ng the goal.
Some folk go horseback via the royal road, but very many others are
compelled to adopt the more tedious processes, involving rocky pathways
and torn shoon and sore feet.

So subtile and so infectious is this grand passion that one is hardly
aware of its presence before it has complete possession of him; and I
have known instances of men who, after having associated one evening
with Judge Methuen and me, have waked up the next morning filled with
the incurable enthusiasm of bibliomania. But the development of the
passion is not always marked by exhibitions of violence; sometimes,
like the measles, it is slow and obstinate about "coming out," and in
such cases applications should be resorted to for the purpose of
diverting the malady from the vitals; otherwise serious results may
ensue.

Indeed, my learned friend Dr. O'Rell has met with several cases (as he
informs me) in which suppressed bibliomania has resulted fatally. Many
of these cases have been reported in that excellent publication, the
"Journal of the American Medical Association," which periodical, by the
way, is edited by ex-Surgeon-General Hamilton, a famous collector of
the literature of ornament and dress.

To make short of a long story, the medical faculty is nearly a unit
upon the proposition that wherever suppressed bibliomania is suspected
immediate steps should be taken to bring out the disease. It is true
that an Ohio physician, named Woodbury, has written much in defence of
the theory that bibliomania can be aborted; but a very large majority
of his profession are of the opinion that the actual malady must needs
run a regular course, and they insist that the cases quoted as cured by
Woodbury were not genuine, but were bastard or false phases, of the
same class as the chickenpox and the German measles.

My mania exhibited itself first in an affectation for old books; it
mattered not what the book itself was--so long as it bore an ancient
date upon its title-page or in its colophon I pined to possess it.
This was not only a vanity, but a very silly one. In a month's time I
had got together a large number of these old tomes, many of them
folios, and nearly all badly worm-eaten, and sadly shaken.

One day I entered a shop kept by a man named Stibbs, and asked if I
could procure any volumes of sixteenth-century print.

"Yes," said Mr. Stibbs, "we have a cellarful of them, and we sell them
by the ton or by the cord."

That very day