Show RARE BOOKS BURNED 3iatchiesa Collection I the Sat anti Sinners Core low York Mail and Express La otf rare bOok no matte where they live suffered almost a per smal lees when the flames sept away the great book store of cClurg Co of Chicagi on Feb 12 In the southwestern western cro of the building wee stored the prIze volume which served as a magnet fOr all the literary lights of ChIcago whose frequent meetings there led Eugene Field to christen it the Saints and Sinners Corner S well was the place known to biblo philta throughout the country that pll never one of them visited the city bof naer found time to while away in the famous fa-mous Corner Its hIgh ranged shelves were stored Is e wIth the choicest and rarest that book land affCed There wer statelY old fohios brodveamed quartos and gems foloS and faded but of duodeclines musty ad fae more precious than fine linen though It wiz precous and dyed with Tia I dyes Each held withIn Its close embrace I em-brace pages of the most superfine and I brac double milled paper tat eve modern types left theIr impress upon Te when boo1e gave torth pungent aromas boK opened and disclosed quaint old prInt and engravings The Idea of the Saints and Sinners Corner occurred to lIr lcClurg In lSi4 and for a long time he gave it hIs personal supervision Whenever he saw a rare folio or whenever he hear and added to it was purchased qf on purchae adde If the stock and always found ready sale Among the books lost in the fire thee of Lambs to manuscript poem was a mnuerpt pem Catherine OrkneY and a presentation Titlee of Honec copy of SeldEns Tlt HonO given to Caleb Banks by SamUel Pepys There ve was an inscription In the handwriting hand-writing of the diarIst on the title page wItng A first edition folio o Beaumont and Fletch < wag another work valued highly I contained an engrave portrait por-trait pf Flttche by William Marshall and was dated 164 RELIC OF LAMB A copy of Charles Lambs woks n octavo volume the former owner of which was Charles Wewood in whose fathers town the Lambs once led ando of whom Lamb wrte that he had retire re-tire onCSO a year and one anecdote had paste In it a letter of Charles Lamb alluding to poor Mary his ssJ ter and her metal weakness Price 24 A set of Ruskns woks in nine royal octavo volumes bound In levant mo rocc the original edition Inside one of the volumes was a imciptol In Rusins hadwrItlng presenting the set to the artist name forgotten who famous portrait of painted the most faous portit o RuskIn Price 450 A fr3tedIton copy of Thackerys Christmas books saves square 12mo volumes complete with colored lustra tions from hIs own drawings one of the rarest sets In the collection Price 500 500A copy of Boydens Shakespeare In nIne folio volume published in 1800 Price 150 Eulwers entire works being sixty four volume so rare that the booltsl hers of London said they never heard of another set Price 375 VALUABLE PRIZE The collection In this department was valued at 50000 One of the most prized volumes was carried home by Mr McClurg for Sunday preachIng and thus escaped the fate of its corn panions Ta speaking of it Mr Mc Clurg said This little book is Palgraves Golden Gol-den Treasure of Song and Lyrics in elaborate binding all hand wrought Aside from the richness of the cover which makes the book worth 700 It Is treasured by me because it is a volume I carried with me during all my service ser-vice ip thewarS After the fire he Chicago Post liter viewed Dr N D Hulls and Dr ink Gunsaulus anti obtained from tnem many interesting anecdotes about the people who have helped make history in the famous corner Dr Hulls said Field named it I was rather too young to knov much about the Saints and Sinners Corner but I remember it nll as one of the most delightful of places There were many books of rare value and many that were inter eating and curious though not so costly cost-ly The most notable volume that I remembtr In the corner was a very fine edition of Ruskias works It was the original edition qt 1648 and was rca tiered even more Ottractive by the fact that tuskin himself had presented it to Frank Holhyer the artist How It got bites the Saints and Sinners Cor nec after tlsatI do not know but It was there Who were the salnts doctor Well Dr Stryker Dr Gunsaulus and Dr Brlstolxsere styled the saints And Field ws the sinner Well he claimed to be As I say I itastather young for the original group but C oftea met them there and ii the meetings were delightful Thero was much of brilliant coaversation at times and very often It bad nothing whatever to do with books As a rule they all talked of rare editions of curl ous editions of fine libraries they bad seen or dreamed of and occasionally they told Stories SAINTS AND SINNERS It was the mostInteresting group of liars ever assembled said Dr Gun saulus For ten years that Saints and SInners Corner was a place where congenial fellows met It was an 5550 ciation without rules of order or times of meeting We simply feasted our eyea on beautiful books on old manuscripts and chatted with each other after the usual fashion of book fiends I remem her taking Dr Watson down thereIan Maclaren ou know He was amazed at the richness of the collection Ha said that he knew nothing like it In London or In Edinburgh I Introduced him to the fellows and their were as well pleased with him as he wan with themWhat What did you do doctor Oh just discussed things It was as I say a most Interesting collection or liars Everbody carried sorae trees urea about with him The stories told sometimes were more amusing than profitable There was an old cot In tIm place which Field lugged itt one day and It used to be the custom to hide things In that cot I dont know how it happened that no one ever stole the treasures which he found there Millard von know had charge of the corner and one day a funny thing happened But before that let me say that none of us was rich They oIl wanted to have tho things they saw and often I suppose webroke the corn mantiment which forbids us to covet For instance tligre was no hope of our ever getting a tIeasure if Prancis Wilson Wil-son found It and wanted It He was making plenty of money and he knew what it was good to have Otis da si man came in there and looked axuund mid piled up more than twenty of the books and manuscripts which we hae all admired and desired Then he said to Millard Send these with the bill to the Au ditorluxu Annex What name asked Millard George W Vanderbilt replied the Sinner Millard almost went through the floorBen Ben Cable war another desirable member So was Dr Stryker He wail bitten I remember with the scheme of Illustrating and I suppose if he bad not been made a college president he svoulct have produced Thompsons Seasons irs thirty volumes WILSONS TREASURE Dr Frank Bristol was the moat tier lag of the lot He certalahy collected a great many desirable things I so member one time a fellow came lxi therewith there-with a copy of Burns It had been owned by George Wahingthn and bad been carefully read and marked by him Bristol would have oarrled it away but that Francis Wilson came in and found It We never saw it again Another thing I think of just now was Fields rhyme by which he saved a book which he greatly coveted Ho could not buy it and he wrote this on the fly leaf Gude friend for Jesus sake forbears To buy ye booke thou seest here For I have gone to earne the poll I mean to buy ye booku myselfe Field you know was a student of the classics And he translated many things in the most ridiculous and mans ing way One time he brought In a translation of Ovid Some of the Sin acre mast have told about it for not long afterward Millard showed us a cartoon which some of your clever newspaper artists had made It repre seated Mr Gladstone reading Fields triWslation and I know I wrote something some-thing of that sort in red ink under the picture I fancy that cartoon was burned with the rest of the Corner Harry B Smith used to come there a great deal He was an acceptable Sinner Oh there were scores of others I cannot now think of half theIr names The Interesting thing was that we found delightful corn panionshfpantireveled iu iixiu them and take them homb we could at least read them and talk about them And we could tehi each other about the desirable things that we saw In our travels It was always a great day when some one could bring a gem that he had picked up In the wilds of Nebraska or something of that sort There never will be another Saints and Sinners Corner These things take years for growth Such a place means more than money and the assembling of the men who made this corner at McClura so notable never will get together again Fielti is dead Bristol has gone to Washington Dr Stryker is no longer in Chicago Dr Gunsaulus is fearfully busy with other cares and Interests The old group is broken up and even If a new Corner were possiblo the associations which made the old one famous could scarcely again be realized |