copies of his own works given by him to various members of his family. These are only a few of the items in the collection, which has long been recognized as the most important Irving collection in existence.

The collection is still rich in unpublished material, while some of the hitherto unstudied material was drawn upon for the recent biography entitled "Washington Irving, Esquire," written by Mr. Seligman's nephew, Mr. George S. Hellman, who aided his uncle in the formation of the collection.

Irving had long been a favorite author with Mr. and Mrs. Seligman, whose home at Irvington adjoined Washington Irving's old home "Sunnyside." The collection thus represents far more than the usual hobby, and is intimately interwoven with personal associations, characteristics, and predilections. Its character is such that it has already appealed greatly to the public that has had the opportunity to see portions of it during those exhibitions at the Public Library, when the collection was lent. Now that it has become the permanent possession of New York City, it will assuredly become more and more appreciated as a memorial of Irving, that beloved author who, more than any other writer, has perpetuated the traditions of the Hudson River country, and of New York City itself.

The Library desires to record its pleasure at the reception of this gift not only for its association with Irving, but also because it was formed by a man deeply concerned with everything that advanced the intellectual life of his native city. In an editorial article published shortly after the death of Mr. Seligman, the New York Evening Post truly said that any city was rich if it possessed so loyal a son as Isaac Seligman.

THREE PORTRAITS ADDED TO THE FORD COLLECTION

MRS.

RS. ROSWELL SKEEL, JR., has presented to the Library three portraits deserving more than passing mention. They depict her father, Gordon Lester Ford, and her two brothers, Paul Leicester and Worthington Chauncey Ford. The elder Ford collected one of the largest and most important private libraries in this country a generation ago, and the two sons carried out their father's wish by giving it to The New York Public Library January 3, 1899. The portrait of the father is a copy made by Charlotte O. Schetter in December, 1923, from the original by Huntington. That of Paul was copied by the same artist from the original by Lillie O'Ryan, while Worthington's was painted from life by Lilla Cabot Perry in Boston in 1924. Miss Schetter knew well both father and son, and was able to add from memory to what might have been bald copies of the two originals. The three are reproduced here in half-tone.

Mention of the Ford collection carries one back to the early years of the nineteenth century. Gordon Ford came to New York from Connecticut at the age of eleven, studied law, practiced in New York City, played an active part in the public and business life of New York and Brooklyn, and when he died in 1891 at the age of sixty-eight left to his sons the memory of a useful life, and a library that represented nearly half a century of collecting. He was a persistent and assiduous collector, and his library was a tribute to his catholic taste. He was a worthy competitor with Cist and Tefft and Sprague and Emmett and Myers in those early days of autograph collecting, but his manuscripts were selected primarily for their value as historical documents, rather than merely as autographs. The printed books suffered not at all in comparison with any collection, public or private.

Books, like every other treasure, carry with the delights of ownership the responsibility of care and attention. After they had brought home a sense of this responsibility and after they had threatened to burst the walls of comfortable, old-fashioned 97 Clark Street, Gordon Ford solved the problem by building over the large back yard, that in early days had stretched between his own home and the houses of his neighbors on the next street. With such a father, with a mother the granddaughter of Noah Webster, and with such surroundings it was but natural that the sons should turn to writing and should continue their father's collections. And there, with walls lined with books and boxes of manuscripts, with floor sprinkled with desks devoted each to some particular piece of work, was done some of the best investigation in

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the fields of bibliography and history this country saw in the closing years of the last century. It was work that did not confine itself to the editing of the writings of Washington and Jefferson, to providing bibliographies of Franklin and Hamilton, to the production of the monographs in the Historical Printing Club publications, but touched the less apparently related fields of fiction in "The Honorable Peter Stirling" and "Janice Meredith," to say nothing of other bits of imaginative literature.

In 1898 the brothers decided to give up the house. They sold the manuscript part of the library to the late Mr. J. Pierpont Morgan, who bought it with the understanding that after he had selected such pieces as he might want for his own collection he would give the rest to The New York Public Library as part of the Ford Collection. The printed books were presented to the Library in a letter signed by the two brothers on January 3, 1899. They said they made the gift as a memorial to their father, and went on to say -in words that many a librarian has wished could be brought home to prospective donors that they did "not wish to lessen the value of the gift by imposing conditions which shall hamper and clog its usefulness." They did not ask that it be kept together or that a special catalogue be printed. All they asked was that each volume be marked to show that it was part of the collection, and that in the new building some suitable means be adopted to call attention to the fact that it contains the Gordon Lester Ford collection.

It was with real pleasure the Library received from the daughter and sister the portraits of these three bookmen, to be placed in the same room that held the likeness of James Lenox with whose tastes they all had so much in

common.