Some months ago a young writer who is known for his imbroglios with the vice censor (from which he invariably emerged as victor) gave a private reading of the plays before an invited audience. Arens was there and at once decided to undertake the publication.
“The publisher ought to be a book seller and should spend most of his time in his book shop. That is the only way to feel the pulse of the reading public,” is Mr. Arens’ motto.
It isn’t a bad maxim for a modern American publisher.
High upon Lexington Avenue, near Fifty-seventh street, is the book shop of Mr. E. Weyhe. His specialties are books on art, rare prints, etchings and books on laces.
“I am a German,” said Mr. Weyhe. “I can’t do anything about it. I simply have to make the best of it in these times of war. I always have been a bookseller. I was an apprentice to a bookseller in Germany, and I learned the trade in the old German way. I worked from six o’clock in the morning until ten o’clock at night for three long years. I loved to travel and was employed in shops in Germany, Italy, and finally I settled in London. There I opened a shop. Unfortunately for me the war broke out. I had to close up and the next best thing to do was to come over here. The British Government most courteously gave me permit to leave, and I will never forget the kind words of the policeman who took me to the steamer. ‘I hope you will soon come back and not stay in America’.”
Mr. Weyhe caters to moneyed collectors exclusively. People who buy books on laces for $250.00, or a history of Sir Joshua Reynolds’ work for $350.00, people who want rare things and to whom money is no object. He is a friend of the artist and writer, who are welcome in his shop, to whom he lends books on chance acquaintance, because he believes in human honesty and has unbounded faith in his fellow-men.
“People trust me. Why shouldn’t I trust them,” was his simple remark. It seems quite wonderful to think that Mr. Weyhe came to America four years ago as a refugee and without funds, and owns today a choice stock of the rarest books, the confidence of his clients and credit wherever he desires it.
Opposite the library on Forty-second Street, high up in a medium sized sky-scraper, is Mr. Gerhardt’s den. Christian Gerhardt is a specialist in out-of-the-way books by out-of-the-way authors. He issues catalogues every month, and these catalogues are indexes of curiosities of literature. Pamphlets by well known authors, perhaps their first literary products, books by fanatics, and by poets whose songs were never known by the world. Individualistic magazines of whose existence you have never heard, fill long rows of his book shelves. But whenever I think of Mr. Gerhardt I remember that unhappy singer of our East Side, of Zoe Anderson, who called herself the “Queen of Bohemia,” who founded the Ragged Edge Club, and presided for years at its unique sessions in the “old Maria.” Miss Anderson struggled for years with printers, paper dealers, and news companies in order to give us her little magazine. _The East Side_, a fearless free-lance sheet, in which she attacked everyone and everything. The champion of the outcasts and sweatshop workers of the East Side, living among them, writing about them with greater understanding than any contemporary writer, poor Zoe ended her own life as cheerfully as she had lived after telling all about it in the then current and last issue of her magazine. Zoe Anderson had been a well known newspaper woman on the staffs of many metropolitan papers, including the _New York Times_.