thy ghost
come back from out those years away off yonder? Be hushed, my Beranger,
for a moment; another song hath awakened softly responsive echoes in my
heart! It is a song of Fanchonette:

In vain, in vain; we meet no more,
Nor dream what fates befall;
And long upon the stranger's shore
My voice on thee may call,
When years have clothed the line in moss
That tells thy name and days,
And withered, on thy simple cross,
The wreaths of Pere la Chaise!

XVI

THE MALADY CALLED CATALOGITIS

Judge Methuen tells me that one of the most pleasing delusions he has
experienced in his long and active career as a bibliomaniac is that
which is born of the catalogue habit. Presuming that there are among
my readers many laymen,--for I preach salvation to the heathen,--I will
explain for their information that the catalogue habit, so called, is a
practice to which the confirmed lover of books is likely to become
addicted. It is a custom of many publishers and dealers to publish and
to disseminate at certain periods lists of their wares, in the hope of
thereby enticing readers to buy those wares.

By what means these crafty tradesmen secure the names of their
prospective victims I cannot say, but this I know full well--that there
seems not to be a book-lover on the face of the earth, I care not how
remote or how secret his habitation may be, that these dealers do not
presently find him out and overwhelm him with their delightful
temptations.

I have been told that among booksellers there exists a secret league
which provides for the interchange of confidences; so that when a new
customer enters a shop in the Fulham road or in Oxford street or along
the quays of Paris, or it matters not where (so long as the object of
his inquiry be a book), within the space of a month that man's name and
place of residence are reported to and entered in the address list of
every other bookseller in Christendom, and forthwith and forever after
the catalogues and price-lists and bulletins of publishers and dealers
in every part of the world are pelted at him through the unerring
processes of the mails.

Judge Methuen has been a victim (a pleasant victim) to the catalogue
habit for the last forty years, and he has declared that if all the
catalogues sent to and read by him in that space of time were gathered
together in a heap they would make a pile bigger than Pike's Peak, and
a thousandfold more inte