THE MERCANTILE LIBRARY
There is a legend of an old booklover who was pasturing among his folios one evening by candle light. Perhaps he sat (as Charles Lamb used to) with a tumbler of mild grog at his elbow. Perhaps he was in that curious hypnotic trance induced by utter silence, long reading and insufficient air. In the musty fragrance of his library the tapers cast their mellow gush of gold about him, burning up the oxygen from under his very nose. At any rate, in a shadowy alcove something stirred. A bookworm peeped out from a tall vellum binding. It flapped its wings and crew with a clear lively note. Startled, the aged bibliophile looked up and just glimpsed the vanishing flutter of its wings. It was only a glimpse, but it was enough. He ran to his shelves, his ancient heart pounding like an anvil chorus. The old promise had come true. For if any man shall live to see a bookworm, all the volumes on his shelves immediately turn to first editions, signed by the author. But the joyous spasm was too much for the poor scholar. The next morning he was found lying palsied at the foot of his bookcase. The fact that at least two fingers of grog remained in his glass, undrunk, led his fellow booklovers to suspect that something strange had happened. As he lay dying he told the story of his vision. He was the only man who ever saw a bookworm.
