[i]

A Book for All Readers

DESIGNED AS AN AID TO THE

COLLECTION, USE, AND PRESERVATION

OF BOOKS

AND THE

FORMATION OF PUBLIC AND PRIVATE LIBRARIES

BY

Ainsworth Rand Spofford

G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS
NEW YORK & LONDON
1900

[ii]

Copyright 1900

by

A R Spofford

[1]

TABLE OF CONTENTS.

[2]

A BOOK FOR ALL READERS

[3]

CHAPTER 1.

The Choice of Books.

When we survey the really illimitable field of human
knowledge, the vast accumulation of works already printed,
and the ever-increasing flood of new books poured out
by the modern press, the first feeling which is apt to arise
in the mind is one of dismay, if not of despair. We ask—who
is sufficient for these things? What life is long
enough—what intellect strong enough, to master even a
tithe of the learning which all these books contain? But
the reflection comes to our aid that, after all, the really important
books bear but a small proportion to the mass.
Most books are but repetitions, in a different form, of what
has already been many times written and printed. The
rarest of literary qualities is originality. Most writers are
mere echoes, and the greater part of literature is the pouring
out of one bottle into another. If you can get hold of
the few really best books, you can well afford to be ignorant
of all the rest. The reader who has mastered Kames’s
“Elements of Criticism,” need not spend his time over the
multitudinous treatises upon rhetoric. He who has read
Plutarch’s Lives thoroughly has before him a gallery of
heroes which will go farther to instruct him in the elements
of character than a whole library of modern biographies.
The student of the best plays of Shakespeare
may save his time by letting other and inferior dramatists
alone. He whose imagination has been fed upon Homer,
Dante, Milton, Burns, and Tennyson, with a few of the
world’s master-pieces in single poems like Gray’s Elegy,
may dispense with the whole race of poetasters. Until you[4]
have read the best fictions of Scott, Thackeray, Dickens,
Hawthorne, George Eliot, and Victor Hugo, you should
not be hungry after the last new novel,—sure to be forgotten
in a year, while the former are perennial. The taste
which is once formed upon models such as have been
named, will not be satisfied with the trashy book, or the
spasmodic school of writing.

What kind of books should form the predominant part
in the selection of our reading, is a question admitting of
widely differing opinions. Rigid utilitarians may hold that
only books of fact, of history and science, works crammed
full of knowledge, should be encouraged. Others will plead
in behalf of lighter reading, or for a universal range. It
must be admitted that the most attractive reading to the
mass of people is not scientific or philosophical. But there
are many very attractive books outside the field of science,
and outside the realm of fiction, books capable of yielding
pleasure as well as instruction. There are few books that
render a more substantial benefit to readers of any age
than good biographies. In them we find those personal
experiences and adventures, those traits of character, that
environment of social and domestic life, which form the
chief interest in works of fiction. In fact, the novel, in its
best estate, is only biography amplified by imagination, and
enlivened by dialogue. And the novel is successful only
when it succeeds in depicting the most truly the scenes,
circumstances, and characters of real life. A well written
biography, like that of Dr. Johnson, by Boswell, Walter
Scott, by Lockhart, or Charles Dickens, by Forster, gives
the reader an insight into the history of the times they
lived in, the social, political, and literary environment, and
the impress of their famous writings upon their contemporaries.
In the autobiography of Dr. Franklin, one of the
most charming narratives ever written, we are taken into[5]
the writer’s confidence, sympathize with his early struggles,
mistakes, and successes, and learn how he made himself,
from a poor boy selling ballads on Boston streets, into
a leader among men, whom two worlds have delighted to
honor. Another most interesting book of biography is that
of the brothers William and Robert Chambers, the famous
publishers of Edinburgh, who did more to diffuse useful
knowledge, and to educate the people, by their manifold
cheap issues of improving and entertaining literature, than
was ever done by the British Useful Knowledge Society itself.

The French nation has, of all others, the greatest genius
for personal memoirs, and the past two centuries are
brought far more vividly before us in these free-spoken and
often amusing chronicles, than in all the formal histories.
Among the most readable of these (comparatively few having
been translated into English) are the Memoirs of Marmontel,
Rousseau, Madame Rémusat, Amiel, and Madame
De Staël. The recently published memoirs by Imbert de
St. Amand, of court life in France in the times of Marie
Antoinette, Josephine, Marie Louise, and other periods,
while hastily written and not always accurate, are lively
and entertaining.

The English people fall far behind the French in biographic
skill, and many of their memoirs are as heavy and
dull as the persons whom they commemorate. But there
are bright exceptions, in the lives of literary men and women,
and in some of those of noted public men in church
and state. Thus, there are few books more enjoyable than
Sydney Smith’s Memoirs and Letters, or Greville’s Journals
covering the period including George IV to Victoria,
or the Life and Letters of Macaulay, or Mrs. Gaskell’s
Charlotte Brontë, or the memoirs of Harriet Martineau, or
Boswell’s Life of Dr. Johnson. Among the briefer biog[6]raphies
worthy of special mention are the series of English
Men of Letters, edited by John Morley, and written by
some of the best of contemporary British writers. They
embrace memoirs of Chaucer, Spenser, Bacon, Sidney, Milton,
De Foe, Swift, Sterne, Fielding, Locke, Dryden, Pope,
Johnson, Gray, Addison, Goldsmith, Burke, Hume, Gibbon,
Bunyan, Bentley, Sheridan, Burns, Cowper, Southey,
Scott, Byron, Lamb, Coleridge, Keats, Shelley, Wordsworth,
De Quincey, Macaulay, Landor, Dickens, Thackeray, Hawthorne,
and Carlyle. These biographies, being quite compendious,
and in the main very well written, afford to busy
readers a short-hand method of acquainting themselves
with most of the notable writers of Britain, their personal
characteristics, their relation to their contemporaries, and
the quality and influence of their works. Americans have
not as yet illustrated the field of biographic literature by
many notably skilful examples. We are especially deficient
in good autobiographies, so that Dr. Franklin’s stands
almost alone in singular merit in that class. We have an
abundance of lives of notable generals, professional men,
and politicians, in which indiscriminate eulogy and partisanship
too often usurp the place of actual facts, and the
truth of history is distorted to glorify the merits of the
subject of the biography. The great success of General
Grant’s own Memoirs, too, has led publishers to tempt
many public men in military or civil life, into the field of
personal memoirs, not as yet with distinguished success.

It were to be wished that more writers possessed of some
literary skill, who have borne a part in the wonderful
drama involving men and events enacted in this country
during the century now drawing to a close, had given us
their sincere personal impressions in autobiographic form.
Such narratives, in proportion as they are truthful, are far
more trustworthy than history written long after the event[7]
by authors who were neither observers nor participants in
the scenes which they describe.

Among American biographies which will help the reader
to gain a tolerably wide acquaintance with the men and affairs
of the past century in this country, are the series of
Lives of American Statesmen, of which thirty volumes
have been published. These include Washington, the
Adamses, Jefferson, Franklin, Hamilton, Jay, Madison,
Marshall, Monroe, Henry, Gallatin, Morris, Randolph,
Jackson, Van Buren, Webster, Clay, Calhoun, Cass, Benton,
Seward, Lincoln, Chase, Stevens, and Sumner. While
these Memoirs are of very unequal merit, they are sufficiently
instructive to be valuable to all students of our national
history.

Another very useful series is that of American Men of
Letters, edited by Charles Dudley Warner, in fifteen volumes,
which already includes Franklin, Bryant, Cooper,
Irving, Noah Webster, Simms, Poe, Emerson, Ripley, Margaret
Fuller, Willis, Thoreau, Taylor, and Curtis.

