Now if any speaks to him of Doe’s remarkable copy, he can draw out his own and create a surprise in the bosom of Doe’s adherent. The laurels of Miltiades no longer deprive him of rest. He has overcome in this trivial and childish strife concerning size and condition, and he holds the champion’s belt for the present. He not only feels big himself but he has succeeded in making Doe feel small, which is still better. I don’t know whether there will be any book-collecting in Mr. Bellamy’s Utopia, but if there is, it will not be disfigured by such meanness, but collectors will go about striving to induce others to accept their superior copies and everything will be as lovely as in Heine’s heaven, where geese fly around ready cooked, and if one treads on your corn it conveys a sensation of exquisite delight.
t has been several times remarked by moralists that human nature is selfish. One of course does not expect another to relinquish to him his place in a “queue” at a box-office or his turn at a barber’s shop, but in the noble and elegant pursuit of book-collecting it would be well to emulate the politeness of the French at Fontenoy, and hat in hand offer our antagonist the first shot
But I believe the only place where the Book-Worm ever does that is the auction room.
I no sooner come into the library, but I bolt the door to me, excluding lust, ambition, avarice, and all such vices, whose nurse is idleness, the mother of ignorance, and melancholy herself, and in the very lap of eternity, among so many divine souls, I take my seat with so lofty a spirit and sweet content, that I pity all our great ones and rich men that know not this happiness.
—Heinsius.
he modern Book-Worm is not the simple and absent-minded creature who went by this name a century ago or more. He is no mere antiquarian, Dryasdust or Dominie Sampson, but he is a sharp merchant, or a relentless broker, or a professional railroad wrecker, or a keen lawyer, or a busy physician, or a great manufacturer—a wide awake man of affairs, quite devoid of the conventional innocency and credulity which formerly made the name of Book-Worm suggestive of a necessity for a guardian or a committee in lunacy