"But you admit that it is valuable because of its rarity, and that compared to fifty dollars' worth of books that are not rare it is not to be compared with them from a literary point of view?" said Mr. Pedagog.
"I presume," said the Idiot, "that the fifty dollars I expended on that book would have provided me with a complete Shakespeare in one volume; all of Byron in green cloth and gold top; all of Dickens, Thackeray, Bulwer, and Austen in six volumes, with a margin of forty-five dollars left with which for nine years I could have paid for a subscription to the Mercantile Library, containing all the good reading of the present day and all the standard works of the past. But I rather like to have the books, and to feel that they are my own, even if it is only for the pleasure of lending them."
"Still, if a man collects books merely for their contents—" persisted Mr. Pedagog.
"He is a wild, extravagant person," said the Idiot. "He might save himself hundreds of dollars, not to say thousands. The library on that plan need not occupy an honored place among the rooms of the house. A mere pigeon-hole with a subscriber's card to a circulating library filed away in it will do as well, or if the city or town in which he lives maintains a public library he may spare himself even that expense."
"Good for you!" exclaimed the Bibliomaniac. "That's the best answer to the critics of book-collectors I have heard yet."
"I agree with you," said Mr. Pedagog. "It is a very comprehensive reply. As for you, my dear Bibliomaniac, why do you collect books?"
"Because I love 'em as books," replied the Bibliomaniac. "Because of their associations, and because when I get a treasure I have the bliss of knowing I have something that others haven't."
"Then it is selfishness?" asked Mr. Pedagog.
"Just as everything else is," returned the Bibliomaniac. "You, sir, if I may be personal without wishing to be offensive, are wedded to Mrs. Pedagog. You take pleasure in knowing that she belongs to you and not to any one else. The Idiot here is proud of his children, and is glad they are his children and nobody else's. I am wedded to my rare books, and it rejoices my soul to pick up a volume that is unique, and to know that it belongs to me and to no one else. If that is selfishness, then all possession is selfish."
"That's about it," said the Idiot. "You collect books just as Mormons and Solomon used to collect wives. You are called a Bibliomaniac. I suppose Brigham Young and Solomon would have been known as Gamyomaniacs—though I don't suppose that age in women as in books is a requisite of value to marrying men—and they are both of them supposed to be rather canny persons."