THE RUINS OF THE CUSTOM HOUSE, LONDON AFTER THE FIRE OF FEBRUARY 14TH, 1814

This was the third building to be destroyed by fire. in 1658, was destroyed in 1718.

The first Custom House was burnt in the Great Fire, 1666. The second, built
From an engraving by Wise, after a drawing by Fellows

deeply occupied as to make it impossible. Is it not perhaps that England has grown rich and more or less indifferent to these things? Is the game worth the candle? Is business to the average man quite the sport it was a hundred years ago? The young man at once says, "Yes, I'd do it, but how about capital?" The rich man says, "Oh! very well, but I prefer a lower rate of interest and reduced risk."

Yet England can, if she will, again become by far the greatest manufacturing centre of the world. She can, if she will, snap her fingers at competition. She does it admirably in some branches of trade, why not in all ?

XIX

THE FANTASTIC IN TRADE

I

RADE has often been developed on lines as widely hysterical as if directed and controlled by silly school children, for when trade touches a man's or a nation's fads, common sense departs and gives place to the wild and fantastic. Men and women become infatuated with an idea, and so bereft of usual financial judgment that their acts when viewed from a distance appear insane, as indeed they often really are. Romance may remain, but a romance which is nebulous and unreal.

Perhaps some of the sweetest moments of life are experienced in the gratification of a long-felt wish. Let a man be a collector, with all the ideals that a true collector may possess. Let him collect books, or orchids, or Chinese pottery, or miniatures, or pictures, or coins, or old furniture, or manuscripts. Let him be a student of any one of these subjects or a hundred others. Let him dream of and long for some precious example rare and difficult to find. Let him feel in his very marrow the intense love for that one object, then let it become finally possible for him to possess it. Money which cannot well be spared goes quickly. Everything gives way to this unconquerable desire. To own it, to look at it, to handle it, to take one last long look at it each night before sleep, to gloat over it with a miser's love, and to display it proudly to admiring companions: such is

a portion of the joy which comes to a man who is a collector at heart.

- A true bibliophile may be pointed to as a collector par excellence. The lover of first editions is a delightful faddist. His common-looking, unpretentious volume has perhaps been read and caressed by the great man who wrote it, and who watched anxiously the reception by the public of this his first effort and first step to fame. Its later owner points with infinite pride to errors of typography which the careless printer had not been sufficiently interested in or well paid for to correct. Such little faults as a wrongly numbered page, an inverted letter, or an error of statement have through years of book collecting added charm and value to the shelf of first editions. Then the bindings running from the famous Groliers through the entire gamut-the Tournevains, the Deromes, the Mace-Ruettes, the Plantins, the Padeloup, the old pigskin Elzevirs and the ornate and bejewelled Bibles of that age of display, down to the beautiful works of delightful art of the finest binders of the present time-these all are to the collector dearer than gold, and seem the most entrancing objects on earth.

Then the Missals which breathe an air of the monastery and reflect the patient skill of the monk-artist of that period of the world's history when all that was best and cleverest was devoted to the Church.

Then the books from the library of the great or famous or notorious characters of olden times; one sees now as perfectly as if each volume was upon this table a beautiful red morocco copy, the red as bright and brilliant as when it left the tooler's hands, a charming book which was once Marie Antoinette's and stamped with her royal coat of arms.

The fair Queen has touched and perhaps loved that book and now-now it is here surrounded with all the memories of her life to take one back for an hour to the Court of Louis.