and simple bravery of that lover
of truth and beauty. The present writer was one of the least and latest
of these. Twice, during the last months of his life, it was my very good
fortune to spend an evening with him at his room on Lexington Avenue, to
drink the delicious coffee he brewed in his percolator given him by
William Marion Reedy, to mull with him over the remarkable scrap-books
he had compiled out of the richness of his varied reading, and to hear
him talk about books and life.

Silas Orrin Howes was born in Macon, Georgia, October 15, 1867. He
attended school in Macon and Atlanta, and then in Franklin, Indiana. He
never went to college.

When he was born, a passion for books was born with him. His niece tells
me that by the time he was twenty-one he had collected a considerable
library. He began life as a newspaper man, on the Macon _Telegraph_.
About the age of twenty-four he went to Galveston where he was first a
copy-reader, and then for seven years telegraph editor of the Galveston
_News_.

I do not know all the details of his life in Galveston, where he lived
for about twenty years. He told me that at the time of the disastrous
storm and flood he was working in a drug store near the Gulf front. He
gave me a thrilling description of the night he spent standing on the
prescription counter with the water swirling about his waist. He slept
in a little room at the back of the store, where he had a shelf of books
which were particularly dear to him. Among them was a volume of Henley's
poems. When the flood subsided all the books were gone, but the next day
as he was looking over the wreckage of neighbouring houses he found his
Henley washed up on a doorstep--covered with slime and filth but still
intact. He sent it to Brentano's in New York to be rebound in vellum,
instructing them not to clean it in any way. He wrote to Henley about
the incident, who sent him a very friendly autographed card which he
pasted in the volume. That was one of the books which he held most dear,
and rightly.

I do not know just when he came to New York; about 1910, I believe. He
took a position as salesman at Brentano's. After a couple of years there
he became anxious to try the book business on his own account. He and
his nephew opened a shop in San Antonio. Neither of them had much real
business experience. Certainly Howes himself was far too devoted a
book-lover to be a good business man! After a few months the venture
ended