Sessler has some unexpectedly fine things from time to time. He goes abroad every year with his pocket full of money, and comes back with a lot of things that quickly empty ours. Dickens is one of his specialties, and from him I have secured at least five of the twenty-one presentation Dickenses that I boast of. A few years ago quite a number came on the market at prices which to-day seem very low. In my last book-hunting experience in London I saw only one presentation Dickens; but as the price was about three times what I had accustomed myself to pay Sessler, I let it pass.
Sessler studies his customer's weaknesses--that's where his strength lies. When I came back from Europe some years ago, I discovered that he had bought for me, in my absence, at the Lambert sale, one item which he knew I could not resist. It was a little pen-and-ink drawing by Thackeray, the first sketch, afterwards more fully elaborated, illustrating "Vanity Fair," where, at the end of the first chapter, the immortal Becky, driving away from Miss Pinkerton's school, throws Dr. Johnson's "Dixonary" out of the window of the carriage as it drives off.
I think that all who knew him will agree with me that Luther S. Livingston was too much of a gentleman, too much of a scholar,--perhaps I should add, too much of an invalid,--to take high rank as a bookseller.
His knowledge was profound. He was an appreciative bibliographer, witness the work he did on Lamb for Mr. J. A. Spoor of Chicago; but I always felt a trifle embarrassed when I asked him the _price_ of anything he had to sell; one could ask him anything else, but to offer money to Livingston seemed rather like offering money to your host after an excellent dinner.
[Illustration: BECKY SHARP THROWING DR. JOHNSON'S "DIXONARY" OUT OF THE CARRIAGE WINDOW, AS SHE LEAVES MISS PINKERTON'S SCHOOL
_From the first pen-and-ink sketch, by Thackeray, afterwards elaborated_]
He enjoyed the love and respect of all book-collectors and we all congratulated him when he graduated from the bookshop to the library. For many years in charge of the rare-book department of Dodd, Mead & Company, and subsequently a partner of Robert Dodd, he was the first custodian of the choice collection of books formed by the late Harry Elkins Widener and bequeathed by the latter's mother to Harvard. A more admirable selection could not have been made. A scholar and a gentleman, he brought to that position just the qualities needed for a post of such distinction, but, unhappily, he lived hardly long enough to take possession of it. He died at Christmas, 1914, after a long and painful illness.