In the department of history, the best books for learners
are not always the most famous. Any mere synopsis of
universal history is necessarily dry reading, but for a constant
help in reference, guiding one to the best original
sources, under each country, and with very readable extracts
from the best writers treating on each period, the
late work of J. N. Larned, “History for Ready Reference,”
five volumes, will be found invaluable. Brewer’s Historic
Note Book, in a single volume, answers many historic
queries in a single glance at the alphabet. For the History
of the United States, either John Fiske’s or Eggleston’s is
an excellent compend, while for the fullest treatment, Bancroft’s
covers the period from the discovery of America up
to the adoption of the constitution in 1789, in a style at
once full, classical, and picturesque. For continuations,[8]
McMaster’s History of the People of the United States
covers the period from 1789 to 1824, and is being continued.
James Schouler has written a History of the
United States from 1789 to 1861, in five volumes, while J.
F. Rhodes ably covers the years 1850 to the Civil War with
a much more copious narrative.

For the annals of England, the Short History of England
by J. R. Green is a most excellent compend. For
more elaborate works, the histories of Hume and Macaulay
bring the story of the British Empire down to about 1700.
For the more modern period, Lecky’s History of England
in the 18th century is excellent, and for the present century,
McCarthy’s History of Our Own Time, and Miss Martineau’s
History of England, 1815-52, are well written
works. French history is briefly treated in the Student’s
History of France, while Guizot’s complete History, in
eight volumes, gives a much fuller account, from the beginnings
of France in the Roman period, to the year 1848.
Carlyle’s French Revolution is a splendid picture of that
wonderful epoch, and Sloane’s History of Napoleon gives
very full details of the later period.

For the history of Germany, Austria, Russia, France,
Spain, Italy, Holland, and other countries, the various
works in the “Story of the Nations” series, are excellent
brief histories.

Motley’s Rise of the Dutch Republic and his United
Netherlands are highly important and well written historical
works.

The annals of the ancient world are elaborately and ably
set forth in Grote’s History of Greece, Merivale’s Rome,
and Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.

Another class of books closely allied to biography and
history, is the correspondence of public men, and men of
letters, with friends and contemporaries. These familiar[9]
letters frequently give us views of social, public, and professional
life which are of absorbing interest. Among the
best letters of this class may be reckoned the correspondence
of Horace Walpole, Madame de Sévigné, the poets
Gray and Cowper, Lord Macaulay, Lord Byron, and Charles
Dickens. Written for the most part with unstudied ease
and unreserve, they entertain the reader with constant variety
of incident and character, while at the same time
they throw innumerable side-lights upon the society and
the history of the time.

Next, we may come to the master-pieces of the essay-writers.
You will often find that the best treatise on any
subject is the briefest, because the writer is put upon condensation
and pointed statement, by the very form and
limitations of the essay, or the review or magazine article.
Book-writers are apt to be diffuse and episodical, having
so extensive a canvas to cover with their literary designs.
Among the finest of the essayists are Montaigne, Lord
Bacon, Addison, Goldsmith, Macaulay, Sir James Stephen,
Cardinal Newman, De Quincey, Charles Lamb, Washington
Irving, Emerson, Froude, Lowell, and Oliver Wendell
Holmes. You may spend many a delightful hour in the
perusal of any one of these authors.

We come now to poetry, which some people consider
very unsubstantial pabulum, but which forms one of the
most precious and inspiring portions of the literature of
the world. In all ages, the true poet has exercised an influence
upon men’s minds that is unsurpassed by that of
any other class of writers. And the reason is not far to
seek. Poetry deals with the highest thoughts, in the most
expressive language. It gives utterance to all the sentiments
and passions of humanity in rhythmic and harmonious
verse. The poet’s lines are remembered long after the
finest compositions of the writers of prose are forgotten.[10]
They fasten themselves in the memory by the very flow
and cadence of the verse, and they minister to that sense
of melody that dwells in every human brain. What the
world owes to its great poets can never be fully measured.
But some faint idea of it may be gained from the wondrous
stimulus given through them to the imaginative power,
and from the fact that those sentiments of human sympathy,
justice, virtue, and freedom, which inspire the best
poetry of all nations, become sooner or later incarnated in
their institutions. This is the real significance of the oft-quoted
saying of Andrew Fletcher, that stout Scotch republican
of two centuries ago, that if one were permitted
to make all the ballads of a nation, he need not care who
should make the laws.

In the best poetry, the felicity of its expressions of
thought, joined with their rhythmical form, makes it easy
for the reader to lay up almost unconsciously a store in
the memory of the noblest poetic sentiments, to comfort
or to divert him in many a weary or troubled hour. Hence
time is well spent in reading over and over again the great
poems of the world. Far better and wiser is this, than to
waste it upon the newest trash that captivates the popular
fancy, for the last will only tickle the intellectual palate
for an hour, or a day, and be then forgotten, while the
former will make one better and wiser for all time.

Nor need one seek to read the works of very many writers
in order to fill his mind with images of truth and
beauty which will dwell with him forever. The really
great poets in the English tongue may be counted upon
the fingers. Shakespeare fitly heads the list—a world’s
classic, unsurpassed for reach of imagination, variety of
scenes and characters, profound insight, ideal power, lofty
eloquence, moral purpose, the most moving pathos, alternating
with the finest humor, and diction unequalled for[11]
strength and beauty of expression. Milton, too, in his
minor poems, has given us some of the noblest verse in the
language. There is poetry enough in his L’Allegro and Il
Penseroso to furnish forth a whole galaxy of poets.

Spenser and Pope, Gray and Campbell, Goldsmith and
Burns, Wordsworth and the Brownings, Tennyson and
Longfellow,—these are among the other foremost names
in the catalogue of poets which none can afford to neglect.
Add to these the best translations of Homer, Virgil, Horace,
Dante, and Goethe, and one need not want for intellectual
company and solace in youth or age.

Among the books which combine entertainment with information,
the best narratives of travellers and voyagers
hold an eminent place. In them the reader enlarges the
bounds of his horizon, and travels in companionship with
his author all over the globe. While many, if not the
most, of the books of modern travellers are filled with
petty incidents and personal observations of no importance,
there are some wonderfully good books of this attractive
class. Such are Kinglake’s “Eothen, or traces of
travel in the East,” Helen Hunt Jackson’s “Bits of
Travel,” a volume of keen and amusing sketches of German
and French experiences, the books of De Amicus on
Holland, Constantinople, and Paris, those on England by
Emerson, Hawthorne, William Winter, and Richard Grant
White, Curtis’s Nile Notes, Howell’s “Venetian Life,” and
Taine’s “Italy, Rome and Naples.”

The wide domain of science can be but cursorily touched
upon. Many readers get so thorough a distaste for science
in early life—mainly from the fearfully and wonderfully
dry text-books in which our schools and colleges have
abounded—that they never open a scientific book in later
years. This is a profound mistake, since no one can afford
to remain ignorant of the world in which we live, with its[12]
myriad wonders, its inexhaustible beauties, and its unsolved
problems. And there are now works produced in
every department of scientific research which give in a
popular and often in a fascinating style, the revelations of
nature which have come through the study and investigation
of man. Such books are “The Stars and the Earth,”
Kingsley’s “Glaucus, or Wonders of the Shore,” Clodd’s
“Story of Creation,” (a clear account of the evolution
theory) Figuier’s “Vegetable World,” and Professor Langley’s
“New Astronomy.” There are wise specialists whose
published labors have illuminated for the uninformed
reader every nook and province of the mysteries of creation,
from the wing of a beetle to the orbits of the planetary
worlds. There are few pursuits more fascinating than
those that bring us acquainted with the secrets of nature,
whether dragged up from the depths of the sea, or demonstrated
in the substance and garniture of the green earth,
or wrung from the far-off worlds in the shining heavens.

