at you may
hunt for a lifetime and never meet one.

The best plan for a man who has to see that his collection is worth what
it cost him, is probably to confine one's self to a single line, say, in
your case, first editions of new English, French, and American books that
are likely to rise in value. I would try, were I you, to collect first
editions of Longfellow, Bryant, Whittier, Poe, and Hawthorne.

As to Poe, you probably will never have a chance. Outside of the British
Museum, where they have the "Tamerlane" of 1827, I have only seen one
early example of Poe's poems. It is "Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane, and Minor
Poems, by Edgar A. Poe. Baltimore: Hatch and Dunning, 1829, 8vo, pp.
71." The book "came to Mr. Locker (Mr. Frederick Locker-Lampson),
through Mr. R. H. Stoddard, the American poet." So says Mr.
Locker-Lampson's Catalogue. He also has the New York edition of 1831.

These books are extraordinarily rare; you are more likely to find them in
some collection of twopenny rubbish than to buy them in the regular
market. Bryant's "Poems" (Cambridge, 1821) must also be very rare, and
Emerson's of 1847, and Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes's of 1836, and
Longfellow's "Voices of the Night," 1839, and Mr. Lowell's "A Year's
Life;" none of these can be common, and all are desirable, as are Mr.
Whittier's "Legends of New England" (1831), and "Poems" (1838).

Perhaps you may never be lucky enough to come across them cheap; no doubt
they are greatly sought for by amateurs. Indeed, all American books of a
certain age or of a special interest are exorbitantly dear. Men like Mr.
James Lenox used to keep the market up. One cannot get the Jesuit
"Relations"--shabby little missionary reports from Canada, in dirty
vellum.

Cartier, Perrot, Champlain, and the other early explorers' books are
beyond the means of a working student who needs them. May _you_ come
across them in a garret of a farmhouse, or in some dusty lane of the
city. Why are they not reprinted, as Mr. Arber has reprinted "Captain
John Smith's Voyages, and Reports on Virginia"? The very reprints, when
they have been made, are rare and hard to come by.

There are certain modern books, new books, that "go up" rapidly in value
and interest. Mr. Swinburne's "Atalanta" of 1865, the quarto in white
cloth, is valued at twenty dollars. Twenty years ago one dollar would
have purchased it. Mr. Austin Dobson's "Proverbs in Porcelain" is also
in demand among the curious