The only uptown book shop that keeps open in the evening. The visitors here are quite different from those on 42d street. But I guess they are as lonesome and often as helpless as the people who come to Mr. Lawson’s shop. There are the strangers from the big hostelries on Fifth avenue, the girls from the Studio Club, and a good many physicians from the nearby clinical buildings. Mr. Alexander A. Salop is the master of the mansion. A young man, studious looking, perhaps because he wears eye glasses. A shrewd business man but books are not only merchandise to him. He reads much in several languages, has his likes and dislikes in literature and keeps always a great variety of modern German and French books. A little room in the back of his shop is consecrated to the bookworms. A few comfortable chairs, reading lamps, library tables, it looks very homey and too inviting to simply buy and go. Peter Stammer, who calls himself “The Original New York Book Hunter” and who knows _the_ book if it was ever printed anywhere and at any time in this world, comes here often in the evening to pick up books, but mostly to chat, to “swap” experiences. Mr. Stammer ought to write his memoirs for the benefit of contemporary literature. Here are a few interesting bits gleaned from him several days ago: “Did you ever know,” he asked, “that Henry James had a sister? She must have been a literary woman of great ability. About 40 years ago I was a typesetter in an English town. I remember the most curious job I ever had to do was a book by Miss James. It was a sort of autobiography most extraordinary. A big book of several hundred pages, very intimate and outspoken. Only three copies were to be printed. The type was destroyed and even the proof pages had to be returned. I wonder what ever happened to that book. I wish I could have made a copy of its contents. I set up the first edition of Oscar Wilde’s ‘Ballad of Reading Gaol.’ That was in Boston while I worked for Benjamin Tucker. “You would naturally think that a book printed in many millions of copies could never become scarce. I thought so, too, until I ran across a poem by Bret Harte, his _Excelsior_. I didn’t find the poem among his collected works. Bret Harte collectors didn’t seem to know of its existence. I started inquiries to investigate and I found that this poem had been written as an advertisement for a well known soap, had been printed in millions of copies, distributed free of charge all over America. Curious enough, my copy was the only existing one outside one in the files of the soap concern.” Mr. Stammer knows books and people so well, has met so many writers, he really ought to retire from business for a year and write his reminiscences. 1918 IV.