A word only can be spared to the wide and attractive
realm of fiction. In this field, those are the best books
which have longest kept their hold upon the public mind.
It is a wise plan to neglect the novels of the year, and to
read (or to re-read in many cases) the master-pieces which
have stood the test of time, and criticism, and changing
fashions, by the sure verdict of a call for continually new
editions. Ouida and Trilby may endure for a day, but
Thackeray and Walter Scott are perennial. It is better to
read a fine old book through three times, than to read
three new books through once.

Of books more especially devoted to the history of literature,
in times ancient and modern, and in various nations,
the name is legion. I count up, of histories of English literature
alone (leaving out the American) no less than one
hundred and thirty authors on this great field or some por[13]tion
of it. To know what ones of these to study, and what
to leave alone, would require critical judgment and time
not at my command. I can only suggest a few known by
me to be good. For a succinct yet most skilfully written
summary of English writers, there is no book that can compare
with Stopford A. Brooke’s Primer of English Literature.
For more full and detailed treatment, Taine’s History
of English Literature, or Chambers’ Cyclopaedia of
English Literature, two volumes, with specimens of the
writers of every period, are the best. E. C. Stedman’s Victorian
Poets is admirable, as is also his Poets of America.
For a bird’s eye view of American authors and their works,
C. F. Richardson’s Primer of American Literature can be
studied to advantage, while for more full reference to our
authors, with specimens of each, Stedman’s Library of
American Literature in eleven volumes, should be consulted.
M. C. Tyler’s very interesting critical History of the
Early American Literature, so little known, comes down
in its fourth volume only to the close of the revolution in
1783.

For classical literature, the importance of a good general
knowledge of which can hardly be overrated, J. P. Mahaffy’s
History of Greek Literature, two volumes, and G.
A. Simcox’s Latin Literature, two volumes, may be commended.
On the literature of modern languages, to refer
only to works written in English, Saintsbury’s Primer of
French Literature is good, and R. Garnett’s History of
Italian Literature is admirable (by the former Keeper of
Printed Books in the British Museum Library). Lublin’s
Primer of German Literature is excellent for a condensed
survey of the writers of Germany, while W. Scherer’s History
of German Literature, two volumes, covers a far wider
field. For Spanish Literature in its full extent, there is
no work at all equal to George Ticknor’s three volumes,[14]
but for a briefer history, H. B. Clark’s Hand-book of
Spanish Literature, London, 1893, may be used.

I make no allusion here to the many works of reference
in the form of catalogues and bibliographical works, which
may be hereafter noted. My aim has been only to indicate
the best and latest treatises covering the leading literatures
of the world, having no space for the Scandinavian, Dutch,
Portuguese, Russian, or any of the Slavonic or oriental
tongues.

Those who find no time for studying the more extended
works named, will find much profit in devoting their hours
to the articles in the Encyclopaedia Britannica upon the
literatures of the various countries. These are within
reach of everyone.

The select list of books named in this chapter does not
by any means aim to cover those which are well worth
reading; but only to indicate a few, a very few, of the best.
It is based on the supposition that intelligent readers will
give far less time to fiction than to the more solid food of
history, biography, essays, travels, literary history, and applied
science. The select list of books in the fields already
named is designed to include only the most improving and
well-executed works. Many will not find their favorites
in the list, which is purposely kept within narrow limits,
as a suggestion only of a few of the best books for a home
library or for general reading. You will find it wise to
own, as early in life as possible, a few of the choicest productions
of the great writers of the world. Those who can
afford only a selection from a selection, can begin with
never so few of the authors most desired, or which they
have not already, putting in practice the advice of Shakespeare:

Says John Ruskin: “I would urge upon every young man[15]
to obtain as soon as he can, by the severest economy, a restricted
and steadily increasing series of books, for use
through life; making his little library, of all his furniture,
the most studied and decorative piece.” And Henry Ward
Beecher urged it as the most important early ambition for
clerks, working men and women, and all who are struggling
up in life, to form gradually a library of good books.
“It is a man’s duty,” says he, “to have books. A library
is not a luxury, but one of the necessaries of life.”

And says Bishop Hurst, urging the vital importance of
wise selection in choosing our reading: “If two-thirds of
the shelves of the typical domestic library were emptied of
their burden, and choice books put in their stead, there
would be reformation in intelligence and thought throughout
the civilized world.”

Selection of Books for Public Libraries.

Let us now consider the subject of books fitted for public
libraries. At the outset, it is most important that each
selection should be made on a well considered plan. No
hap-hazard, or fitfully, or hastily made collection can answer
the two ends constantly to be aimed at—namely, first,
to select the best and most useful books, and, secondly, to
economize the funds of the library. No money should be
wasted upon whims and experiments, but every dollar
should be devoted to the acquisition of improving books.

As to the principles that should govern and the limitations
to be laid down, these will depend much upon the
scope of the library, and the amount of its funds. No library
of the limited and moderate class commonly found
in our public town libraries can afford to aim at the universal
range of a national library, nor even at the broad
selections proper to a liberally endowed city library.

[16]But its aims, while modest, should be comprehensive
enough to provide a complete selection of what may be
termed standard literature, for the reading public. If the
funds are inadequate to do this in the beginning, it should
be kept constantly in view, as the months and years go on.
Every great and notable book should be in the library
sooner or later, and if possible at its foundation. Thus
will its utility and attractiveness both be well secured.

Taking first the case of a small public library about to
be started, let us see in a few leading outlines what it will
need.

1. A selection of the best works of reference should be
the corner-stone of every library collection. In choosing
these, regard must be had to secure the latest as well as
the best. Never buy the first edition of Soule’s Synonymes
because it is cheap, but insist upon the revised and
enlarged edition of 1892. Never acquire an antiquated
Lempriere’s or Anthon’s Classical Dictionary, because some
venerable library director, who used it in his boyhood, suggests
it, when you can get Professor H. T. Peck’s “Dictionary
of Classical Antiquities,” published in 1897. Never
be tempted to buy an old edition of an encyclopaedia at
half or quarter price, for it will be sure to lack the populations
of the last census, besides being a quarter of a century
or more in arrears in its other information. When
consulting sale catalogues to select reference books, look
closely at the dates of publication, and make sure by your
American or English catalogues that no later edition has
appeared. It goes without saying that you will have these
essential bibliographies, as well as Lowndes’ Manual of
English Literature first of all, whether you are able to buy
Watt and Brunet or not.

2. Without here stopping to treat of books of reference
in detail, which will appear in another place, let me refer[17]
to some other great classes of literature in which every library
should be strong. History stands fairly at the head,
and while a newly established library cannot hope to possess
at once all the noted writers, it should begin by securing
a fine selection, embracing general history, ancient and
modern, and the history of each country, at least of the
important nations. For compendious short histories, the
“Story of the Nations” series, by various writers, should
be secured, and the more extensive works of Gibbon, Grote,
Mommsen, Duruy, Fyffe, Green, Macaulay, Froude, McCarthy,
Carlyle, Thiers, Bancroft, Motley, Prescott, Fiske,
Schouler, McMaster, Buckle, Guizot, etc., should be acquired.
The copious lists of historical works appended to
Larned’s “History for Ready Reference” will be useful
here.

