Just as the disappearance of certain books sends their prices up considerably in the market, so the unexpected appearance of others has just the reverse effect. Until quite recently one of the scarcest of the first editions of the writings of Charles Dickens was a thin octavo pamphlet of seventy-one pages, entitled 'The Village Coquettes: a Comic Opera. In two Acts. London: Richard Bentley, 1836.' So rare was this book that very few collectors could boast the possession of it, and an uncut example might always be sold for L30 or L40. About a year before his death, Dickens was asked by Mr. Locker-Lampson whether he had a copy; his reply was: 'No, and if I knew it was in my house, and if I could not get rid of it in any other way, I would burn the wing of the house where it was'--the words, no doubt, being spoken in jest. Not long since, a mass of waste-paper from a printer's warehouse was returned to the mills to be pulped, and would certainly have been destroyed had not one of the workmen employed upon the premises caught sight of the name of 'Charles Dickens' upon some of the sheets. The whole parcel was carefully examined, and the searchers were rewarded by the discovery of nearly a hundred copies of 'The Village Coquettes,' in quires, clean and unfolded. These were passed into the market, and the price at once fell to about L5. The most curious things turn up sometimes in a similar manner. A little sixpenny bazaar book ('Two Poems,' by Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning, 1854) was for a long time extremely rare, as much as L3 or L4 being paid for it when it occurred for sale. Suddenly it appeared in a bookseller's catalogue at 2s., and as every applicant could have as many as he wanted, it then leaked out that the bookseller, Mr. Herbert, had purchased about 100 copies with books which he purposed sending to the mill. Even 'remainders' sometimes turn out to be little gold-mines. The late Mr. Stibbs bought the 'remainder' of Keats's 'Endymion' at 4d. per copy. We do not know what he realized by this investment, but their value for some years has been L4 and upwards. [Illustration: _The late Henry Stevens, of Vermont._]