When romance, and possibility removed from the Clydeside to some dingy acre behind the Gallowgate, my wings had grown a bit and my ambitions wert above the barrows.
I have never visited them there, nor do I know if they still tempt the curious by the display of miscellaneops wisdom ata penny oF threepence a dip, but T suspect that their day is over. Since their removal T have hunted along the quaysides of the Seine, always with the feeling that I might be back again among the barrows of the Clyde, T have squandered days and eyesight peering round the shelves of an infinite variety of bookshops:
Leipzig, the Mecca of booklovers; haunted dim bookstores. in Vienna, and even braved the elegance of those lordly places in Berlin, where in the window they display one opened volume in a setting of purple and fine linen; I have carted back loads which threatened the stitching of my suitcases and roused the wonderment of Customs officials anc the weath of porters, but: somehow the old thrill is hard to win, Now and then, of course, that glow which {is really' more than the joy of viz~ tue rewarded, that unutterable and permanent delight of finding at long last a book sought for on the shelves of the old world and the new, comes and abides, but I catch myself wone dering whether it is of the same intensity or the same duration at the satisfaction which nccompari fom the barrows after I ud pent the last penny of my pocket money on, some solid chunks of mental pabulum and had to tramp the long miles home:
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.