3. Biography stands close to history in interest and importance.
For general reference, or the biography of all
nations, Lippincott’s Universal Pronouncing Dictionary of
Biography is essential, as well as Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of
American Biography, for our own country. For Great
Britain, the “Dictionary of National Biography” is a mine
of information, and should be added if funds are sufficient.
Certain sets of collective biographies which are important
are American Statesmen, 26 vols., Englishmen of Letters, — vols.,
Autobiography, 33 vols., Famous Women series,
21 vols., Heroes of the Nation series, 24 vols., American
Pioneers and Patriots, 12 vols., and Plutarch’s Lives.
Then of indispensable single biographies there are Boswell’s
Johnson, Lockhart’s Scott, Froude’s Carlyle, Trevelyan’s
Macaulay, Froude’s Caesar, Lewes’ Goethe, etc.

4. Of notable essays, a high class of literature in which
there are many names, may be named Addison, Montaigne,
Bacon, Goldsmith, Emerson, Lamb, De Quincey, Holmes,
Lowell, etc.

[18]5. Poetry stands at the head of all the literature of imagination.
Some people of highly utilitarian views decry
poetry, and desire to feed all readers upon facts. But that
this is a great mistake will be apparent when we consider
that the highest expressions of moral and intellectual truth
and the most finely wrought examples of literature in every
nation are in poetic form. Take out of the world’s literature
the works of its great poets, and you would leave it
poor indeed. Poetry is the only great source for the nurture
of imagination, and without imagination man is a
poor creature. I read the other day a dictum of a certain
writer, alleging that Dickens’s Christmas Carol is far more
effective as a piece of writing than Milton’s noble ode “On
the Morning of Christ’s Nativity.” Such comparisons are
of small value. In point of fact, no library can spare
either of them. I need not repeat the familiar names of
the great poets; they are found in all styles of production,
and some of the best are among the least expensive.

6. Travels and voyages form a very entertaining as well
as highly instructive part of a library. A good selection
of the more notable will prove a valuable resource to readers
of nearly every age.

7. The wide field of science should be carefully gleaned
for a good range of approved text-books in each department.
So progressive is the modern world that the latest
books are apt to be the best in each science, something
which is by no means true in literature.

8. In law, medicine, theology, political science, sociology,
economics, art, architecture, music, eloquence, and
language, the library should be provided with the leading
modern works.

9. We come now to fiction, which the experience of all
libraries shows is the favorite pabulum of about three readers
out of four. The great demand for this class of read[19]ing
renders it all the more important to make a wise and
improving selection of that which forms the minds of multitudes,
and especially of the young. This selection presents
to every librarian and library director or trustee some
perplexing problems. To buy indiscriminately the new
novels of the day, good, bad, and indifferent (the last
named greatly predominating) would be a very poor discharge
of the duty devolving upon those who are the responsible
choosers of the reading of any community. Conceding,
as we must, the vast influence and untold value of
fiction as a vehicle of entertainment and instruction, the
question arises—where can the line be drawn between the
good and improving novels, and novels which are neither
good nor improving? This involves something more than
the moral tone and influence of the fictions: it involves
their merits and demerits as literature also. I hold it to
be the bounden duty of those who select the reading of a
community to maintain a standard of good taste, as well as
of good morals. They have no business to fill the library
with wretched models of writing, when there are thousand
of good models ready, in numbers far greater than
they have money to purchase. Weak and flabby and silly
books tend to make weak and flabby and silly brains. Why
should library guides put in circulation such stuff as the
dime novels, or “Old Sleuth” stories, or the slip-slop
novels of “The Duchess,” when the great masters of romantic
fiction have endowed us with so many books replete
with intellectual and moral power? To furnish immature
minds with the miserable trash which does not deserve
the name of literature, is as blameworthy as to put
before them books full of feverish excitement, or stories of
successful crime.

We are told, indeed (and some librarians even have said
it) that for unformed readers to read a bad book is better[20]
than to read none at all. I do not believe it. You might
as well say that it is better for one to swallow poison than
not to swallow any thing at all. I hold that library providers
are as much bound to furnish wholesome food for
the minds of the young who resort to them for guidance,
as their parents are to provide wholesome food for their
bodies.

But the question returns upon us—what is wholesome
food? In the first place, it is that great body of fiction
which has borne the test, both of critical judgment, and of
popularity with successive generations of readers. It is
the novels of Scott, Austen, Dickens, Thackeray, George
Eliot, Cooper, Hawthorne, Kingsley, Mulock-Craik, and
many more, such as no parents need blush to put into the
hands of their daughters. In the next place, it is such a
selection from the myriads of stories that have poured
from the press of this generation as have been approved by
the best readers, and the critical judgment of a responsible
press.

As to books of questionable morality, I am aware that
contrary opinions prevail on the question whether any
such books should be allowed in a public library, or not.
The question is a different one for the small town libraries
and for the great reference libraries of the world. The
former are really educational institutions, supported at the
people’s expense, like the free schools, and should be held
to a responsibility from which the extensive reference libraries
in the city are free. The latter may and ought to
preserve every form of literature, and, if national libraries,
they would be derelict in their duty to posterity if they did
not acquire and preserve the whole literature of the country,
and hand it down complete to future generations.
The function of the public town library is different. It
must indispensably make a selection, since its means are[21]
not adequate to buy one-tenth of the annual product of
the press, which amounts in only four nations (England,
France, Germany, and the United States) to more than
thirty-five thousand new volumes a year. Its selection,
mainly of American and English books, must be small, and
the smaller it is, the greater is the need of care in buying.
In fact, it is in most cases, compelled to be a selection from
a selection. Therefore, in the many cases of doubt arising
as to the fit character of a book, let the doubt be resolved
in favor of the fund, thus preserving the chance of getting
a better book for the money.

With this careful and limited selection of the best, out
of the multitude of novels that swarm from the press, the
reading public will have every reason to be satisfied. No
excuse can be alleged for filling up our libraries with poor
books, while there is no dearth whatever of good ones. It
is not the business of a public library to compete with the
news stands or the daily press in furnishing the latest short
stories for popular consumption; a class of literature whose
survival is likely to be quite as short as the stories themselves.

Take an object lesson as to the mischiefs of reading the
wretched stuff which some people pretend is “better than
no reading at all” from the boy Jesse Pomeroy, who perpetrated
a murder of peculiar atrocity in Boston. “Pomeroy
confessed that he had always been a great reader of
‘blood and thunder’ stories, having read probably sixty
dime novels, all treating of scalping and deeds of violence.
The boy said that he had no doubt that the reading of
those books had a great deal to do with his course, and he
would advise all boys to leave them alone.”

In some libraries, where the pernicious effect of the
lower class of fiction has been observed, the directors have
withdrawn from circulation a large proportion of the[22]
novels, which had been bought by reason of their popularity.
In other newly started libraries only fiction of the
highest grade has been placed in the library from the start,
and this is by far the best course. If readers inquire for
inferior or immoral books, and are told that the library
does not have them, although they will express surprise
and disappointment, they will take other and improving
reading, thus fulfilling the true function of the library as
an educator. Librarians and library boards cannot be too
careful about what constitutes the collection which is to
form the pabulum of so many of the rising generation.

This does not imply that they are to be censors, or
prudes, but with the vast field of literature before them
from which to choose, they are bound to choose the best.

