AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN
enthusiast of whom he speaks so slightingly in his autobiography. He was the genius of worldly wisdom. He remained with the Quakers so long as they retained power and left them when they lost it. He secured the favors of women without marriage. He gave to the Pennsylvania Hospital the outlawed debts of his firm, which had no value because uncollectible, and gained a reputation for philanthropy. The Library Company of Philadelphia has been called the Franklin Library, although it contains the really valuable collection made by James Logan, and its records show that Thomas Bond bought and gave to it Franklin's newspaper and Franklin gave to it practically nothing. He claimed to have founded the University of Pennsylvania, because he wrote a pamphlet, although he endeavored to prevent Dr. William Smith, the provost and real founder, from getting money in England for its support. He claimed to have founded the American Philosophical Society, although its minutes show that he never read a scientific paper before it and while president even failed to attend the meetings.
My books came to me in all kinds of ways, and from over the earth, and I became known to the dealers and writers not only at home but in Amsterdam, London and Berlin. Some of the incidents which occur in the search for out-of-the-way treasures are both romantic and dramatic. Gus Egolf, short and stout, with a wen on the back of his neck nearly as large as his head, a keen dealer in old furniture and old books, lived and still lives in Norristown, where he has a store. Often I went “incog” in an old suit and broken hat with him to the sales of the German farmers in the country and I have bought as many as a three-bushel-bag full of books at a sale. The auctioneer would hold them up at a window, half a dozen at a time, and knock them down for a few pennies. There was little or no opportunity for preliminary examination and often the purchase proved to be of little value, but every once
