io THE GARDEN OF A 



Beside the gift of healing and sympathy with 

 everything living, father had the book madness. 

 Not the disagreeable stuffy kind of mania that 

 Nodier's Theodore died of, simply the hunger for 

 the friendships that books offered him and the desire 

 to keep such boon companions in the best of health 

 and raiment. Woe was upon me even in my baby- 

 hood if I ever ate cookies over the lap of the mean- 

 est volume or cut the leaves of a magazine with 

 anything less smooth than a paper knife ! So it 

 came about that when we took our winter holidays 

 in Boston and New York, we mingled music, theatre, 

 and pictures with many eager hours in a dingy auc- 

 tion room where books were sold, that stood at the 

 meeting of three crossways. It is impossible to 

 word the keen joy we both found within those smoky 

 walls, father in the chase and bringing down the 

 prey, I in retrieving, so to speak. This sport con- 

 sisted in rushing the precious volumes safely past 

 Aunt Lot's custom-house inspection and mixing 

 them with the older residents in the book shelves 

 until their identity was lost. 



The risk of retrieving varied greatly with the size 

 of the book itself. The "New English Canaan" 

 and Josselyn's " Rarities " were easily pocketed, and 

 they modestly kept the secret of their own value, 



