=100. Book Merchants.= In many of the new towns springing up in the West, there are openings for booksellers. Many colleges and seminaries are being built up, thereby offering a still better market for the sale of school books. It would be well for those going into the business to ascertain, before doing so, what books are used in the literary institutions of the place. Some booksellers are so mean as to sell old-fashioned, out-of-date school books to country merchants, thereby clearing their own stock, and imposing their unsalable goods on others. No doubt, many established book merchants would be willing to trust, to such as they have confidence in, a stock of books to be sold on commission. When a sufficient sum is acquired, the individual can purchase a stock of her own. Many dry-goods merchants keep a few books, but when there is a sufficient sale of books, a store, if expenses are only cleared for a while, may gradually become a revenue of profit, and is likely to prove a permanent business, where discretion and industry are used. In London and Paris, women sell stationery, almanacs, memorandum books, diaries, and pocket books, on the streets. Public auctions of books are held frequently in cities and towns. Agents do much to extend a circulation of books. In large cities, merchants confine their stock of books to two or three kinds--as those of medicine, law, theology, or school books; but, as a general thing, miscellaneous books are kept. The trade sales which occur in Boston once, and in Philadelphia and New York twice a year, are only attended by booksellers. These sales last but a few days. The prices at which books sell at these auctions are considered a pretty fair criterion of their future worth. Miss H. told me of a Miss P., niece of Horace Mann, now living in Concord, N. H., who kept a bookstore in Boston, and imported books to fill orders, but was crushed by other book importers, because she was a woman. In many towns and cities, women keep small stores for the sale of stationery, magazines, newspapers, &c. "In large stationery stores, women might be employed to stamp initials on paper," with small hand presses made for the purpose.