Project Gutenberg's The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac, by Eugene Field

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Title: The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac

Author: Eugene Field

Posting Date: August 30, 2008 [EBook #443]
Release Date: February, 1996

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LOVE AFFAIRS OF A BIBLIOMANIAC ***

Produced by Charles Keller

THE LOVE AFFAIRS OF A BIBLIOMANIAC

BY

EUGENE FIELD

Introduction

The determination to found a story or a series of sketches on the
delights, adventures, and misadventures connected with bibliomania did
not come impulsively to my brother. For many years, in short during
the greater part of nearly a quarter of a century of journalistic work,
he had celebrated in prose and verse, and always in his happiest and
most delightful vein, the pleasures of book-hunting. Himself an
indefatigable collector of books, the possessor of a library as
valuable as it was interesting, a library containing volumes obtained
only at the cost of great personal sacrifice, he was in the most active
sympathy with the disease called bibliomania, and knew, as few
comparatively poor men have known, the half-pathetic, half-humorous
side of that incurable mental infirmity.

The newspaper column, to which he contributed almost daily for twelve
years, comprehended many sly digs and gentle scoffings at those of his
unhappy fellow citizens who became notorious, through his
instrumentality, in their devotion to old book-shelves and auction
sales. And all the time none was more assiduous than this same
good-natured cynic in running down a musty prize, no matter what its
cost or what the attending difficulties. "I save others, myself I
cannot save," was his humorous cry.

In his published writings are many evidences of my brother's
appreciation of what he has somewhere characterized the "soothing
affliction of bibliomania." Nothing of book-hunting love has been more
happily expressed than "The Bibliomaniac's Prayer," in which the
troubled petitioner fervently asserts:

"But if, O Lord, it pleaseth Thee
To keep me in temptation's way,
I humbly ask that I may be
Most notably be