"The learned Professor Biersteintrinken," continued Dr. O'Rell, "has
advanced in his scholarly work on 'Raderinderkopf' the interesting
theory that catalogitis is produced by the presence in the brain of a
germ which has its origin in the cheap paper used by booksellers for
catalogue purposes, and this theory seems to have the approval of M.
Marie-Tonsard, the most famous of authorities on inebriety, in his
celebrated classic entitled 'Un Trait sur Jacques-Jacques.'"

"Did you effect a cure in the case of N. M.?" I asked.

"With the greatest of ease," answered the doctor. "By means of
hypnotism I purged his intellectuals of their hallucination, relieving
them of their perception of objects which have no reality and ridding
them of sensations which have no corresponding external cause. The
patient made a rapid recovery, and, although three months have elapsed
since his discharge, he has had no return of the disease."

As a class booksellers do not encourage the reading of other
booksellers' catalogues; this is, presumably, because they do not care
to encourage buyers to buy of other sellers. My bookseller, who in all
virtues of head and heart excels all other booksellers I ever met with,
makes a scrupulous practice of destroying the catalogues that come to
his shop, lest some stray copy may fall into the hands of a mousing
book-lover and divert his attention to other hunting-grounds. It is
indeed remarkable to what excess the catalogue habit will carry its
victim; the author of "Will Shakespeare, a Comedy," has frequently
confessed to me that it mattered not to him whether a catalogue was
twenty years old--so long as it was a catalogue of books he found the
keenest delight in its perusal; I have often heard Mr. Hamlin, the
theatre manager, say that he preferred old catalogues to new, for the
reason that the bargains to be met with in old catalogues expired long
ago under the statute of limitations.

Judge Methuen, who is a married man and has therefore had an excellent
opportunity to study the sex, tells me that the wives of bibliomaniacs
regard catalogues as the most mischievous temptations that can be
thrown in the way of their husbands. I once committed the imprudence
of mentioning the subject in Mrs. Methuen's presence: that estimable
lady gave it as her opinion that there were plenty of ways of spending
money foolishly without having recourse to a book-catalogue for
suggestion. I wonder whether Captivity w