He read till he could read no longer, cutting the pages as he went, and thus his progress could be traced like that of a backwoodsman who "blazes" his way through a primeval forest. The paper-knife generally ceased to do duty before the thirtieth page. The melancholy of the bookhunter is aroused by two questions, "Whence?" and "Whither?" The bibliophile asks about his books the question which the metaphysician asks about his soul. Whence came they? Their value depends a good deal on the answer. If they are stamped with arms, then there is a book ("Armorial du Bibliophile," by M. Guigard) which tells you who was their original owner. Any one of twenty coats-of-arms on the leather is worth a hundred times the value of the volume which it covers. If there is no such mark, the fancy is left to devise a romance about the first owner, and all the hands through which the book has passed. That Vanini came from a Jesuit college, where it was kept under lock and key. That copy of Agrippa "De Vanitate Scientiarum" is marked, in a crabbed hand and in faded ink, with cynical Latin notes. What pessimist two hundred years ago made his grumbling so permanent? One can only guess, but part of the imaginative joys of the book-hunter lies in the fruitless conjecture. That other question