The American Library Association has had this subject
under discussion repeatedly, and while much difference of
opinion has arisen from the difficulty of finding any absolute
standard of excellence, nearly all have agreed that as
to certain books, readers should look elsewhere than to the
public free library for them. At one time a list of authors
was made out, many of whose works were deemed objectionable,
either from their highly sensational character, or
their bad style, or their highly wrought and morbid pictures
of human passions, or their immoral tendency. This
list no doubt will surprise many, as including writers
whose books everybody, almost, has read, or has been accustomed
to think well of. It embraces the following popular
authors, many of whose novels have had a wide circulation,
and that principally through popular libraries.

Here follow the names:

Mary J. Holmes, Mrs. Henry Wood, C. L. Hentz, M. P.
Finley, Mrs. A. S. Stephens, E. D. E. N. Southworth, Mrs.
Forrester, Rhoda Broughton, Helen Mathers, Jessie Fothergill,
M. E. Braddon, Florence Marryat, Ouida, Horatio[23]
Alger, Mayne Reid, Oliver Optic, W. H. S. Kingston, E.
Kellogg, G. W. M. Reynolds, C. Fosdick, Edmund Yates,
G. A. Lawrence, Grenville Murray, W. H. Ainsworth,
Wilkie Collins, E. L. Bulwer-Lytton, W. H. Thomes, and
Augusta Evans Wilson.

Bear in mind, that only English and American novels
are included, and those only of the present century: also,
that as to many which are included, no imputation of immorality
was made. Such a “black list” is obviously open
to the charge of doing great injustice to the good repute
of writers named, since only a part of the works written by
some of them can properly be objected to, and these are
not specially named. Bulwer-Lytton, for example, whose
“Paul Clifford” is a very improper book to go into the
hands of young people, has written at least a dozen other
fictions of noble moral purpose, and high literary merit.

Out of seventy public libraries to which the list was sent,
with inquiry whether the authors named were admitted as
books of circulation, thirty libraries replied. All of them
admitted Bulwer-Lytton and Wilkie Collins, all but two
Oliver Optic’s books, and all but six Augusta Evans Wilson’s.
Reynolds’ novels were excluded by twenty libraries,
Mrs. Southworth’s by eleven, “Ouida’s” by nine, and Mrs.
Stephens’s and Mrs. Henry Wood’s by eight. Other details
cannot find space for notice here.

This instance is one among many of endeavors constantly
being made by associated librarians to stem the
ever increasing flood of poor fiction which threatens to submerge
the better class of books in our public libraries.

That no such wholesome attempt can be wholly successful
is evident enough. The passion for reading fiction is
both epidemic and chronic; and in saying this, do not infer
that I reckon it as a disease. A librarian has no right to
banish fiction because the appetite for it is abused. He is[24]
not to set up any ideal and impossible standard of selection.
His most useful and beneficent function is to turn
into better channels the universal hunger for reading
which is entertaining. Do readers want an exciting novel?
What can be more exciting than “Les Miserables” of Victor
Hugo, a book of exceptional literary excellence and
power? Literature is full of fascinating stories, admirably
told, and there is no excuse for loading our libraries with
trash, going into the slums for models, or feeding young
minds upon the unclean brood of pessimistic novels. If it
is said that people will have trash, let them buy it, and let
the libraries wash their hands of it, and refuse to circulate
the stuff which no boy nor girl can touch without being
contaminated.

Those who claim that we might as well let the libraries
down to the level of the poorest books, because unformed
and ignorant minds are capable of nothing better, should
be told that people are never raised by giving them nothing
to look up to. To devour infinite trash is not the road to
learn wisdom, or virtue, or even to attain genuine amusement.
To those who are afraid that if the libraries are
purified, the masses will get nothing that they can read,
the answer is, have they not got the entire world of magazines,
the weekly, daily, and Sunday newspapers, which supply
a whole library of fiction almost daily? Add to these
plenty of imaginative literature in fiction and in poetry,
on every library’s shelves, which all who can read can comprehend,
and what excuse remains for buying what is
neither decent nor improving?

Take an example of the boundless capacity for improvement
that exists in the human mind and human taste, from
the spread of the fine arts among the people. Thirty
years ago, their houses, if having any decoration at all,
exhibited those fearful and wonderful colored lithographs[25]
and chromos in which bad drawing, bad portraiture, and
bad coloring vied with each other to produce pictures
which it would be a mild use of terms to call detestable.
Then came the two great international art expositions at
Philadelphia and Chicago, each greatly advancing by the
finest models, the standard of taste in art, and by new economies
of reproduction placing the most beautiful statues
and pictures within the reach of the most moderate purse.
What has been the result? An incalculable improvement
in the public taste, educated by the diffusion of the best
models, until even the poor farmer of the backwoods will
no longer tolerate the cheap and nasty horrors that once
disfigured his walls.

The lesson in art is good in literature also. Give the
common people good models, and there is no danger but
they will appreciate and understand them. Never stoop
to pander to a depraved taste, no matter what specious
pleas you may hear for tolerating the low in order to lead
to the high, or for making your library contribute to the
survival of the unfittest.

Is it asked, how can the librarian find out, among the
world of novels from which he is to select, what is pure and
what is not, what is wholesome and what unhealthy, what
is improving and what is trash? The answer is—there are
some lists which will be most useful in this discrimination,
while there is no list which is infallible. Mr. F. Leypoldt’s
little catalogue of “Books for all Time” has nothing
that any library need do without. Another compendious
list is published by the American Library Association.
And the more extensive catalogue prepared for the World’s
Fair in 1893, and embracing about 5,000 volumes, entitled
“Catalogue of A. L. A. Library: 5,000 vols. for a popular
library,” while it has many mistakes and omissions, is a tolerably
safe guide in making up a popular library. I may[26]
note that the list of novels in this large catalogue put forth
by the American Library Association has the names of five
only out of the twenty-eight writers of fiction heretofore
pronounced objectionable, and names a select few only of
the books of these five.

As for the later issues of the press, and especially the
new novels, let him skim them for himself, unless in cases
where trustworthy critical judgments are found in journals.
Running through a book to test its style and moral
drift is no difficult task for the practiced eye.

Let us suppose that you are cursorily perusing a novel
which has made a great sensation, and you come upon the
following sentence: “Eighteen millions of years would
level all in one huge, common, shapeless ruin. Perish the
microcosm in the limitless macrocosm! and sink this
feeble earthly segregate in the boundless rushing choral
aggregation!” This is in Augusta J. Evans Wilson’s story
“Macaria”, and many equally extraordinary examples of
“prose run mad” are found in the novels of this once noted
writer. What kind of a model is that to form the style of
the youthful neophyte, to whom one book is as good as another,
since it was found on the shelves of the public library?

I am not insisting that all books admitted should be
models of style; even a purist must admit that one of the
greatest charms of literature is its infinite variety. But
when book after book is filled with such specimens of literary
lunacy as this, one is tempted to believe that Homer
and Shakespeare, to say nothing of Thackeray and Hawthorne,
have lived in vain.

Never fear criticism of those who find fault with the absence
from your library of books that you know to be nearly
worthless; their absence will be a silent but eloquent
protest against them, sure to be vindicated by the utter ob[27]livion
into which they will fall. Many a flaming reputation
has been extinguished after dazzling callow admirers
for six months, or even less. Do not dread the empty sarcasm,
that may grow out of the exclusion of freshly printed
trash, that your library is a “back number.” To some
poor souls every thing that is great and good in the world’s
literature is a “back number”; and the Bible itself, with
its immortal poetry and sublimity, is the oldest back number
of all. It is no part of your business as a librarian to
cater to the tastes of those who act as if the reading of endless
novels of sensation were the chief end of man. As
one fed on highly spiced viands and stimulating drinks
surely loses the appetite for wholesome and nourishing
food, so one who reads only exciting and highly wrought
fictions loses the taste for the master-pieces of prose and
poetry.

