what he had done, or what he was about to do, were
questions never considered, either by Kelsey or by his friends. That
he was part of the driftwood left stranded and unrecognized on the
intellectual shore was enough. All that any of them asked for was
brains, and Felix, even before the first evening had ended, had
uncovered a stock so varied, and of such unusual proportions, and of
so brilliant a character that he was always accorded the right of way
whenever he took charge of the talk.

And a queer lot they were who listened, and a queer lot they had to be,
to enjoy Kelsey's confidence. "Men are like books," he would often say
to Felix. "It is their insides I care for, no matter how badly they
are bound. The half-calf or all-morocco sort never appeal to me. Shelf
fellows seldom handled, I call them, and a man who is not handled and
rubbed up against, with a corner worn off here and there, is like a book
kept under glass. Nobody cares anything about it except as an ornament,
and I have no room for ornaments."

That is why the door was kept shut at night, when some half-calf rapped
and Tim would get a look at his binding through the shutter and tiptoe
back, closing the door of the inner room behind him.

Among Kelsey's collection was old Silas Murford, the custom-house
clerk--a fat, stupid-looking old fellow whose chin rested on his
shirt-front and whose middle rested on his knees, the whole of him, when
seated, filling Tim's biggest chair. Tim prized this volume most, for
when Silas began to talk, the sheepish look would fade out of his placid
face, his little pig eyes would vanish, and the listener would discover
to his astonishment that not only was this lethargic lump of flesh a
delightful conversationalist but that he had spent every hour he
could spare from his custom-house in a study of the American system
of immigration--and had at his tongue's end a mass of statistics about
which few men knew anything.

Crackburn, an authority on the earlier printers, then in charge of the
prints in the Astor Library, and who, for diversion, ground lenses on
the sly, was another prize document. And so was Lockwood, the lapidary,
famous as a designer of medals and seals; and many more such oddities.
"Fine old copies," Kelsey would say of them, "hand-printed, all of them;
one or two, like old Silas, extremely rare."

That he considered Felix entitled to a place in his private collection
had been decided at their first meetin