THE SEVENTY-EIGHTH PAGE

Another book source was the dump, although I like the friendlier English usage of tip, which sounds like a gift rather than human excrement.

Many a treasure can be found for nothing there. When your usage of fiction is instruction rather than collection, an old book club edition or coverless paperback serves as well as an original publisher’s printing. The abundance of textbooks, the next best thing to the blank-paged “nothing” books of the sixties, is the only obstacle of the treasure search. For what it’s worth, almost any literary book you find is a first edition and worth hanging on to until the author dies or goes on to bestsellerland of which difference there is little in the two. In literature there are no second editions.

People in our society wouldn’t treat a dog or cat the way they treat books. What beast can thrill you with a story, moving you to tears or laughter, or as in my quest, instruct you in the conduct of life as observed and recorded by our scribes? The beasts can only be fed, be petted, be inoculated, be walked, be groomed, be spayed and they unfailingly die on you. How unlike this, is our friend the book, our chum, our boon companion, who without mewing or barking disturbs not our sleep nor waking solitude and lives on into and past our dying days.

But some folks toss books out like old cereal cartons.