Of this Book only One Hundred and FiftyCopies were privately printed for theAuthor, on Arnold's Unbleached HandmadePaper, in the month of January1896—of which this is

No. 25

Chats in the
Book-room

By

Horace N. Pym

Editor of Caroline Fox's Journals; A Mother's Memoir;
A Tour Round my Book-shelves, etc. etc.

With Portrait by MOLLY EVANS, and Two
Photogravures of the Book-room

"If any one, whom you do not know, relates strange stories,be not too ready to believe or report them, and yet (unless he isone of your familiar acquaintances) be not too forward to contradicthim."—Sir Matthew Hale.

Privately Printed for the Author in the Year1896 by Ballantyne, Hanson & Co.

To
My Dearly Loved Son

Julian Tindale Pym

I dedicate these "Chats in the Book-room,"to which I ask him to extend that noble"Patience, sovereign o'er transmuted ill,"which gilds and elevates his life.

H. N. P.

Christmas,
Foxwold Chase, 1895.

[Pg vii]

Table of Contents

"Youth longs and manhood strives, but age remembers,

Sits by the raked-up ashes of the past,

Spreads its thin hands above the whitening embers,

That warm its creeping life-blood till the last."

O. W. Holmes.

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