Chapter III

Forty-second Street loses its brilliance on Seventh Avenue and shows all the way down to the West Side ferries the sad degeneration of a New York street that was once a fashionable residence section. Glaring electric signs from Fifth to Seventh Avenues. High life after dusk. Eighteen theaters. Cabarets galore. The amusement center of the metropolis around Broadway. The seat of learning in one whole block on Fifth Avenue. The moment you cross Seventh Avenue, cheap rooming houses, tenement dwellings, sweat shops. Wealth and poverty rub elbows. Puritanical decency on the borders of the city’s mire. Lunch rooms, garages, plumber shops, dirty Jewish and Italian groceries, loan brokers’ offices, everywhere signs “Rooms to Let,” gaudily dressed women emerge from dark house entrances on whose stoops laborers read their evening papers. Children everywhere, ragged, uncared for children.

In the midst of this typically American panorama, pinched in between a repair shop and a restaurant, is Mr. Lawson’s book store. He sells books, too, but I would rather call his place of business an “intellectual exchange.”

“How can you sell books in this neighborhood?” I asked of Mr. Lawson on my first visit to his shop. I knew him a dozen of years ago in Chicago. He’s a book man of the old school. He knows books, is well read, well known among the members of his guild. Americana had been his specialty and many a scarce and rare item had he discovered in days gone by.

“What a strange place you have selected here in New York.”

“Stick around for a couple of hours and you will see yourself that book stores of my brand are actually needed in this sort of neighborhood in New York,” was his off-hand answer, while he continued counting green and yellow tickets, assorting them by their colors.

“What are they?” I asked.

“Coupons,” was the answer. “All these people in my neighborhood insist on getting coupons with all their purchases. So-called profit-sharing coupons. They get them with their cigars, with their soap, with their butter, with most of their victuals. Each of these coupons represents a certain cash value. Here in this catalogue,” and he showed me a voluminous book with many pictures, “you can see what they can exchange for their coupons if they choose to save enough of them. Here lies the point. They never save enough of these coupons. Most of my customers live from hand to mouth, often they are in actual need of ten or fifteen cents. I buy their coupons. At other times, again they come down here to buy coupons in order to complete the needed number of the slips and to exchange them for some household article, but mostly for ‘gifts.’ You would be surprised how they like cheap bric-a-brac, phony jewelry and most of all, cut-glass--imitation cut-glass, of course. Most of my business is done after 6 o’clock in the evening.

“See the music rolls over there? A player-piano concern established some time ago a branch in this section and got rid of hundreds of instruments. And whenever the people need money they bring me their music rolls. I pay a few cents for them. But that’s just what they need. They sell them on Thursday and Friday. On Saturday, after they receive their pay checks, they buy new ones. It is a part of their life’s routine.”

An old woman came in with a bunch of magazines, Mr. Lawson bought them for a few cents.

“She keeps a rooming house,” he explained. “Her roomers are cheap comedians, who never stay longer than a couple of days or so, and always leave magazines when they move. She sells them. She also sends her roomers down to me to buy magazines if they get lonely in the evening and inquire for something to read.

“You see that man?” and he pointed to an old fellow who was examining carefully a big heap of magazines. “He’s the news dealer from the corner. He runs in several times a day and buys lots of magazines. The American News Company grants him the return privilege on certain magazines for 30 days and others for 60 days. He buys any standard magazine of the current week here for a nickel, some even cheaper, and then he returns them to the news company at full value. For instance, he buys a 20-cent magazine for a nickel and the American News Company credits him with 15 cents upon its return.

“There is nothing on earth that you can not sell in this neighborhood, and on the other hand, you would be constantly surprised what people will offer you for sale.”

The store was crowded. Boys wanted detective stories, women dream books, foreigners dictionaries, somebody was trying records on an old phonograph in the back of the store. A woman who still showed traces of great beauty wanted to get rid of hundreds of photographs of herself, showing her in exotic stage costume.