Let not the fear of making many mistakes be a bug-bear
in your path. If you are told that your library is too exclusive,
reply that it has not means enough to buy all the
good books that are wanted, and cannot afford to spend
money on bad or even on doubtful ones. If you have excluded
any highly-sought-for book on insufficient evidence,
never fail to revise the judgment. All that can be expected
of any library is approximately just and wise selection,
having regard to merit, interest, and moral tone, more
than to novelty or popularity.

In the matter of choice, individual opinions are of small
value. Never buy a book simply because some reader extols
it as very fine, or “splendid,” or “perfectly lovely.”
Such praises are commonly to be distrusted in direct proportion
to their extravagance.

A good lesson to libraries is furnished in the experience
of the Cleveland (Ohio) Public Library. In 1878, out of
16,000 volumes in that library, no less than 6,000 were[28]
novels. The governing board, on the plea of giving people
what they wanted, bought nearly all new books of fiction,
and went so far, even, as to buy of Pinkerton’s Detective
stories, fifteen copies each, fifteen of all Mrs. Southworth’s
novels, etc. But a change took place in the board, and the
librarian was permitted to stop the growing flood of worthless
fiction, and as fast as the books were worn out, they
were replaced by useful reading. It resulted that four
years later, with 40,000 volumes in the library, only 7,000
were novels, or less than one-fifth, instead of more than
one-third of the whole collection, as formerly. In the
same time, the percentage of fiction drawn out was reduced
from 69 per cent. of the aggregate books read, to 50 per
cent.

Libraries are always complaining that they cannot buy
many valuable books from lack of funds. Yet some of
them buy a great many that are valueless in spite of this
lack. Can any thing be conceived more valueless than a
set of Sylvanus Cobb’s novels, reprinted to the number of
thirty-five to forty, from the New York Ledger? Yet
these have been bought for scores of libraries, which could
not afford the latest books in science and art, or biography,
history, or travel. There are libraries in which the latest
books on electricity, or sewerage, or sanitary plumbing,
might have saved many lives, but which must go without
them, because the money has been squandered on vapid
and pernicious literature.

In almost every library, while some branches of knowledge
are fairly represented, others are not represented at
all. Nearly all present glaring deficiencies, and these are
often caused by want of systematic plan in building up the
collection. Boards of managers are frequently changed,
and the policy of the library with them. All the more important
is it that the librarian should be so well equipped[29]
with a definite aim, and with knowledge and skill competent
to urge that aim consistently, as to preserve some
unity of plan.

I need not add that a librarian should be always wide
awake to the needs of his library in every direction. It
should be taken for granted that its general aim is to include
the best books in the whole range of human knowledge.
With the vast area of book production before him,
he should strengthen every year some department, taking
them in order of importance.

Some scholarly writers tell us that very few books are
essential to a good education. James Russell Lowell
named five, which in his view embraced all the essentials;
namely, Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, Cervantes, and
Goethe’s Faust. Prof. Charles E. Norton of Harvard remarked
that this list might even be abridged so as to embrace
only Homer, Dante and Shakespeare. I can only
regard such exclusiveness as misleading, though conceding
the many-sidedness of these great writers. To extend the
list is the function of all public libraries, as well as of most
of the private ones. Next after the really essential books,
that library will be doing its public good service which acquires
all the important works that record the history of
man. This will include biography, travels and voyages,
science, and much besides, as well as history.

Special pains should be taken in every library to have
every thing produced in its own town, county, and State.
Not only books, but all pamphlets, periodicals, newspapers,
and even broadsides or circulars, should be sought for and
stored up as memorials of the present age, tending in large
part rapidly to disappear.

In selecting editions of standard authors, one should
always discriminate, so as to secure for the library, if not
the best, at least good, clear type, sound, thick paper, and[30]
durable binding. Cheap and poor editions wear out quickly,
and have to be thrown away for better ones, which wise
economy should have selected in the first place. For example,
a widely circulated edition of Scott’s novels, found
in most libraries, has the type so worn and battered by the
many large editions printed from the plates, that many
letters and words are wanting, thus spoiling not only the
pleasure but abridging the profit of the reader in perusing
the novels. The same is true of one edition of Cooper.
Then there are many cheap reprints of English novels in
the Seaside and other libraries which abound in typographical
errors. A close examination of a cheap edition of
a leading English novelist’s works revealed more than
3,000 typographical errors in the one set of books! It
would be unpardonable carelessness to buy such books for
general reading because they are cheap.

Librarians should avoid what are known as subscription
books, as a rule, though some valid exceptions exist. Most
of such books are profusely illustrated and in gaudy bindings,
gotten up to dazzle the eye. If works of merit, it is
better to wait for them, than to subscribe for an unfinished
work, which perhaps may never reach completion.

A librarian or book collector should be ever observant of
what he may find to enrich his collection. When in a
book-store, or a private or public library, he should make
notes of such works seen as are new to him, with any characteristics
which their custodian may remark upon. Such
personal examination is more informing than any catalogue.

I think each public library should possess, besides
a complete set of the English translations of the Greek and
Latin classics, a full set of the originals, for the benefit of
scholarly readers. These classic texts can be had complete
in modern editions for a very moderate price.

[31]How far duplicate volumes should be bought should depend
upon demand, and the views of the purchasing
powers. There is a real need of more than one copy of
almost every standard work, else it will be perpetually out,
giving occasion for numerous complaints from those who
use the library. It would be a good rule to keep one copy
always in, and at the service of readers, of every leading
history, standard poet, or popular novel. Then the duplicate
copies for circulation may be one or more, as experience
and ability to provide may determine. A library
which caters to the novel-reading habit as extensively as
the New York Mercantile (a subscription library) has to
buy fifty to one hundred copies of “Trilby,” for example,
to keep up with the demand. No such obligation exists
for the free public libraries. They, however, often buy
half a dozen to a dozen copies of a very popular story, when
new, and sell them out after the demand has slackened or
died away.

The methods of selection and purchase in public libraries
are very various. In the Worcester (Mass.) Public
Library, the librarian makes a list of desiderata, has it
manifolded, and sends a copy to each of the thirteen members
of the Board of directors. This list is reported on by
the members at the next monthly meeting of the Board,
and generally, in the main, approved. Novels and stories
are not bought until time has shown of what value they
may be. The aim is mainly educational at the Worcester
library, very special pains being taken to aid all the pupils
and teachers in the public schools, by careful selection, and
providing duplicate or more copies of important works.

In the Public Library of Cleveland, Ohio, there is appointed
out of the governing Board a book-committee of
three. To one of these are referred English books wanted,
to another French, and to the third German books. This
sub-committee approves or amends the Librarian’s recom[32]mendations,
at its discretion; but expensive works are referred
to the whole board for determination.

In the New York Mercantile Library, which must keep
continually up to date in its supply of new books, the announcements
in all the morning papers are daily scanned,
and books just out secured by immediate order. Many
publishers send in books on approval, which are frequently
bought. An agent in London is required to send on the
day of publication all new books on certain subjects.

The library boards of management meet weekly in New
York and Philadelphia, but monthly in most country libraries.
The selection of books made by committees introduces
often an element of chance, not quite favorable to
the unity of plan in developing the resources of the library.
But with a librarian of large information, discretion, and
skill, there need seldom be any difficulty in securing approval
of his selections, or of most of them. In some libraries
the librarian is authorized to buy at discretion additions
of books in certain lines, to be reported at the next
meeting of the board; and to fill up all deficiencies in
periodicals that are taken. This is an important concession
to his judgment, made in the interest of completeness
in the library, saving a delay of days and sometimes weeks
in waiting for the board of directors.

