At this point a lady faltered in, saying she felt very faint, and might she sit down a moment. I gave her my chair, and called to Mrs. Duckie for some water. The lady told me her home was in Ashford, and she was only up for the day, having to get some things for her boy who was joining a merchant-ship, and did I know where Heronsgate Mansions were, because she had a cousin living there whom she would like to see, and was there a good dentist in this neighbourhood, and could I tell her if the 4.43 to Ashford was still running. Having at length resumed my chair, I proceeded with Walter Pope:-- "Let the gods, who dispose of every king's crown, Whomsoever they please, set up and pull down; I'll pay the whole shilling impos'd on my head, Tho' I go without claret that night to my bed.... Tho' I care not for riches, may I not be so poor That the rich without shame cannot enter my door; May they court my converse, may they take much delight My old stories to hear in a winter's long night." ... The rusty man here came in again, and after spending a moment at the shelves, offered me another book, and pitched such a tale of woe that I bought it for myself. Two days afterwards, I may here remark, Miss Wagstaff came up to ask me if I had sold a copy of Rogers' _Italy_ with Turner's plates while I was in charge. "No," I said, "but I bought one." She examined it swiftly, and informed me that it was their own copy which had been sold to me. "He spotted you for a greenhorn all right," she said. "And had a starving family, hadn't he? And was only just out of the Brompton Hospital?" I said it was so. "Oh that Brompton Hospital!" she added. "Life would be quite simple if it had never been built. They've all got some one there when they want to sell a book." I gave Miss Wagstaff the book again, and said I was very sorry. "You'll always be taken in," she said, as she hurried off. "You go about asking for it." Probably; but how can one say no to certain forms of distress, real or so well-managed as to seem real? After my experiences I know that it is not the disposal of books that presents the greatest difficulty to a bookseller, but the acquisition of them. At least I know that that would be the case with me. My difficulty would always be to refuse to buy the books which the unhappy persons brought in. A very little while after the shabby man had departed with his ill-gotten gains, a neat little old woman entered with a brown paper parcel which she undid with excessive deliberation and care, revealing at last a shabby copy of an odd volume of Rowe's _Shakespeare_. At the same time she took out of her purse a folded newspaper cutting and placed it in my hands. Then she looked at me with an expression in which excitement, hope, and fear were almost unbearably blended.