first served, is my motto, and if six orders come for the
same book, it goes to the man whose letter or card I first receive.' A
sturdy John Bull sort of man this, with a great knowledge of books, who
has had to fight a long uphill battle, and is perhaps one of the
best-known men in the trade.

An awkward incident for the thief happened once. A bookseller, the
proprietor of two or three shops, was in one of them, when a person
entered and offered for sale a couple of books. The proprietor
recognised one of them as being his property, he having that morning
sent it to the other of his shops, from which it had been apparently
almost immediately removed. When questioned, the intending vendor
pretended to be much insulted, and asserted the book had been in his
possession for some considerable time, and even threatened the
bookseller, when he insisted on detaining the book, with the police.
This was rather unfortunate, for at that moment a constable passing by
was called in, and, in spite of a great deal of bluster and many
threats, the thief was marched off to the nearest police-station. The
other book, it was found, had also been stolen that morning from another
shop, and the result was four months' imprisonment.

The remarkable fact is that book-thieves are nearly always well-to-do
people; if hunger induced them to steal a book to get a dinner, they
would come in the category of ordinary thieves. If they stole books
because they wanted to read them, and were unable to pay for them, one
might overlook their crime. One of the most remarkable illustrations of
the past few years is that in which an ex-lieutenant in the Royal Scots
Greys was implicated. The books belonged to a lady who had let her house
to the prisoner's father. She left a number of books, which were in
three bookcases. They were locked, and contained valuable books. She was
informed (so runs the report) that several of the books were missing,
and a few weeks after she saw a number of books, including Ruskin's
'Stones of Venice' and 'Modern Painters,' which she identified as her
property. The law was put into motion, and the case came into the
courts. The value of the two books mentioned she estimated at L60, and
the other books at L50. Mr. Reeves, bookseller, then of 196, Strand,
deposed that he could identify the prisoner, and on June 21 he purchased
five volumes of Ruskin's 'Modern Painters,' and gave a cheque for L16.
He understood that the accused had c