"But it is from the selling side that we see most, or else I have always paid more heed to this class; and a strange one it is too, for we buy of some curious customers at times. Now by chance one buys a whole library belonging to some one deceased--now a lot of a broker who has purchased the whole effects of some one in trouble, or about to move a great distance; but more often we get our stock in trade from people who bring little lots of half-a-dozen or a dozen books at a time, and are glad enough to take anything for them. For they know well enough that old books possess a very different value to the same works at the publishers. Of course there are some which are always valuable; but the generality of your light frothy works come down so that I could get any number of three-volume, guinea-and-a-half sets of novels at from ninepence to eighteenpence the set. "Most of your selling customers are reckless, and dab down a score of old books with a `What'll you give me for these?' But sometimes we had people come who had seen better days; and then it becomes painful, and I hated to offer them the current value of the works they had brought themselves to part with most unwillingly. They were generally books they had bought in happier days, or had presented to them; and perhaps after making some calculation at home as to the amount they can raise upon these works, the look of stony despair that came over their faces was something pitiful; for, you see, trade is trade, and when things have a current value in the market, however well one may feel disposed towards those in trouble, one is obliged to be hard-hearted, and to think of the business part alone. "But I couldn't always do it; there are times when things go home to your feelings, and a case occurred to me once when I was sorely put out. You see, one day I was sitting in my old shabby dusty coat amongst my books, taking a peep here, and a dip there, just as it was my custom to do, when a tall, pale girl, dressed in shabby black, entered the shop with a large moreen bag containing four great quarto volumes. These she placed upon the counter, with the request that I would give her as much for them as they were worth. "I looked at the books, then at my visitor, then at the books again, and I felt in a manner that I would much rather they had been taken elsewhere. I was not romantic--all the romance was rubbed off my character like so much silver plating sixty years ago, to leave only the copper quite bare; but I knew well enough that my first words would give a lady who was in distress great pain, and, therefore, I dreaded to speak; for it was all plain enough written in that poor girl's face-- beaten-down pride, struggle with poverty, the desire to keep up appearances, and all compelled to give way to the hunger which would take no denial. "But business was business; she had come in obedience to urgent need, and I knew it was cruelty to keep her in suspense.