John Gilbert gave a dignity to his calling and made men understand that the actor could be an artist as surely and as truly as a great painter or a sculptor is an artist. We who are familiar with his best impersonations will always carry with us a feeling of satisfaction that we were permitted to enjoy the charm of his personality and the delightful work of a master of his art.

There was old George Holland, too, whose skip and snuffle used to seem so irresistibly comic, and whose fame was queerly perpetuated in connection with the popular name of one of New York's churches "The Little Church Around the Corner." The story is too familiar for repetition. Holland's Memorial, published in 1871, enlarged by Augustin Daly by added portraits, play-bills, pictures of theatres, and autographs, so that it comprises two quarto volumes, fell into my hands when Daly's treasures were dispersed, and it is like going back to boyhood to glance over its pages. But if I tried to give an idea of its contents I would exhaust the patience of the "gentle reader," and I forbear. For all details of New York's theatres in those remote days I refer you to Laurence Hutton and his delightful books.

XV

Of éditions de luxe, old booksellers, quotations, and indexes.

D

URING the past few years we have been persecuted continually by publishers with what are styled éditions de luxe-a phrase which ought to be banished from our language. It should never have been admitted to the pages of the Century Dictionary, a ponderous but useful compilation about which I feel, as Bill Nye said he did: "I like it immensely. It is quite thrilling in places, and although somewhat jerky in style and verbose, perhaps, its wordpainting is accurate and delightful." The Century adds to its definition the truthful and significant remark that "éditions de luxe are usually sold by subscription."

We who have suffered the assaults of the subscription agent, that insidious product of modern civilization, his unwarranted invasions of our privacy, his shameless intrusions upon us at our places of business, and his stubborn refusals to take himself off with his delusive specimen pages, have good reason to admit the fact alleged by the Century, with a sense of mortification at having often pusillanimously surrendered to his arts in sheer weariness of spirit. It is pitiful to read of the methods which these sharks employed in the case of Mr. Peter Marié, who was made to buy books at ten times their value by a series of bunco-like operations which would make a Bulgarian bandit blush for envy.

When the copyright of some famous series of books has expired, the astute publisher finds it convenient to put forth a new edition, printed upon some pretentiously named paper, with "deckle edges," containing some indifferent pictures made easily and inexpensively by the modern methods of photography, binding it in an imitation half-morocco scarcely to be distinguished from the genuine, and announcing it as "limited to 1000 copies." If some scraps of the author's handwriting can be obtained, a fragment is inserted in each "set," and we have an "Autograph Edition." The unwary purchaser may, if he choose, have his name printed on the back of the title-page, where it is falsely asserted that the book was printed by Jones & Co. for "John Doe" or "Richard Roe," as the case may be. Then an exorbitant price is paid, the "set" reposes upon the book-shelves of the

buyer, who never looks at it again, and when, after his richly deserved bankruptcy, the library is sent to the auction-room, the second-hand book - dealer carries it off for an insignificant fraction of its cost to the original victim.

Men have begun to learn the truth about such matters and to beware of the book-agent. I have found a sure way to rid myself of the pests. I have made a valid and subsisting contract with a certain man to buy subscription editions only through him, and I never buy any through him. Of course, I cannot constitutionally do any act tending to impair the obligation of a contract.

There is another favorite method of involving a book-lover in trouble and perplexity-the bringing forth in an author's lifetime of a "complete edition" of his works. It ought to be obvious to an ordinary intelligence that such a thing as a complete edition can never be produced as long as the writer retains his mind and his power of tongue or of pen, unless for a valuable consideration he shall have promised, covenanted, and agreed that he will compose no more. As I have already confessed, I paid a silly price for twenty-two volumes of Mark Twain, and as Mark fortunately survived and has ever since continued-long may he continue! to turn out page upon page of fiction, humor, and philosophy, I must needs go on squandering money, or my set will be worthless when it is passed over to Bangs's-or, more accurately, to Anderson's, for the old house, dear to all New York book- fanciers, seems to be vanishing. I have also a tale of woe about Bret Harte and Kipling.

The true collector, as we know, does not occupy his mind about the prospective value of his accumulations, and we know, also, that the inheritors of his stores seldom care for anything except the money-worth of the volumes which he cherishes so fondly. A collector's wife, proud as she may be of the books which her spouse has gathered, is usually impatient with the collection, however much she may appreciate its importance. She is disturbed, and I do not blame her, because of its unruly interference with the neatness of the ménage, and its capacity for absorbing all that tiresome dust which is her chief enemy. I am inclined to give her my sympathy. She has ample justification for her objections to the litter of books which makes the whole house seem like the bewildering lofts of our old friend Bukowski of Arsenalsgaten, in Stockholm, and I know of nothing more dusty and disorderly than they are, with their appalling but attractive mixture of books, prints, old furniture, and antiquities of every description. I have just found a newspaper clipping con