248

AMID ANCIENT VOLUMES

Down in a Cool Cellar Surrounded by Many Ancient and Interesting Books.

Who Some of the Omaha Buyers of Rare Books Are -- What lodge Savage's Taste Runs to -- Other Collectors.

Let Omaha hurry and fret as much as she chooses, the thermometer get as outrageous as possible, and stock go up till it intoxicates or down till it plunges in despair, there is one man who does not mind.

His name is Henry Schonfeld.

When it is cold Mr. Schonfeld has a fire in his stove. When it is hot he takes off his coat and alts in the shade just without his door. Past him the crowds hurry. All around him men are fretting and planning, and wondering when rest will come from the pressure and the fever. Now and then some of these hurrying mortals stop before Mr. Schonfeld's door, linger a moment, get a damp and soothing smell from within and descend his steps.

Then for half an hour they, too, find rest.

And the secret of it is that Henry Schonfeld is a dealer in old books. He deals with an interesting past. He is surrounded by that dim and pacifying title "Antiquarian." It is ten years now since his [?] first bore that legend, and the first man lured into Mr. Schunfeld's little hole-in-the-ground by its allurements was Mr. James Ross who, was everyone knows, is a writer of charming light verse, a bohemian, a book collector and a newspaper man.