“There is one thing I have just refused to buy because the man wanted too much for it. He said that he had recently returned from Europe, had been a soldier, and wanted to sell me the embalmed finger of a German general. I forget the name of the general, but the man said that it was authentic and that he would sign a document before a notary public, swearing that he had been present at the time the finger was cut off of the general’s hand. Now, if he had asked fifty cents or a dollar, I would have been willing to take a chance, because it would make a good window display in this time of war; but he wanted five dollars, and I couldn’t see my way clear. That’s too much of a chance, to stake a five-spot on an embalmed finger of a German general. So I bought a slipper instead. It belonged to a Madame Jumel, and she is supposed to have worn it on the day that she got her divorce from Aaron Burr. I paid a dollar for it and I consider it a pretty sound gamble.” “How so?” I asked. “Well,” he answered, “because Aaron Burr was the second Vice-President of the United States.” Of course that argument was final, and I wished him luck with his purchase. 1918 II. Strange to say, most of the bookshops in New York with individual appeal are modern places only recently established, and their proprietors young, often very young people. Most of them are up-to-date business men who had their training in different lines. They were lovers of books, they realized the possibilities of a “bookshop with a soul,” they opened shops after their own hearts, and are meeting with success. The Oxford Book Shop Alfred Goldsmith’s is the youngest of New York’s book shops. This is to be found on Lexington Avenue near Twenty-fifth Street, in an old-fashioned basement, with pillars and nooks, near some of the oldest auction rooms in the city, just the place for a book shop. Shelves all around the walls filled with a few thousand well-selected books, comfortable chairs to sit in here and there, a sacred case of first editions, all other books well dusted and in neat rows, modern authors mostly, scarce translations of authors whose names, perhaps, you have never heard before, but who will be your good friends when once you have made their acquaintance. Mr. Goldsmith is a young man, a college graduate with a successful business career in the print paper industry behind him. He always was a great reader and buyer of books. One day this fall he decided to open a book shop, and to get married. He did both, and is well satisfied with both ventures. Book collectors are gifted with a sixth sense. It is not necessary to send them announcements. Some day they are sure to drift in, and if the atmosphere is congenial they come again and again.