ALL proverbs are not necessarily true, but that which asserts that “every man has his hobby” few will gainsay. Nothing in a house so well betrays this hobby as the owner’s bookcase. It may be large, or it may be small, but there the secret lies. One man’s hobby is angling, and his shelf begins with quaint Isaac Walton, and ends with the _Field_ newspaper of last week. Another has a liking for natural science, and his library is a _vade mecum_ of its mysteries. A third—oftentimes a lady—loves ferns, and her study is a little compendium of that curious literature that has all but wholly sprung up within the present generation. Even the young lady’s shelf of poems, or novels, or histories, betrays, if not the bent of her mind, the bias of her education. My hobby is Nomenclature, and my library betrays my weakness in—what class of books, do you think?—directories! You would think I was a postal official. I have London Directories, Provincial Town Directories, and County Directories. I have even a Paris and a New York Directory. But herein lies a strange truth. I find as much pleasure in perusing these directories as any schoolgirl over her first and most sensational novel. The grand finale of murders, suicides from third-storey windows, and runaway weddings, all so thrillingly blended, cannot be half so absorbing to her—not that I recommend her to read such things—as the last chapter of the London Post Office Directory, from Y to Z, is to me. It is the conclusion of one of the grandest and most highly wrought romances ever put together by the ingenuity of man. Oftentimes in the evening I take it down from my shelf, and I never feel tempted to skip the pages. Nay, when I have at last got to Z, I can begin at A again with but freshened interest; for the Directory will bear reading twice.