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Show Literary Notes. TALE OF A BOOK AUCTION. The Book-Lover tells. a good story of a New York book auction as follows: New York biblophiles have been chuckling jojously ever since a certain auction which took place not long ago. A collection of rare books was offered. In cataloguing the lot the man who had the collection in charge ran across a seedy and insignificant insig-nificant little volume He examined it carelessly. His carelessness vanished. His eyes grew round. His mouth opened. Here was a little book which he recognized as phenomenally rare. Moreovor, it was an autograph auto-graph copy which had belonged to a famous old author. The book-lover gazed, hesitated, and was lost. Bibliophiles are only human. He had stumbled upon the volume quite by chance. Probably no one else would recognize its value, unless attention were to it. Ho laid the little book with its fellows but he didn't catalogue that. No genuine bibliophile with a limited income could have beon noble enough to put his find in evidence for the benefit of plutocrats. pluto-crats. The day of the auction arrived. The book mon strolled in and began examining the collection, H with much consultation of the catalogue. The guily cataloguer smiled and smiled and was a vil-B vil-B lain still. H Presently one canny lover of books ran across H the seedy little volume. He turned it over, opened B it idly, took one look at it, then cast a stealthy B glance over his shoulder at his busy fellows. He B quietly 3lipped the little volume back into its B place and sauntered away with exaggerated care- B lessness. i ' B A few moments later another man who knows B a thing or two not in catalogues discovered the B little book. He, too, looked as though a galvanic B battery had been suddently applied to him. Ho, B too, dropped the book and walked away with the fl air of a criminal endeavoring to foil the myrmi- B rtohs of the law by an air of innocence. B Six men, one after another, made the discovery. B Six men made herculean efforts to look indifferent B and not attract attention to the dark corner where B the treasure lay. The rest of the crowd ignored B the shabby, uncatalogued book. fl The bidding began. In time the little bock was B put up for sale. It wasn't in the catalogue. It fl didn't look attractive. The original Machiavelll B held his breath and waited. B A man bid 50 cents. His tone implied that. he B considered himself a fool to offer so much, but B hatf-d the silence. B Another man carelessly made the bid $1. B Somo one, just by way of jest, offered $2. B The bids crept up, slowly, slowly. There was B no enthusiasm, rather dull indifference, but still B the tide. rose. B The cataloguer began to feel uneasy. The bid- B ders eyed one another furtively. Bj Finally the situation began to dawn upon them. fl Sheepish smiles overspread six faces. The smiles fl became grins. The six recognized the fact that fl thev all had discovered the book. Then they B dropped pretense and began bidding in earnest. Bj The man with the longest purse-string got the Bj book. , ) B TUe cataloguer had not grinned. His heart was fl 80rf whin him, but his opinion of New York B bibliophiles has gone up several degrees. K Evidently some of them do know a gocd thing when they see it. m B The Scotch element is strong and influential 'n American life and keeps itself in close rela-H rela-H tipns with the old home, The proposition tp re produce at the World's Fair of 1904 at St. Louis the Robert Burns' cottage has struck a popular chord. The "Auld Clay Buggin," the very humble hum-ble cottage under the thatched roof of which Robert Burns was born on the 25th of January, 1757, is of clay, with a sanded front, whitewashed, and was built mainly by the hands of the poet's father while he was working as a gardener for Ferguson of Doonholm. The house, as all pilgrims to Ayr know, is one story high, and consists of a kitchen in one end and a best parlor in the other. In the latter is a fireplace and, in a niche by its side, a bed. As to Bobbie, it is the opinion of the old wives of the town that "The bed in which he first began To be that various thing called man" was in the tiny kitchen. Replicas of the bed and other important items in the little white house in Ayr are included in the St. Louis scheme. The co-operation of the leading Burns societies and other Scottish associations both in Scotland and in America has been promised. A suggestion has been made that the replicas of the cottage and relics shall be free gifts from the sons of Scotland, whether at home or abroad, to St. Louis. Further, if permissible, it is proposed also to build some other historic Scottish structure on the Fair grounds, as room will be needed for the accumulation of Scottish relics that promises to pour in. John W. Dick, St. Louis, is president, and James M. Dixon, St. Louis, is secretary of the Burns Cottage Association. The Macmillan Company have just published a story of Mormonism from the pen of William Alexander Linn, entitled "The Story of the Mormons." Mor-mons." The subject is handled from a non-partisan view and reviews the origin and growth of the sect ably and exhaustively, obtaining his information infor-mation from various collections of writings extant upon the subject. The Hudson-Kimberly Publishing Company of Kansas City, Mo., has placed upon the book mart a handsomely finished volume on "Telepathy and Thought Transference," by Prof. S. A. Weltmer, a well-known authority on metaphysics and thought healing. The able writer clearly differentiates differ-entiates between telepathy and thought transference, transfer-ence, assigning to the former science the ability of man to gather material from the atmosphere of thought and give it expression, while the latter becomes the message of the universal between man and man. The subject of thought healing is clearly handled, han-dled, numerous instances being cited in support of the position takon by the writer, and abundant proof offered that the theory of healing by Christian Chris-tian Science is but a groping in the dark after a truth clearly established long before the Christian Chris-tian era. The author makes no claim that belief effects a cure, but maintains that it makes a cure possible in that it calls forth that dynamic force of the body which under the touch of disease has become dormant. The professor attributes the so-called faculty of inspiration to telepathy, and handles the subject sub-ject with clearness and ability. The work is deserving of careful reading, and is a fascinating study in its broad scope of research re-search in the field of occultism. |