All orders sent out for accessions should previously
be compared with the alphabeted order-card list, as well
as with the general catalogue of the library, to avoid duplication.
After this the titles are to be incorporated in the
alphabet of all outstanding orders, to be withdrawn only
on receipt of the books.

The library should invite suggestions from all frequenting
it, of books recommended and not found in the collection.
A blank record-book for this purpose, or an equivalent
in order-cards, should be always kept on the counter
of the library.

[33]

CHAPTER 2.

Book Buying.

The buying of books is to some men a pastime; to
others it is a passion; but to the librarian and the intelligent
book collector it is both a business and a pleasure.
The man who is endowed with a zeal for knowledge is eager
to be continually adding to the stores which will enable
him to acquire and to dispense that knowledge. Hence
the perusal of catalogues is to him an ever fresh and fascinating
pursuit. However hampered he may be by the lack
of funds, the zest of being continually in quest of some
coveted volumes gives him an interest in every sale catalogue,
whether of bookseller or of auctioneer. He is led
on by the perennial hope that he may find one or more of
the long-wished for and waited-for desiderata in the thin
pamphlet whose solid columns bristle with book-titles in
every variety of abbreviation and arrangement. It is a
good plan, if one can possibly command the time, to read
every catalogue of the book auctions, and of the second-hand
book dealers, which comes to hand. You will thus
find a world of books chronicled and offered which you do
not want, because you have got them already: you will
find many, also, which you want, but which you know you
cannot have; and you may find some of the very volumes
which you have sought through many years in vain. In
any case, you will have acquired valuable information—whether
you acquire any books or not; since there is hardly
a priced catalogue, of any considerable extent, from which
you cannot reap knowledge of some kind—knowledge of
editions, knowledge of prices, and knowledge of the com[34]parative
scarcity or full supply of many books, with a
glimpse of titles which you may never have met before.
The value of the study of catalogues as an education in
bibliography can never be over-estimated.

The large number of active and discriminating book-buyers
from America has for years past awakened the interest
and jealousy of collectors abroad, where it has very
largely enhanced the price of all first-class editions, and
rare works.

No longer, as in the early days of Dibdin and Heber, is
the competition for the curiosities of old English literature
confined to a half-score of native amateurs. True, we have
no such omnivorous gatherers of literary rubbish as that
magnificent helluo librorum, Richard Heber, who amassed
what was claimed to be the largest collection of books ever
formed by a single individual. Endowed with a princely
fortune, and an undying passion for the possession of
books, he spent nearly a million dollars in their acquisition.
His library, variously stated at from 105,000 volumes
(by Dr. Dibdin) to 146,000 volumes (by Dr. Allibone)
was brought to the hammer in 1834. The catalogue filled
13 octavo volumes, and the sale occupied 216 days. The
insatiable owner (who was a brother of Reginald Heber,
Bishop of Calcutta) died while still collecting, at the age
of sixty, leaving his enormous library, which no single
house of ordinary size could hold, scattered in half a dozen
mansions in London, Oxford, Paris, Antwerp, Brussels and
Ghent.

Yet the owner of this vast mass of mingled nonsense and
erudition, this library of the curiosities of literature, was
as generous in imparting as in acquiring his literary treasures.
No English scholar but was freely welcome to the
loan of his volumes; and his own taste and critical knowledge
are said to have been of the first order.

[35]From this, probably the most extensive private library
ever gathered, let us turn to the largest single purchase, in
number of volumes, made at one time for a public library.
When Dr. J. G. Cogswell went abroad in 1848, to lay the
foundations of the Astor Library, he took with him credentials
for the expenditure of $100,000; and, what was of
even greater importance, a thoroughly digested catalogue
of desiderata, embracing the most important books in every
department of literature and science. No such opportunity
of buying the finest books at the lowest prices is
likely ever to occur again, as the fortuitous concourse of
events brought to Dr. Cogswell. It was the year of revolutions—the
year when the thrones were tottering or falling
all over Europe, when the wealthy and privileged classes
were trembling for their possessions, and anxious to turn
them into ready money. In every time of panic, political
or financial, the prices of books, as well as of all articles of
luxury, are the first to fall. Many of the choicest collections
came to the hammer; multitudes were eager to sell—but
there were few buyers except the book merchants, who
were all ready to sell again. The result was that some 80,000
volumes were gathered for the Astor Library, embracing
a very large share of the best editions and the most expensive
works, with many books strictly denominated rare,
and nearly all bound in superior style, at an average cost
of about $1.40 per volume. This extraordinary good fortune
enabled the Astor Library to be opened on a very
small endowment, more splendidly equipped for a library
of reference than any new institution could be today with
four or five times the money.

Compared with such opportunities as these, you may
consider the experiences of the little libraries, and the narrow
means of recruitment generally found, as very literally
the day of small things. But a wise apportionment of[36]
small funds, combined with a good knowledge of the commercial
value of books, and perpetual vigilance in using opportunities,
will go very far toward enlarging any collection
in the most desirable directions.

Compare for a moment with the results stated of the Astor
Library’s early purchases, the average prices paid by
British Libraries for books purchased from 1826 to 1854,
as published in a parliamentary return. The average cost
per volume varied from 16s or about $4 a volume, for the
University Library of Edinburgh, to 4s 6d, or $1.10 a volume
for the Manchester Free Library. The latter, however,
were chiefly popular new books, published at low
prices, while the former included many costly old works,
law books, etc. The British Museum Library’s average
was 8s 5d or about $2.00 per volume. Those figures represent
cloth binding, while the Astor’s purchases were
mostly in permanent leather bindings.

Averages are very uncertain standards of comparison, as
a single book rarity often costs more than a hundred volumes
of the new books of the day; but in a library filled
with the best editions of classical and scientific works, and
reference books, I presume that two dollars a volume is not
too high an estimate of average cost, in these days represented
by the last twenty years. For a circulating library,
on the other hand, composed chiefly of what the public
most seek to read, half that average would perhaps express
the full commercial value of the collection. Of its intrinsic
value I will not here pause to speak.

There are many methods of book buying, of which we
may indicate the principal as follows:

• 1. By direct orders from book dealers.
• 2. By competition on select lists of wants.
• 3. By order from priced catalogues.
• [37]4. By purchase at auction sales.
• 5. By personal research among book stocks.
• 6. By lists and samples of books sent on approval.

Each of these methods has its advantages—and, I may
add, its disadvantages likewise. The collector who combines
them, as opportunity presents, is most likely to make
his funds go the farthest, and to enrich his collection the
most. Direct orders for purchase are necessary for most
new books wanted, except in the case of the one government
library, which in most countries, receives them
under copyright provision. An advantageous arrangement
can usually be made with one or more book-dealers,
to supply all new books at a fairly liberal discount from retail
prices. And it is wise management to distribute purchases
where good terms are made, as thereby the trade
will feel an interest in the library, and a mutuality of interest
will secure more opportunities and better bargains.

The submission of lists of books wanted, to houses having
large stocks or good facilities, helps to make funds go
as far as possible through competition. By the typewriter
such lists can now be manifolded much more cheaply than
they can be written or printed.

