"It's the same way with books," put in the Bibliomaniac, an unfortunate
being whose love of rare first editions had brought him down from
affluence to boarding. "Many a man who wouldn't steal a dollar would run
off with a book. I had a friend once who had a rare copy of _Through
Africa by Daylight_. It was a beautiful book. Only twenty-five copies
printed. The margins of the pages were four inches wide, and the
title-page was rubricated; the frontispiece was colored by hand, and the
seventeenth page had one of the most amusing typographical errors on
it--"
"Was there any reading-matter in the book?" queried the Idiot, blowing
softly on a hot potato that was nicely balanced on the end of his fork.
[Illustration: "ALARMED THE COOK"]
"Yes, a little; but it didn't amount to much," returned the
Bibliomaniac. "But, you know, it isn't as reading-matter that men like
myself care for books. We have a higher notion than that. It is as a
specimen of book-making that we admire a chaste bit of literature like
_Through Africa by Daylight_. But, as I was saying, my friend had this
book, and he'd extra-illustrated it. He had pictures from all parts of
the world in it, and the book had grown from a volume of one hundred
pages to four volumes of two hundred pages each."
"And it was stolen by a highly honorable friend, I suppose?" queried the
Idiot.
"Yes, it was stolen--and my friend never knew by whom," said the
Bibliomaniac.
"What?" asked the Idiot, in much surprise.
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