Throughout graduate school, and even before, I had the good fortune that my best friend, Alex, worked for John Gach in Baltimore. John owned a “used book store”. (He is still in business on the internet and is quite famous in the antique book market.) Alex would give me his “employee discount” on books, and John would set aside for me items he thought I would want. A very meaningful example of John’s generosity was when he cam into possession of a framed autographed photo of Bertrand Russell, in 1971. John knew that I collected first editions of Russell’s books, and so set it aside for me. Since he was in Baltimore and I lived in the Maryland suburbs of DC. It was 6 weeks before I was at this store again. In the meanwhile a Bertrand Russell collector from Toronto, who took a yearly buying trip up and down the east coast, was in John’s shop and saw the framed photo. He offered John three times his asking price. John turned him down, but took his name and address in case I didn’t want it. When John gave it to me, he simply told me some else had wanted it. The following autumn, I attended the Bertrand Russell Centennial Conference in Hamilton Ontario, I met that collector. One evening he took me to his office at the University of Toronto to show me his Russell collection and told me about “the one that got away” in Baltimore! I informed him that I had that photograph! He asked whether I had known John was holding that item for me. When I told him that, no, I hadn’t known of the existence of that item, he just shook his head and said, well, you have a good friend there.”