In Luck at Last | Page 2

the
Bun-house; you may wander among the rare plants of the Botanic
Gardens. The old great houses rise, shadowy and magnificent, above
the modern terraces; Don Saltero's Coffee-House yet opens its
hospitable doors; Sir Thomas More meditates again on Cheyne Walk;
at dead of night the ghosts of ancient minuet tunes may be heard from

the Rotunda of Ranelagh Gardens, though the new barracks stand upon
its site; and along the modern streets you may fancy that if you saw the
ladies with their hoop petticoats, and the gentlemen with their wigs and
their three-cornered hats and swords, you would not be in the least
astonished.
Emblem's is one of two or three shops which stand together, but it
differs from its neighbors in many important particulars. For it has no
plate-glass, as the others have; nor does it stand like them with open
doors; nor does it flare away gas at night; nor is it bright with gilding
and fresh paint; nor does it seek to attract notice by posters and bills.
On the contrary, it retains the old, small, and unpretending panes of
glass which it has always had; in the evening it is dimly lighted, and it
closes early; its door is always shut, and although the name over the
shop is dingy, one feels that a coat of paint, while it would certainly
freshen up the place, would take something from its character. For a
second-hand bookseller who respects himself must present an exterior
which has something of faded splendor, of worn paint and shabbiness.
Within the shop, books line the walls and cumber the floor. There are
an outer and an inner shop; in the former a small table stands among
the books, at which Mr. James, the assistant, is always at work
cataloguing, when he is not tying up parcels; sometimes even with gum
and paste repairing the slighter ravages of time--foxed bindings and
close-cut margins no man can repair. In the latter, which is Mr.
Emblem's sanctum, there are chairs and a table, also covered with
books, a writing-desk, a small safe, and a glass case, wherein are
secured the more costly books in stock. Emblem's, as must be
confessed, is no longer quite what it was in former days; twenty, thirty,
or forty years ago that glass case was filled with precious treasures. In
those days, if a man wanted a book of county history, or of genealogy,
or of heraldry, he knew where was his best chance of finding it, for
Emblem's, in its prime and heyday, had its specialty. Other books
treating on more frivolous subjects, such as science, belles lettres, art,
or politics, he would consider, buy, and sell again; but he took little
pride in them. Collectors of county histories, however, and
genealogy-hunters and their kind, knew that at Emblem's, where they
would be most likely to get what they wanted, they would have to pay

the market price for it.
There is no patience like the patience of a book-collector; there is no
such industry given to any work comparable with the thoughtful and
anxious industry with which he peruses the latest catalogues; there is
no care like unto that which rends his mind before the day of auction or
while he is still trying to pick up a bargain; there are no eyes so sharp
as those which pry into the contents of a box full of old books, tumbled
together, at sixpence apiece. The bookseller himself partakes of the
noble enthusiasm of the collector, though he sells his collection; like
the amateur, the professional moves heaven and earth to get a bargain:
like him, he rejoices as much over a book which has been picked up
below its price, as over a lost sheep which has returned into the fold.
But Emblem is now old, and Emblem's shop is no longer what it was to
the collector of the last generation.
It was an afternoon in late September, and in this very year of grace,
eighteen hundred and eighty-four. The day was as sunny and warm as
any of the days of its predecessor Augustus the Gorgeous, but yet there
was an autumnal feeling in the air which made itself felt even in streets
where there were no red and yellow Virginia creepers, no square
gardens with long trails of mignonette and banks of flowering
nasturtiums. In fact, you cannot anywhere escape the autumnal feeling,
which begins about the middle of September. It makes old people think
with sadness that the grasshopper is a burden in the land, and that the
almond-tree is about to flourish; but the young it fills with a vinous and
intoxicated rejoicing, as if the time of feasting, fruits, harvests, and
young wine, strong and fruity, was upon the world. It made