but a
bookseller, with a shop "at the Ball in St. Paul's
Churchyard."

On comparing the first page of the text of his purchase with the same
page of an acknowledged London issue of the "Isle of Pines" [7]in the
John Carter Brown Library,{1} the bookseller concluded that the two were
entirely different publications.

An expert cataloguer connected with one of the large auction firms of
New York then took up the subject. After a study of the tract he
became assured that it could only have been printed by Samuel Green,
of Cambridge, and he brought forward facts and comparisons which seemed
conclusive and for which he deserves much credit. It was a clever bit of
bibliographical work. With such an endorsement as to rarity and
quality the pamphlet was again put to the test of the auction room. The
cataloguer stated his case in sufficient fulness of detail and the
first page of the text was reproduced.{2} Naturally the discovery sent
a little thrill through the mad-house of bibliography. The tract was
knocked down for $400 to a bookseller from Hartford, Connecticut,
presumably for some local collection. The incident would have passed
from memory had it not been for one of those accidents to which even the
amateur bibliographer is liable.

1 No. 5 in the Bibliography, page 93, infra.

2 Nuggets of American History, American Art Association,
November 19, 1917. The Isle of Pines was lot 142, and was
introduced by the words, "Cambridge Press in New England."
The catalogue was prepared by Mr. F. W. Coar.

In the bitter days of the winter of 1917-18 the working force of the
Massachusetts Historical Society was contracted into one room--the
Dowse Library--where was at least a semblance [8]of warmth in the open
fireplace.

THE DOWSE COPIES

One afternoon, when I had finished my work and the others had left, I
picked up the catalogue of the Dowse Library and began idly to turn over
its leaves. Incidentally, that catalogue is characteristic of the older
methods of the Society. As is known to the elect, no book in the Dowse
Library can ever leave the room in which it now rests, and of the
catalogue twenty-five copies were printed and never circulated. If the
library had been left in the Dowse house in Cambridgeport, its existence
and contents could not have been more successfully hidden from the
world. While reading the titles in a very casual way, my eye was caught
by one which gave