“Would Mr. Doerner undertake to catalogue the stock and appraise it; the estate would pay him three dollars per day for his services?” Mr. Doerner accepted, and, to make the story short, at the end of six months, the cataloguing and appraising were not yet finished, the book-seller’s heirs were unwilling to pay Mr. Doerner’s fees, which amounted to several hundred dollars, upon the dubious chance of reimbursement by public auction: “Would Mr. Doerner accept the books, themselves, in payment of his claim?” He would. And so he found himself the proprietor of a book shop. Mr. Doerner has made discoveries during his career which were of the utmost importance to American history. His collection of paintings, especially of American paintings, would fill a private museum. He hates commercialism, he loves weak humanity, and, strange to say, the disreputable men and women of Wells Street love him, and he and his possessions are safe in the most dangerous part of the city. Or is it true, as he once answered in a rather pessimistic mood: “If they suspected that I had only one thirty-second carat of a diamond in my place, they would murder me and loot my shop in order to find it. But books or paintings, who cares for them in America?” Frank Morris and His Famous Shop Chicago had a great literary period in the nineties. Eugene Field had come to the Western metropolis and was in the early stage of his fame. Stanley Waterloo had written his books, the White Chapel Club was in its flower, Oppie Reed and Bill Nye carried the strangest legends of Chicago throughout the United States on their more or less romantic “lecture” tours. Ben King’s funeral had created a sensation all over the United States. The World Fair brought a great influx of English poets and writers to Chicago. Cowly Stapleton Brown had started his unforgetable _Goose Quill_ in which he predicted twenty-four years ago that Kipling had sung his swan song in “Plain Tales of the Hills,” that Hall Caine would sink into oblivion after a few seasons of best-seller notoriety. He paid in the _Goose Quill_ homage to the genius of Oscar Wilde, and to the man who wrote the Elder Conklin stories. Kimball and Stone established their _Chap Books_ in which America was given a chance to get acquainted with Ernest Dowson, Aubrey Beardsly, John Davidson, Stephane Mallarme, Verlaine, Joseph Peledan, Villiers de L’Isle Adam, Baudelaire here found their first translations, and until today the _Chicago Chap Book_ remains the only source of information of the lives and times of the French decadents. Bill Eaton then was the great dramatic critic who had had his season in London and had come back as the only American who in one year had acquired a perfect English accent. Col. Bill Visscher, the famous Confederate editor and singer of the Southern States had completed his eleven hundred and fifty-sixth patriotic song and had issued his sentimental “In the Canoe.”