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.

Ten years ago Mr. Ross came into the store, which had already been in existence for eleven years, but not as a concern of its present nature, and bought a copy of "Melanchton's Commentary."

"I remember quite well how it looked," says Mr. Schonfeld. "It was in a stamped vellum [?] and printed in 1530. Mr. Ross paid $15 for it." From that time to this Ross has been an almost daily visitor to the shop. He likes the coolness of it, and the dull roar from the street and the dimness of the light, and the faint but unmistakable odor of old paper, dear to the nostrils of the collector.

Poetry is usually Ross' choice -- and Mr. Schonfeld has had some rare old volumes in the course of the years.

Mr. Charles Offutt, the well-known attorney, likes to pick up women of rich exterior and classical interior, and does not object if it is a wanderer from some famous library, which, having gone the way of all libraries and suffered wreck, floats over to this country as the flotsam and jetsam of literature. There is the same delight in securing a book which has drifted about on the seas of vicissitudes that there must be in pulling in a cask of Spanish gold out of the surf to one engaged in the polite occupation of wrecking.

The writer has never had any experience with the Spanish gold exploits, and the reference is purely imaginative, but as to hauling in a book which has rested on the shelves of a great man and been touched by distinguished hands, and taking it home with a pleasure almost guilty to place it on meagre and common shelves, amid exceedingly unpretentious surroundings, she knows all about that. In the first place there is the pleasure of exulting over the book for its down fall.

"Oh, Book!" you say to yourself in the quie of your midnight hour. "to think that Wadsworth has read out of you, written in you, thought about you, and that you have sailed the high seas of his approbation to end at last on such a dull lagoon as this. Here you are, the possession of a born foo, who never had an extraordinary thought, who never did any good to anybody, who cannot even understand the best in you, although dimly she knows that there is in you some way and some where a virtue, if only she had the wit to find it! Book! Isn't it humorous? Do you not wish you were dead, like the majority of books?"

Then you open the pages and imagine you smell mould, and you are delighted at a few brown and sinuous worm holes, which are to a book what the Indian trade mark is to an oriental shawl, and you are happy.

Then too, you have another reprehensible pleasure, -- even more malicious than the one of exulting over the fallen Book. It is a sensation such as the thief must have over his stolen goods. You never feel quite honest about your Book. You know that if all had gone well you would not have had that Book. In a way it does not belong to you. It was another man's brain that first perceived its excellence. It was another man's hand that proudly wore his name -- as like as not a name with a creat above it -- and you have stolen the fruits of his discrimination, and appropriated his intellectual delight, while he poor soul lies rotting -- at least [?] grey matter does. And you laugh a sardonic, contemptible laugh, that you, plain and stupid John Smith have that book, with its crest, its number, its many evidences of having belonged to a man of great worldly and intellectual estate, and that the earl who owned it can be dust while John Smith --, is a living, breathing man -- in the flower of his meanness. Under some circumstances it is better to be John Smith than to be an earl. And one of them obviously is when John Smith is eating and the earl is being eaten -- to borrow a phrase that Judge Cooley will recognize as having been invented by his friend Hamlet.

The judge buys books, by the way. They are mostly political works. He does not confine himself to American politics in his selections. Of course Mr. Byron Reed buys works on American numismatics. If Mr. Reed were in the heart of darkest Africa, he would still be hunting for works on numismatics. Few men living have the right to plume themselves over Mr. Reed on their possession of a library on this subject in particular.

Mr. Arthur II. Bishop, the manager of the Consolidated tank line company, buys works on art, and he is not satisfied with an artistic interior, but must have a binding which will gratify the eye. No man in the city is a better up in the intricacies of dentile edges. Illumination, the treatment of tree calf and the use and history of the tall piece. He likes the elaborate illustrations of the second empire, the microscopical colored plates of the directory and the fine old margins of the careful publications of the English presses in the last century.

Brad Slaughter, the United States marshal, prefers works on art to works of art. R. W Breckenridge, the attorney, is a general reader and does not object to having the dust of a hundred years on the books he buys. He is fond of works of travel, and takes journeys by land and sea, with many great and brave men without the necessity of leaving his library. Mr. F. I. Haller likes a saunter on the cool basement where Mr. Schonfeld smiles upon Philistine and philosopher and buys extensively of works on art, particularly those relating to the old [?].

Judge Savage used to haunt the place. He was buying Shakespeareans. His collection in this direction is most exceptional. Lately he has not visited the place. His collection is doubltess complete.

Judge Bartholomew looks in almost every day. He is a fastidious reader and is not willing to insult his shelves with any but first rate books. He calls that nothing good may get away from him. But he knows what he wants, and is not to be deluded by any cheap pretense at peculiarity or excellence that any impudent book may make. The judge used to buy American biographies, but he has doubtless got his fill of American worthies -- that is, of those who are dead. It is an odd fact, by the way, that one is apt to be indifferent to contemporaneous biography. The life of Grant was an exception -- but that was an autobiography. But as a general thing one wishes his heroes to be dead at least fifty years before one reads about them. There is no objection to appreciating a recently dead hero, or even one who labors under the disadvantage of being alive, but when it comes to reading about him itis quite a different matter. A hero, like wine, is best laid away for a century. At the end of that time he acquires a fine flavor. Judge Bartholomew has no doubt got down to the last part of the nineteenth century, and is now buying the spick and span volumes that come from the eastern presses. But he probably finds his pleasure in biography diminished when he purchases the lives of the men whom he has known -- or all but known.

