rkable, for much of
the work in a newspaper office is done hastily. Yet some of these
errors are very amusing. I remember to have read in a Berlin newspaper
a number of years ago that "Prince Bismarck is trying to keep up honest
and straightforward relations with all the girls" (madchen).

This statement seemed incomprehensible until it transpired that the
word "madchen" was in this instance a misprint for "machten," a word
meaning all the European powers.

X

WHEN FANCHONETTE BEWITCHED ME

The garden in which I am straying has so many diversions to catch my
eye, to engage my attention and to inspire reminiscence that I find it
hard to treat of its beauties methodically. I find myself wandering up
and down, hither and thither, in so irresponsible a fashion that I
marvel you have not abandoned me as the most irrational of madmen.

Yet how could it be otherwise? All around me I see those things that
draw me from the pathway I set out to pursue: like a heedless butterfly
I flit from this sweet unto that, glorying and revelling in the
sunshine and the posies. There is little that is selfish in a love
like this, and herein we have another reason why the passion for books
is beneficial. He who loves women must and should love some one woman
above the rest, and he has her to his keeping, which I esteem to be one
kind of selfishness.

But he who truly loves books loves all books alike, and not only this,
but it grieves him that all other men do not share with him this noble
passion. Verily, this is the most unselfish of loves!

To return now to the matter of booksellers, I would fain impress you
with the excellences of the craft, for I know their virtues. My
association with them has covered so long a period and has been so
intimate that even in a vast multitude of people I have no difficulty
in determining who are the booksellers and who are not.

For, having to do with books, these men in due time come to resemble
their wares not only in appearance but also in conversation. My
bookseller has dwelt so long in his corner with folios and quartos and
other antique tomes that he talks in black-letter and has the modest,
engaging look of a brown old stout binding, and to the delectation of
discriminating olfactories he exhaleth an odor of mildew and of tobacco
commingled, which is more grateful to the true bibliophile than all the
perfumes of Araby.

I have studied the craft so diligently that by merely clap