chase from the sale-room.
On the other hand he gives no credit. The bookseller who enjoys the
luxury of a shop, gets credit from the auctioneer, and gives credit to
his customers. He has to put as large a margin of profit as possible on
his books, and an average of sixpence each has to be added to the
original cost of every item catalogued. The bookstall-man is, naturally,
handicapped in many ways, and if he finds the sweepings of his more
aristocratic _confreres'_ shops a long time on his hands, he, at all
events, makes as large a profit with much fewer liabilities.

We have referred to Hodgson's as the centre from which nearly all the
bookstalls are supplied. Occasionally, however, the barrow-man buys at
Sotheby's, and frequently so at Puttick and Simpson's. Sometimes the
more adventurous spirits attend auctions in private houses in the
suburbs, and occasionally those held a few miles out of town. These
expeditions are more often than not 'arranged,' and usually resolve
themselves into 'knock-outs.' It is a by no means unknown contingency
for two or three men to purchase, against all comers, the entire lot of
books at figures which invariably put the auctioneer into an exceedingly
good humour; neither is it an unknown event for these men to decamp
without the books, and also without leaving their addresses or deposit!
Such tricks, however, are not the work of the tradesmen who have a
_locus standi_, but of the better class of book-jackals, who, failing to
get the books for next to nothing, outbid everyone else, and leave the
auctioneer to get out of the dilemma as he best can.

[Illustration: _The late Edmund Hodgson, Book-auctioneer._]

For many years the weekly cattle-market at Islington has been a happy
hunting-ground of the bookstall-keeper. Books are among the hundred and
one articles which are brought from every conceivable source, and many
very good things have doubtless been picked up here. But it is always
the early prowler who gets the rarities--the man who gets there at eight
or nine o'clock in the morning. There is very little but absolute
rubbish left for the post-prandial visitor. A few inveterate
book-hunters have journeyed thither at various times and in a spasmodic
manner, but the hope of anything worth having has usually turned out to
be a vain one: they have always been anticipated.

Between the more ambitious shop and the nondescript bookstall, there is
a class or species of bookseller who deser