We have hundreds of those cards left over while our plans have continued to mutate. The bookstore became a bookstore-gallery became a bookstore-gallery-shop for objets d'art. We perceived our name as signifying the temporary rescue of things from oblivion.

Today the name has official status. We registered the name with the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania as an enterprise for art. It has become a catchall for dreams real and delusional. It serves as we give birth to our vague business of creative endeavors, Ms Keogh selling her paintings, which she does with reasonable success earning something shy of an income, and me selling my writings, which is done with great success so long as I don't charge any money. There is a mailing address:

And still we continue to dream beyond our reach. I want to start up a literary publishing house in Philadelphia. I would seek out new talent and print limited fine press first editions, then a small run in paperback, and finally the books would only be available through P.O.D. (print on demand) technology, where each book is individually produced only when ordered.

This year I found the head office for my publishing house. It sits on the southeast corner of Washington Square, Philadelphia. The small park (6.4 acre) was originally laid out in 1682 by William Penn's surveyor, and served in the 18th-century as a potter's field and pasture. Southeast Square, as the Quakers called it, includes the dead of both British and American soldiers from the time of the Revolution. The 19th-century recast the park's role as a city arboretum and in 1825 it was renamed in honor of our first President. I had picked for our company's headquarters a white pseudo-Italian palazzo, the home of Locks Gallery, just catty-corner to the Lippincott Building and the Athenaeum of Philadelphia.

The Lea & Febiger BuildingPhoto B.Bentzman

I brought Ms Keogh to see the Locks Gallery, which we have yet to visit. The few times I've tried, I found it closed. Ms Keogh liked it very much and suggested we could build our dream house on its flat roof. (For more about the dream house, see Suburban Soliloquy #66: The Ambulatory.) She pressed to know how we were to finance our little empire. I said we would have to wait until I sold the movie rights to a number of my short stories, my stock answer.

"All this dreaming amounts to what?" Ms Keogh inquired. Nothing would come of it except to fill the time and occupy my mind when I'm bored. I told her I could make it the subject of one of my Soliloquies and here it is, but the story doesn't end here.

Wanting to know more of the history of the building that houses the Locks Gallery, I attempted fruitless research on the Internet. So on another day I went back to examine the building more closely. On the side of the building were holes and stains where once brass letters gave the place its original name. I couldn't make it out, but took a picture with Ms Keogh's digital camera. Returning home, I fooled with the photo using the computer's software. Lo and behold, Locks Gallery was formerly Lea & Febiger, Publishers. I had no idea who Lea & Febiger were, but with that basic information in hand the Internet coughed up a wealth of material. The Lea & Febiger Building at 600 South Washington Square is on the Philadelphia Register of Historic Places (designed in 1923 by Earl Nelson Edwards). But that's not all.

To begin with, 19th-century Washington Square became known as "publishers' row". Surrounding this square are the Lippincott Building and the Athenaeum of Philadelphia, as mentioned earlier, but also the Farm Journal Building, the Bible House, the former headquarters of W.B. Saunders Publishing Company, the home of American writer Christopher Morley, and the Curtis Center where Curtis Publishing produced The Saturday Evening Post and The Ladies Home Journal. As for Lea & Febiger, they were the oldest publishing company in the United States, founded by Matthew Carey in 1785.

Matthew Carey was an irrepressible Catholic born in Dublin, 1760. At fifteen years of age he disappointed his father, a successful man, by going into the book trade, selling and printing. He produced pamphlets that Parliament decided were evidence of the seditious nature of the Irish. Dublin's Catholics, hoping for favorable legislation in Parliament, sought to find and prosecute the author of the pamphlets. Carey escaped to France where he met and apprenticed himself to Benjamin Franklin. He then returned to Ireland, wrote more, found himself in further political trouble, was imprisoned, was released, and following the recommendation of friends, snuck off to America - I mean emigrated from Ireland to America in disguise. The Marquis de Lafayette, who Carey befriended while in France, met him again in Philadelphia and gave him $400 to start up his publishing business, a sum which the company later paid back when Lafayette was in financial straits.

Carey, who died in Philadelphia in 1839, was given the largest funeral the city had ever seen. Across two centuries the company's name has gone through transformations: Carey, Stewart & Co.; M. Carey & Son; M. Carey & Sons; Carey & Lea; Carey, Lea & Carey; Carey, Lea &Blanchard; Lea & Blanchard; Blanchard & Lea; Henry C. Lea; Henry C. Lea's Sons & Co., Lea Bros & Co. and finally Lea & Febiger. I don't know what has become of Lea & Febiger. In recent years they left Philadelphia and may even be defunct. I would have liked buying the company and restoring it to its Washington Square home, a fairy tale ending with new brass letters mounted where their name had been removed. Bentzman & Keogh, Publishers. Or Keogh & Bentzman, Publishers. Whichever you prefer.