The chief objects of my later ambition have been rare old books, gems,
engravings, china, and so forth. All these things, if they are to be
collected, demand that you shall have your wits about you; and the
peculiarity of the Duffer is that his wits are always wool-gathering.
A nice collection of wool they must have stored up somewhere. As to
books, one invariably begins by collecting the wrong things. In novels
and essays you read of "priceless Elzevirs," and "Aldines worth their
weight in gold." Fired with hope, you hang about all the stalls, where
you find myriads of Elzevirs, dumpy, dirty little tomes, in small
illegible type, and legions of Aldines, books quite as dirty, if not
so dumpy, and equally illegible, for they are printed in italics. You
think you are in luck, invest largely, and begin to give yourself the
airs of an amateur and a discoverer. Then comes somebody who knows
about the matter in hand, and who tells you, with all the savage joy
of a collector, that nobody wants any Elzevirs and Aldines, except a
very few, and they must be in beautiful old bindings, uncut down,
or scarcely cut down by the binder. These you may long for, but you
certainly will never find them in the fourpenny box. The Duffer is
always making the mistake of buying small bargains, as he thinks them,
and so he will spend, in some time, perhaps, a hundred pounds. With
a hundred pounds, and with luck, and prudence, and cunning, he might
perhaps buy one small volume which a collector who knew his business
would not wholly disdain.
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