The Bookhunter Author:John Hill Burton Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: people who, being all right themselves, have undertaken the duty of keeping in order the rest of the world, have far too serious a task in hand to afford time fo... more »r idle reading. There is a good chance, therefore, that this little book may pass them unnoticed, and the harmless class, on whose peculiar frailties the present occasion is taken for devoting a gentle and kindly exposition, may yet be permitted to go at large. So having spoken, I now propose to make the reader acquainted with some characteristic specimens of the class. 21 Vision of fHujJHg | S the first case, let us summon from the shades my venerable friend Archdeacon Meadow, as he was in the body. You see him now — tall, straight, and meagre, but with a grim dignity in his air which warms into benignity as he inspects a pretty little clean Elzevir, or a tall portly Stephens, concluding his inward estimate of the prize with a peculiar grunting chuckle, known by the initiated to be an important announcement. This is no doubt one of the milder and more inoffensive types, but still a thoroughly confirmed and obstinate case. Its parallel to the classes who are to be taken chargeof by their wiser neighbours is only too close and awful; for have not sometimes the female members of his household been known on occasion of some domestic emergency—or, it may be, for mere sake of keeping the lost man out of mischief—to have been searching for him on from bookstall unto bookstall, just as the mothers, wives, and daughters of other lost men hunt them through their favourite taverns or gambling-houses? Then, again, can one forget that occasion of his going to London to be examined by a committee of the House of Commons, when he suddenly disappeared with all his money in his pocket, and returned penniless, followed by a waggon...« less