Charles Brown, the attorney, likes elegant light literature. "The Rev. John Williams, priest at St. Barnabas, turns a scholarly and critical eye on Mr. Schonfeld's book shelves, and sorts ou such works on philosophic and theologic subjects as he inclines toward. No doubt Mr. Williams looks remarkably well in an old book shop with that ascetic and fine face of his, and and those piercing blue eyes in which burn the fires of intellectual activity, never ceasing.

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.

Ten years ago Mr. Ross came into the store, which had already been in existence for eleven years, but not as a concern of its present nature, and bought a copy of "Melanchton's Commentary."

"I remember quite well how it looked," says Mr. Schonfeld. "It was in a stamped vellum [?] and printed in 1530. Mr. Ross paid $15 for it." From that time to this Ross has been an almost daily visitor to the shop. He likes the coolness of it, and the dull roar from the street and the dimness of the light, and the faint but unmistakable odor of old paper, dear to the nostrils of the collector.

Poetry is usually Ross' choice -- and Mr. Schonfeld has had some rare old volumes in the course of the years.

Mr. Charles Offutt, the well-known attorney, likes to pick up women of rich exterior and classical interior, and does not object if it is a wanderer from some famous library, which, having gone the way of all libraries and suffered wreck, floats over to this country as the flotsam and jetsam of literature. There is the same delight in securing a book which has drifted about on the seas of vicissitudes that there must be in pulling in a cask of Spanish gold out of the surf to one engaged in the polite occupation of wrecking.

The writer has never had any experience with the Spanish gold exploits, and the reference is purely imaginative, but as to hauling in a book which has rested on the shelves of a great man and been touched by distinguished hands, and taking it home with a pleasure almost guilty to place it on meagre and common shelves, amid exceedingly unpretentious surroundings, she knows all about that. In the first place there is the pleasure of exulting over the book for its down fall.

"Oh, Book!" you say to yourself in the quie of your midnight hour. "to think that Wadsworth has read out of you, written in you, thought about you, and that you have sailed the high seas of his approbation to end at last on such a dull lagoon as this. Here you are, the possession of a born foo, who never had an extraordinary thought, who never did any good to anybody, who cannot even understand the best in you, although dimly she knows that there is in you some way and some where a virtue, if only she had the wit to find it! Book! Isn't it humorous? Do you not wish you were dead, like the majority of books?"

Then you open the pages and imagine you smell mould, and you are delighted at a few brown and sinuous worm holes, which are to a book what the Indian trade mark is to an oriental shawl, and you are happy.

Then too, you have another reprehensible pleasure, -- even more malicious than the one of exulting over the fallen Book. It is a sensation such as the thief must have over his stolen goods. You never feel quite honest about your Book. You know that if all had gone well you would not have had that Book. In a way it does not belong to you. It was another man's brain that first perceived its excellence. It was another man's hand that proudly wore his name -- as like as not a name with a creat above it -- and you have stolen the fruits of his discrimination, and appropriated his intellectual delight, while he poor soul lies rotting -- at least [?] grey matter does. And you laugh a sardonic, contemptible laugh, that you, plain and stupid John Smith have that book, with its crest, its number, its many evidences of having belonged to a man of great worldly and intellectual estate, and that the earl who owned it can be dust while John Smith --, is a living, breathing man -- in the flower of his meanness. Under some circumstances it is better to be John Smith than to be an earl. And one of them obviously is when John Smith is eating and the earl is being eaten -- to borrow a phrase that Judge Cooley will recognize as having been invented by his friend Hamlet.

The judge buys books, by the way. They are mostly political works. He does not confine himself to American politics in his selections. Of course Mr. Byron Reed buys works on American numismatics. If Mr. Reed were in the heart of darkest Africa, he would still be hunting for works on numismatics. Few men living have the right to plume themselves over Mr. Reed on their possession of a library on this subject in particular.

Mr. Arthur II. Bishop, the manager of the Consolidated tank line company, buys works on art, and he is not satisfied with an artistic interior, but must have a binding which will gratify the eye. No man in the city is a better up in the intricacies of dentile edges. Illumination, the treatment of tree calf and the use and history of the tall piece. He likes the elaborate illustrations of the second empire, the microscopical colored plates of the directory and the fine old margins of the careful publications of the English presses in the last century.

Brad Slaughter, the United States marshal, prefers works on art to works of art. R. W Breckenridge, the attorney, is a general reader and does not object to having the dust of a hundred years on the books he buys. He is fond of works of travel, and takes journeys by land and sea, with many great and brave men without the necessity of leaving his library. Mr. F. I. Haller likes a saunter on the cool basement where Mr. Schonfeld smiles upon Philistine and philospher and buys extensively of works on art, particularly those relating to the old [?].