This oldest street of Boston, the Cheapside of New England, once an important center of city trade, gave Boston its literary charm. In the dilapidated old-time queer buildings, half a dozen book stores invited the lovers of literature. Here was the favorite haunt of the men who gave Boston a literary reputation. It was here in Cornhill that Thomas Burnham founded the first second-hand book shop in the United States in 1825. Young Burnham went from here day after day, with a basket of books on his arm, to the wharves to trade with sea-faring people. Almost one hundred years have elapsed and the shop is still there. Oliver Wendell Holmes had his chair and desk in “_The Old Corner Book Shop_,” and in _Colesworthy’s_ was a hidden nook where Whittier used to hide for an hour or two, reading newly arrived books, but only rarely buying. “_Littlefield’s_” was next door, where Lowell, Longfellow and Emerson used to congregate, talk and occasionally buy additions to their libraries. But alas! Boston is no more the Athens of America. The book stores on Cornhill have shrunk to the number of four. New buildings have invited modern business to invade the neighborhood. The remaining book dealers, still following the traditions of half a century, are very old men. Their days are counted and soon Cornhill will be remembered as one of the landmarks that have been swept away by the modern spirit and are gone forever. Burnham’s Antique Book Store Richard C. Lichtenstein, fifty-five years ago an apprentice to old Mr. Burnham, is now the proprietor of the shop. He has many memories of great book days in Boston. “The most interesting of all my ‘finds’ since I entered the second-hand book trade in the late sixties,” he said (he’s a good and entertaining talker), “was the copy of Poe’s ‘Tamerlaine,’ which created a great sensation among collectors. This small pamphlet of forty pages, published by Collin F. Thomas in Boston in 1827, had escaped the searches of the keenest of book collectors. I usually spent my noon hour in other second-hand stores, and one day I found this small pamphlet which I purchased for 25 cents. I had a good many opportunities to dispose of it, but didn’t sell it before 1892, in auction. It was knocked down to Dodd, Meade & Co. for $1,850. ‘Tamerlaine’ has remained unique among all the books, being today the most costly American book known. I understand a New York bookseller is holding a copy at $15,000.