“But how about these oil paintings?” There were some magnificent pictures in one corner and really good books right next to trashy novels. “That’s the other side of my book business,” answered Lawson. “Dealers come in from all parts of the country and I have the whole day to myself to attend auctions, to visit collectors. A good many gems have drifted in here. Doesn’t it look like a junk shop? And I dare to say that very few dealers in New York have such valuable books, autographs, prints, paintings and etchings as I have at times right here among all this junk.”

A procession of strange people continued to pour in. Everybody bought something, sold or exchanged something, half a dozen languages were talked simultaneously and the cash register rang merrily through the noise and constant chatter.

“There must be lots of money in this novel game of yours?” I asked of Lawson. “Of course there is,” he answered cheerfully. “The individual purchases are small, but judge for yourself how many people are coming in and then don’t forget that every one of them is a steady customer, coming down here almost every other day. Buying or selling, but I am always the winner. And I dare say that these people would miss me. I provide for them amusement, pleasure, and even education, and do they not come to me in their need?”

Casement’s Book Emporium

Book stores, like mushrooms, never grow solitary. Only a few doors south is another book store. Nothing but books and magazines. Mr. Casement is the proprietor. Somebody told me once that Mr. Casement is a second cousin of Sir Roger Casement. But Mr. Casement denied any relationship with the great Irish patriot. He could not deny, however, his Irish origin. “I sell magazines mostly to my neighbors here, detective stories to the boys and Meade’s books to the girls. But the dealers from all over town come here and pick out whatever they want.”

All his books are alphabetically arranged and I don’t wonder that many a scarce book can be found amongst his stock. Mr. Casement is a solitary figure among the book dealers of New York. Very silent, always kindly, smiling, obliging and unassuming. Often in the twilight, when he drinks his cup of coffee, and eats his herring with rye bread, I love to drop in and watch his self-content and real satisfaction with his life and with his lot. He is the only happy man among all the book dealers in New York--from hope and fear set free--content among his books.

The Madison Book Store

The only uptown book shop that keeps open in the evening. The visitors here are quite different from those on 42d street. But I guess they are as lonesome and often as helpless as the people who come to Mr. Lawson’s shop. There are the strangers from the big hostelries on Fifth avenue, the girls from the Studio Club, and a good many physicians from the nearby clinical buildings. Mr. Alexander A. Salop is the master of the mansion. A young man, studious looking, perhaps because he wears eye glasses. A shrewd business man but books are not only merchandise to him. He reads much in several languages, has his likes and dislikes in literature and keeps always a great variety of modern German and French books. A little room in the back of his shop is consecrated to the bookworms. A few comfortable chairs, reading lamps, library tables, it looks very homey and too inviting to simply buy and go. Peter Stammer, who calls himself “The Original New York Book Hunter” and who knows _the_ book if it was ever printed anywhere and at any time in this world, comes here often in the evening to pick up books, but mostly to chat, to “swap” experiences.

Mr. Stammer ought to write his memoirs for the benefit of contemporary literature. Here are a few interesting bits gleaned from him several days ago:

“Did you ever know,” he asked, “that Henry James had a sister? She must have been a literary woman of great ability. About 40 years ago I was a typesetter in an English town. I remember the most curious job I ever had to do was a book by Miss James. It was a sort of autobiography most extraordinary. A big book of several hundred pages, very intimate and outspoken. Only three copies were to be printed. The type was destroyed and even the proof pages had to be returned. I wonder what ever happened to that book. I wish I could have made a copy of its contents. I set up the first edition of Oscar Wilde’s ‘Ballad of Reading Gaol.’ That was in Boston while I worked for Benjamin Tucker.

“You would naturally think that a book printed in many millions of copies could never become scarce. I thought so, too, until I ran across a poem by Bret Harte, his _Excelsior_. I didn’t find the poem among his collected works. Bret Harte collectors didn’t seem to know of its existence. I started inquiries to investigate and I found that this poem had been written as an advertisement for a well known soap, had been printed in millions of copies, distributed free of charge all over America. Curious enough, my copy was the only existing one outside one in the files of the soap concern.”

Mr. Stammer knows books and people so well, has met so many writers, he really ought to retire from business for a year and write his reminiscences.

1918