The Year Was 1889...

If you read last week's blog, (the first in our "Find of the Week on the Used Book Floor" series) you already know that here at Bayswater, we are finding amazing items in and among the many books we have for sale on our used book floor.  This week’s find comes in a book published in 1889 entitled Elements of Composition and Grammar.  Yes, the book, alone, is a great discovery, as it appears to be a first edition and is now 118 years old.  Elements of Composition and Grammar also displays a beautiful engraved cover (see picture).  But, alas, the book was not the best find – that award goes to what we discovered in the pages.

Perfectly pressed and sandwiched into pages 10-11 (in the “Exercises for Dictation” chapter, in case you were wondering) was a four leaf clover that, while we cannot be sure of the exact date it was preserved, appears to be very old and quite large.  Also found a few pages later was a postcard with a postmark of the year 1890 sent from Boston to an esquire in Boscawen, New Hampshire.  The postcard is handwritten on the front and contains information on the back regarding the 1889 decision by government officials of the State of Vermont to use Greenleaf’s Arithmetics book in all of the state’s schools.

     While it may seem that we must spend countless hours flipping through our used books in search of our next great find, we assure you, they just appear in the course of our daily fun here at Bayswater.  Be sure to check in next week to see what our next great “Find of the Week on the Used Book Floor” will be and don’t forget to stop by and check out the section for yourself!