BOOK-TOKENS
SIR,—After months of pleasurable endeavour, I was lucky enough last week to win a prize in the Spectator crossword, and duly received a handsome book-token entitling me to buy a book or books to the value of one guinea. After due thought, I determined to try to get a copy of Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, which has been missing from my library for some years. A large bookshop in Victoria Street (not Wilson's) told me that they did not exchange the ordinary book-tokens at all. In Charing Cross Road the shops I visited said that book-tokens did net
apply to second-hand books, and they did not "touch them." 1 am not dismayed, and have no doubt that I shall eventually get good value for my prize. But the attitude of these booksellers strikes me as stupid and unco-operative. The book-token Is in essence a glorified postal order which can only be cashed in a bookshop and cannot., like an ordinary P.O., he squandered in a tavern or dissipated in the general household expenses. One would think that the habit of using them for presents and prizes must bring a lot of money to bookshops which otherwise would go else- where. It is particularly hard to understand why they cannot be used
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