450." Perhaps the most unique guess in this line was "Richard Wagner invented the Wagner cars;" Abbotsford is "the title of a book by Sir Walter Scott;" "Vassar College is a dream, high-up and unattainable;" "Tammany Hall is a political meeting place in London;" "the Parthenon, an art gallery in Athens."

Pedagogy seemed one of the most perplexing of words. It was defined by one as "the science of religion," by another as "learned pomposity;" but the most remarkable of all was "pedagogy is the study of feet.”

SONG OF SOME LIBRARY SCHOOL SCHOLARS.

Three little maids from school are we,
Filled to the brim with economy-
Not of the house but library,

Learnt in the Library School

1st Maid-I range my books from number one.
2nd Maid—Alphabetically I've begun.

3rd Maid-In regular classes mine do run.

All-Three maids from the Library School.

All-Three little maidens all unwary,

Each in charge of a library,

Each with a system quite contrary

To every other school.

Our catalogues, we quite agree,

From faults and errors must be free,

If only we our way can see

To find the proper rule.

Boy's remark on returning a certain juvenile book to the library: "I don't want any more of them books. The girls is all too holy."

"Half the books in this library are not worth reading," said a sour-visaged, hypercritical, novel-satiated woman.—' -"Read the other half, then," advised a bystander.

THE WOES OF A LIBRARIAN.
Let us give a brief rehearsal
Of the learning universal,
Which men expect to find
In Librarians to their mind.

He must undergo probation,
Before he gets a situation;
Must begin at the creation,

When the world was in formation,
And come down to its cremation,
In the final consummation

Of the old world's final spasm:

He must study protoplasm,
And bridge over every chasm
In the origin of species,

Ere the monkey wore the breeches,
Or the Simian tribe began

To ascend from ape to man.

He must master the cosmology,
And know all about pyschology,
And the wonders of biology,
And be deep in ornithology,
And develop ideology,

With the aid of craniology.

He must learn to teach zoölogy, And be skilled in etymology, And the science of philology, And calculate chronology, While he digs into geology, And treats of entomology, And hunts up old mythology, And dips into theology, And grows wise in sociology, And expert in anthropology. He must also know geography, And the best works on photography, And the science of stenography, And be well up on cosmography, And the secrets of cryptography. Must interpret blind chirography,

Know by heart all mens' biography,
And the black art of typography,
And every book in bibliography.

These things are all essential
And highly consequential.

If he's haunted by ambition
For a library position,

And esteems it a high mission,

To aspire to erudition;

He will find some politician
Of an envious disposition,
Getting up a coalition

To secure his non-admission,
And send him to perdition,
Before he's reached fruition.

If he gets the situation,
And is full of proud elation
And of fond anticipation,
And has in contemplation
To enlighten half the nation,
He may write a dissertation
For the public information
On the laws of observation,
And the art of conversation.

He must know each famed oration,

And poetical quotation,

And master derivation,

And the science of translation,

And complex pagination,

And perfect punctuation,

And binomial equation,
And accurate computation,
And boundless permutation,
And infinite gradation,
And the craft of divination,
And Scripture revelation,
And the secret of salvation.

He must know the population
Of every separate nation,

The amount of immigration,
And be wise in arbitration,
And the art of navigation,
And colonial annexation,
And problems Australasian.

He must take his daily ration
Of catalogue vexation,
And endless botheration
With ceaseless complication
Of decimal notation,

Or Cutter combination.

To complete his education,

He must know the valuation

Of all the publications

Of many generations,

With their endless variations,
And true interpretations.

When he's spent a life in learning,
If his lamp continues burning,
When he's mastered all philosophy,
And the science of theosophy,
Grown as learned as Mezzofanti,

As poetical as Dante,

As wise as Magliabecchi

As profound as Mr. Lecky—

Has absorbed more kinds of knowledge

Than are found in any college;

He may take his full degree

Of Ph. or LL. D.

And prepare to pass the portal

That leads to life immortal.

CHAPTER 26.

RARE BOOKS.

There is perhaps no field of inquiry concerning literature in which so large an amount of actual mis-information or of ignorance exists as that of the rarity of many books. The makers of second-hand catalogues are responsible for much of this, in describing the books which they wish to sell as "rare," "very scarce," etc., but more of it proceeds from absolute ignorance of the book-markets of the world. I have had multitudes of volumes offered for sale whose commercial value was hardly as many cents as was demanded in dollars by their ill-informed owners, who fancied the commonest book valuable because they "had never seen another copy." No one's ideas of the money value of any book are worth anything, unless he has had long experimental knowledge of the market for books both in America and in Europe.

What constitutes rarity in books is a question that involves many particulars. Thus, a given book may be rare in the United States which is abundant in London; or rare in London, when common enough in Germany. So books may be rare in one age which were easily found in another: and again, books on certain subjects may be so absorbed by public demand when events excite interest in that subject, as to take up most of the copies in market, and enhance the price of the remainder. Thus, Napoleon's conquering career in Egypt created a great demand for all books on Egypt and Africa. The scheme for founding a great French colony in Louisiana raised the price of all books and pamphlets on that region, which soon after fell