When you go inside, though, the experience completely transforms. You are greeted, upon entrance, by a friendly, knowledgeable bookseller—likely as not, Mr. King himself—and then left to yourself to explore floor after floor of books. The sections are arranged well, but you never know just what you might find. On my latest trip I returned home with Spalding’s National Collegiate Athletic Association Official Rules for Swimming, Diving and Water Games, a gift for my natant ("swimming" according to another find, a first edition of Hartrampf’s Vocabularies from 1929) girlfriend, and an absolutely darling 1916 Dictionary of Similes that includes such gems as “eager like a mettlesome hound, into the fray with a plunge and a bound.” I made another purchase of a more whimsical nature, a simply horrifying Barber’s Guide to men’s haircuts from the mid-1980s, a joshing gift for a good friend who cuts hair for a living.

Most wonderful of all, I returned with a 1919 history of the British press, Fleet Street & Downing Street, beautifully bound with an introduction in the archaic font and language of an early English broadsheet. I had to leave behind a smashing leather-bound early printing of Moll Flanders, much to my chagrin (it was a very rare book, and not inexpensive). What awaits on the next visit? Only God and perhaps Mr. King know all the secrets that lie hidden within.