hat in
becoming a book-collector he had deprived the world of a great
musician; for he was like Charles Lamb in that he was sentimentally
inclined to harmony but organically incapable of a tune.

Yet he was so broad-minded that it was not possible for him to hold
even a neutral attitude in the presence of anything in which other
people delighted. I have known him to sit through a long and heavy
organ recital, not in a resigned manner but actively attentive,
clearly determined that if the minutest portion of his soul was
sensitive to the fugues of J. S. Bach he would allow that portion to
bask in the sunshine of an unwonted experience. So that from one point
of view he was the incarnation of tolerance as he certainly was the
incarnation of good-humor and generosity. He envied no man his gifts
from Nature or Fortune. He was not only glad to let live, but
painstakingly energetic in making the living of people a pleasure to
them, and he received with amused placidity adverse comments upon
himself.

Words which have been used to describe a famous man of this century I
will venture to apply in part to the Bibliotaph. 'He was a kind of
gigantic and Olympian school-boy, ... loving-hearted, bountiful,
wholesome and sterling to the heart's core.'

LAST WORDS ON THE BIBLIOTAPH

The Bibliotaph's major passion was for collecting books; but he had a
minor passion, the bare mention of which caused people to lift their
eyebrows suspiciously. He was a shameless, a persistent, and a
successful hunter of autographs. His desire was for the signatures of
living men of letters, though an occasional dead author would be
allowed a place in the collection, provided he had not been dead too
long. As a rule, however, the Bibliotaph coveted the 'hand of write'
of the man who was now more or less conspicuously in the public eye.
This autograph must be written in a representative work of the author
in question. The Bibliotaph would not have crossed the street to
secure a line from Ben Jonson's pen, but he mourned because the
autograph of the Rev. C. L. Dodgson was not forthcoming, nor likely to
be. His conception of happiness was this: to own a copy of the first
edition of _Alice in Wonderland_, upon the fly-leaf of which Lewis
Carroll had written his name, together with the statement that he had
done so at the Bibliotaph's request, and because that eminent
collector could not be made happy in any other Way.

The Bibliotaph liked the