of man were capable of inventing, constructing, and
practising.

When Alice became my wife she knew that I was a lover and collector of
books, but, being a young thing, she had no idea of the monstrous
proportions which bibliomania, unchecked, is almost certain to acquire.
Indeed, the dear girl innocently and rapturously encouraged this
insidious vice. "Some time," she used to say, "we shall have a house
of our own, and then your library shall cover the whole top-floor, and
the book-cases shall be built in the walls, and there shall be a lovely
blue-glass sky-light," etc. Moreover, although she could not tell the
difference between an Elzevir and a Pickering, or between a folio and
an octavo, Alice was very proud of our little library, and I recall now
with real delight the times I used to hear her showing off those
precious books to her lady callers. Alice made up for certain
inaccuracies of information with a distinct enthusiasm and garrulity
that never failed to impress her callers deeply. I was mighty proud of
Alice; I was prepared to say, paraphrasing Sam Johnson's remark about
the Scotchman, "A wife can be made much of, if caught young."

It was not until after little Grolier and little Richard de Bury were
born to us that Alice's regard for my pretty library seemed to abate.
I then began to realize the truth of what my bachelor friend Kinzie had
often declared,--namely, that the chief objection to children was that
they weaned the collector from his love of books. Grolier was a
mischievous boy, and I had hard work trying to convince his mother that
he should by no means be allowed to have his sweet but destructive will
with my Bewicks and Bedfords. Thumb and finger marks look well enough
in certain places, but I protested that they did not enhance the quaint
beauty of an old wood-cut, a delicate binding, or a wide margin. And
Richard de Bury--a lovely little 16mo of a child--was almost as
destructive as his older brother. The most painful feature of it all
to me then was that their mother actually protected the toddling knaves
in their vandalism. I never saw another woman change so as Alice did
after those two boys came to us. Why, she even suggested to me one day
that when we did build our new house we should devote the upper story
thereof not to library but to nursery purposes!

Things gradually got to the pass that I began to be afraid to bring
books into the house. At first Alice used to reproac