Rensselaer Republican, Volume 16, Number 11, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 November 1883 — The Bibliophile. [ARTICLE]

The Bibliophile.

v One man fills many shelves with common books; another fills few shelves with choice treasures, possibly with treasures that he never re., dsn or means to read. The, true bibliophile thinks it desecration to read his hooks; for how, he asks, would Renouard’s or Charles Nodier’s volumes be in the exquisite condition for which they are notorious if their owners had handled them and turned over their page < as if they were like any ordinary magazine? The joy of possessing an uncut “Pastissier Francais,” or a manuscript bound as the book in Van Eyck’s picture, is bound is not, we fear, in the least connected with the literary value of those gems. The “Pastissier,” indeed, is a very ordinary little Cookery book, but, for some mysterious reason, it is the most sought after of all the Elzevirs; and the two uncut copies which came a. few years ago into the Paris market were regarded with as much curiosity ns if., they had been a pair of phoenixes. How the craze for these and similar rarities has lately grown in intensity and Volume is known to every one who has. studied the records of the Beckford and other recent sales; and this, of course, makes the formal ion of a library of. rarities, or the addition of rarities to existing libraries, more and more difficult.— London Times. Dr. C. 0. Graham, of Louisville, is 99 years of age. He used to hunt Indians with Daniel Boone.