toward the street, so that, with the book-shelves for a back-ground, her face was in profile, and I determined swiftly that if she were to wait on me she would be kept waiting as long as my money lasted. I did not want “The Log of the JOLLY POLLY,” but I did want to hear the lovely lady speak, and especially I desired that the one to whom she spoke should be myself. “What is the price of this?” I asked. With magnificent self-control I kept my eyes on the book, but the lovely lady was so long silent that I raised them. To my surprise, I found on her face an expression of alarm and distress. With reluctance, and yet within her voice a certain hopefulness, she said, “Fifty dollars.” Fifty dollars was a death blow. I had planned to keep the young lady selling books throughout the entire morning, but at fifty dollars a book, I would soon be owing her money. I attempted to gain time. “It must be very rare!” I said. I was afraid to look at her lest my admiration should give offense, so I pretended to admire the book. “It is the only one in existence,” said the young lady. “At least, it is the only one for sale!” We were interrupted by the approach of a tall man who, from his playing the polite host and from his not wearing a hat, I guessed was Mr. Hatchardson himself. He looked from the book in my hand to the lovely lady and said smiling, “Have you lost it?” The girl did not smile. To her, apparently, it was no laughing matter. “I don't know--yet,” she said. Her voice was charming, and genuinely troubled. Mr. Hatchardson, for later I learned it was he, took the book and showed me the title-page. “This was privately printed in 1830,” he said, “by Captain Noah Briggs. He distributed a hundred presentation copies among his family and friends here in New Bedford. It is a most interesting volume.” I did not find it so. For even as he spoke the young girl, still with a troubled countenance, glided away. Inwardly I cursed Captain Briggs and associated with him in my curse the polite Mr. Hatchardson. But, at his next words my interest returned. Still smiling, he lowered his voice. “Miss Briggs, the young lady who just left us,” he said, “is the granddaughter of Captain Briggs, and she does not want the book to go out of the family; she wants it for herself.” I interrupted eagerly. “But it is for sale?” Mr. Hatchardson reluctantly assented. “Then I will take it,” I said. Fifty dollars is a great deal of money, but the face of the young lady had been very sad. Besides being sad, had it been aged, plain, and ill-tempered, that I still would have bought the book, is a question I have never determined.