After you have passed the stairway in Brentano’s leading to the basement and properly admired the framed autographs and signed portraits which cover the walls, you will pass the gate that leads into the kingdom of Mr. Cadigan, another dealer in literary property but of quite a different type. Mr. Cadigan is the head of Brentano’s periodical department. He knows the development of the American magazine better than anybody else living. For a score of years he has watched successes and failures, but nearest to his heart are the magazines of those men who have had the courage to stand up for their own ideas and their own conception of the world. Some of the most pathetic figures in American letters have founded magazines of their own; they would not follow the example of their contemporaries or submit to the wishes of their publishers and to the presumed desires of the reading public. Mr. Cadigan knows them all. He recommends them if he thinks them commendable. While the gigantic trusts of our American news companies afford them very little or no chances for circulation, Mr. Cadigan adopts them and presents them for sale on his tables next to the full-fledged products of the capitalistic press. I get more satisfaction and pleasure out of Brentano’s basement devoted to periodicals than out of all the periodical reading rooms of all our public libraries combined, with the Carnegie institutions thrown in. To be able to look over the current issues of magazines and to take home just the interesting ones carries with it an intimate satisfaction. 1917 Young Madigan Everybody calls him young Madigan to distinguish him from his father, “old” Madigan, the dean of the autograph craft in the United States. Tom Madigan is young in years; about twenty-five; but he was bred among autographs. There is a lot of romance and excitement in finding autographs. It stirred the imagination of the boy. While his schoolmates indulged in Indian stories and enthused themselves with the mysteries of Sherlock Holmes, Tom Madigan went about searching for autographs. Old country houses, dilapidated and deserted mansions, garrets even were his hunting grounds. He had a wonderful scent. He found old trunks with letters and manuscripts, boxes with documents and deeds, and his father taught him to separate the chaff from the wheat. Tom read a good deal. History and biography mostly. He became his father’s walking encyclopedia. There is a good deal of the born reporter in Tom, and at a tender age, he discovered his literary inclinations. His autographs furnished his material, dead letters became alive in his hands, magazines and journals were glad to print his rambles and discoveries. We thank him for a good many sidelights upon the private life of illustrious personages. One day Tom disappeared. The fact is he got married and started a shop of his own. Knowledge was his only capital, and today at the age of twenty-five he ranks among the first autograph dealers in America.