-and-ink drawing of a war-ship firing a big gun at a few small birds. Perhaps this was satirically intended to denote the pains and time he had expended on so small a sale. But I will now immortalize him
