Gladstone's Waste Paper is Valuable.

Otago Witness, Issue 2308, 26 May 1898, Page 52

Gladstone's Waste Paper is Valuable.

I have been in the habit for many years, said a second-hand bookseller in the north of Scotland, of sending Mr Gladstone a copy of all my catalogues, and . as a result have received 'aumerous orders from the Grand Old Man. "Except on very rare occasions— chiefly when they reach him away from horne — l>e returns the catalogues, and the first thing I do on receiving them back is to scan every page for the veteran book-hunter's pencil or pen notes.

The items he decides on purchasing are initialed with the familiar " W.E.G." (now, alas, showing unmistakable signs of failing physical vigour), and on the front page is scribbled a courteous note asking me to .have the kindness to forward the indicated volumes to " your obedient servant.*"

©f^pn there are jotted down oi^posite the books wanted appreciative or depreciatory thumb-nail critiques on their subject matter, butoftenor still these critical jottings appear against works he does not wish to acquire, but which he cannot resist the temptation to review. His remarks are of the nature of " a truly excellent treatise ; deduction entirely fallacious ; the first copy I have seen advertised for many years ; my admiration for this little work is unbounded — sat reading it till very late when it first appeared," etc. My regular customers know of this peculiarity of the ey-Premier, and are always eager to secure the returned pamphlets. Of oource, these catalogues are, in a sense, waste paper, but this is the sort of waste paper I do not dispose of by weight. In fact, I get quite freely 2s, ss, 7s 6d, and as high as 10s 6d for each, according to the extent and nature of the remarks they bear, What, however, undoubtedly helps me in disposing of them is the perfect faith of the purchasers in their genuineness. I may tell you that the catalogues, notwithstanding they invariably contain written mattet <*t the nature of a. letter ara always

encased in a halfpenny newspaper wrappdty and, strange to say, I am never surcharged on that account.