Yet how could it be otherwise? All around me I see those things that draw me from the pathway I set out to pursue: like a heedless butterfly I flit from this sweet unto that, glorying and revelling in the sunshine and the posies. There is little that is selfish in a love like this, and herein we have another reason why the passion for books is beneficial. He who loves women must and should love some one woman above the rest, and he has her to his keeping, which I esteem to be one kind of selfishness. But he who truly loves books loves all books alike, and not only this, but it grieves him that all other men do not share with him this noble passion. Verily, this is the most unselfish of loves! To return now to the matter of booksellers, I would fain impress you with the excellences of the craft, for I know their virtues. My association with them has covered so long a period and has been so intimate that even in a vast multitude of people I have no difficulty in determining who are the booksellers and who are not. For, having to do with books, these men in due time come to resemble their wares not only in appearance but also in conversation. My bookseller has dwelt so long in his corner with folios and quartos and other antique tomes that he talks in black-letter and has the modest, engaging look of a brown old stout binding, and to the delectation of discriminating olfactories he exhaleth an odor of mildew and of tobacco commingled, which is more grateful to the true bibliophile than all the perfumes of Araby. I have studied the craft so diligently that by merely clapping my eyes upon a bookseller I can tell you with certainty what manner of books he sells; but you must know that the ideal bookseller has no fads, being equally proficient in and a lover of all spheres, departments, branches, and lines of his art. He is, moreover, of a benignant nature, and he denies credit to none; yet, withal, he is righteously so discriminating that he lets the poor scholar have for a paltry sum that which the rich parvenu must pay dearly for. He is courteous and considerate where courtesy and consideration are most seemly. Samuel Johnson once rolled into a London bookseller's shop to ask for literary employment. The bookseller scrutinized his burly frame, enormous hands, coarse face, and humble apparel. "You would make a better porter," said he. This was too much for the young lexicographer's patience. He picked up a folio and incontinently let fly at the bookseller's head, and then stepping over the prostrate victim he made his exit, saying: "Lie there, thou lump of lead!" This bookseller was Osborne, who had a shop at Gray's Inn Gate. To Boswell Johnson subsequently explained: "Sir, he was impertinent to me, and I beat him."