Selection from priced catalogues presents a constantly
recurring opportunity of buying volumes of the greatest
consequence, to fill gaps in any collection, and often at surprisingly
low prices. Much as book values have been enhanced
of late years, there are yet catalogues issued by
American, English and continental dealers which quote
books both of the standard and secondary class at very
cheap rates. Even now English books are sold by the
Mudie and the W. H. Smith lending libraries in London,
after a very few months, at one-half to one-fourth their
original publishing price. These must usually be rebound,
but by instructing your agent to select copies which[38]
are clean within, all the soil of the edges will disappear
with the light trimming of the binder.

Purchase at auction supplies a means of recruiting libraries
both public and private with many rare works, and
with the best editions of the standard authors, often finely
bound. The choice private libraries of the country, as well
as the poor ones, tend to pour themselves sooner or later
into public auctions. The collectors of books, whose early
avidity to amass libraries of fine editions was phenomenal,
rarely persist in cultivating the passion through life.
Sometimes they are overtaken by misfortune—sometimes
by indifference—the bibliomania not being a perennial inspiration,
but often an acute and fiery attack, which in a
few years burns out. Even if the library gathered with so
much money and pains descends to the heirs of the collector,
the passion for books is very seldom an inherited
one. Thus the public libraries are constantly recruited by
the opportunities of selection furnished by the forced sale
of the private ones. Here, public competition frequently
runs up the price of certain books to an exorbitant degree,
while those not wanted often sell for the merest trifle.
One should have a pretty clear idea of the approximate
commercial value of books, before competing for them at
public sale. He may, however, if well persuaded in his
own mind as to the importance or the relative unimportance
to his own collection of any work, regulate his bids by
that standard, regardless of commercial value, except as a
limit beyond which he will not go. Few librarians can
personally attend auction sales—nor is it needful, when
limits can so easily be set to orders. It is never safe to
send an unlimited bid, as there may be others without
limit, in which case the book is commonly awarded to the
most remote bidder.

There are many curiosities of the auction room, one of[39]
them being the frequent re-appearance of book rarities
which have been through several auctions, sometimes at
intervals of years, keenly competed for by rival bibliophiles,
and carried off in triumph by some ardent collector,
who little thought at the time how soon his own collection
would come to the hammer.

There are also many curiosities of compilation in auction
catalogues. Not to name errors of commission, like giving
the authorship of books to the wrong name, and errors
of omission, like giving no author’s name at all, some
catalogues are thickly strewn with the epithets rare—and
very rare, when the books are sufficiently common in one
or the other market. Do not be misled by these surface
indications. Books are often attributed in catalogues to
their editor or translator, and the unwary buyer may thus
find himself saddled with a duplicate already in his own
collection. There has been much improvement in late
years in the care with which auction catalogues are edited,
and no important collection at least is offered, without
having first passed through the hands of an expert, familiar
with bibliography. It is the minor book sales where
the catalogues receive no careful editing, and where the
dates and editions are frequently omitted, that it is necessary
to guard against. It is well to refrain from sending
any bids out of such lists, because they furnish no certain
identification of the books, and if all would do the same,
thus diminishing the competition and the profit of the
auctioneer, he might learn never to print a catalogue without
date, place of publication, and full name of author of
every book offered.

Never be too eager to acquire an auction book, unless
you are very thoroughly assured that it is one of the kind
truly designated rarissimus. An eminent and thoroughly
informed book collector, with an experience of forty years[40]
devoted to book auctions and book catalogues, assured me
that it was his experience that almost every book would
turn up on the average about every seven years. Of course
there are notable exceptions—and especially among the
class of books known as incunabula, (or cradle-books
printed in the infancy of printing) and of early Americana:
but it is not these which the majority of libraries are
most in search of. Remember always, if you lose a coveted
volume, that there will be another chance—perhaps many
of them. The private collector, who carries it off against
you, has had no former opportunity to get the rare volume,
and may never have another. He is therefore justified in
paying what is to ordinary judgment an extraordinary
price. Individual collectors die, but public libraries are
immortal.

If you become thoroughly conversant with priced catalogues,
you will make fewer mistakes than most private
buyers. Not only catalogues of notable collections, with
the prices obtained at auction, but the large and very
copious catalogues of such London book-dealers as Quaritch
and Sotheran, are accessible in the great city libraries.
These are of the highest use in suggesting the proximate
prices at which important books have been or may
be acquired. Since 1895, annual volumes entitled “American
Book Prices Current” have been issued, giving the
figures at which books have been sold at all the principal
auction sales of the year.

There is no word so much abused as the term rare, when
applied to books. Librarians know well the unsophisticated
citizen who wants to sell at a high price a “rare”
volume of divinity “a hundred and fifty years old” (worth
possibly twenty-five cents to half a dollar,) and the persistent
woman who has the rarest old bible in the country,
which she values anywhere from fifty to five hundred dol[41]lars,
and which turns out on inspection to be an imperfect
copy of one of Barker’s multitudinous editions of 1612 to
’18, which may be picked up at five to eight shillings in any
old London book-shop. The confident assertions so often
paraded, even in catalogues, “only three copies known,”
and the like, are to be received with absolute incredulity,
and the claims of ignorant owners of books who
fancy that their little pet goose is a fine swan, because they
never saw another, are as ridiculous as the laudation bestowed
by a sapient collector upon two of his most valued
nuggets. “This, sir, is unique, but not so unique as the
other.”

Buying books by actual inspection at the book-shops is
even more fascinating employment than buying them
through catalogues. You thus come upon the most unexpected
volumes unawares. You open the covers, scan the
title-pages, get a glimpse of the plates, and flit from book
to book, like a bee gathering honey for its hive. It is a
good way to recruit your library economically, to run
through the stock of a book-dealer systematically—neglecting
no shelf, but selecting throughout the whole
stock, and laying aside what you think you may want.
When this is done, you will have quite a pile of literature
upon which to negotiate with the proprietor. It is cheaper
to buy thus at wholesale than by piecemeal, because the
bookseller will make you a larger discount on a round lot
of which you relieve his shelves.

Another method of recruiting your library is the examination
of books “on approval.” Most book-dealers will be
so obliging as to send in parcels of books for the inspection
of a librarian or collector, who can thus examine them
leisurely and with more thoroughness than in a book store,
without leaving his business.

All books, by whatever course they may be purchased,[42]
are indispensably to be collated before they are accepted
and paid for. Neglect of this will fill any library with imperfections,
since second-hand books are liable to have
missing leaves, or plates, or maps, while new books may
lack signatures or plates, or be wrongly bound together.
In the case of new books, or books still in print, the publisher
is bound to make good an imperfection.

In old books, this is usually impossible, and the only
remedy is to return the imperfect books upon the seller’s
hands, unless there may be a reason, such as the rarity of
the volume, or its comparative little cost, or the trifling
nature of the imperfection, for retaining it. The equities
in these cases are in favor of the buyer, who is presumed
to have purchased a perfect copy. But the right of
reclamation must be exercised promptly, or it may be forfeited
by lapse of time. If an imperfection in any book
you order is noted in the catalogue, it is not subject to return.
I have ever found the book auctioneers most courteous
and considerate in their dealings—and the same can
be said of the book trade generally, among whom instances
of liberality to libraries are by no means rare.

One of the choicest pleasures of the book collector,
whether private student or librarian, is to visit the second-hand
book-shops of any city, and examine the stock with
care. While he may find but few notable treasures in one
collection, a search through several shops will be almost
sure to reward him. Here are found many of the outpourings
of the private libraries, formed by specialists or
amateurs, and either purchased by the second-hand dealer
en bloc, or bid off by him at some auction sale. Even rare
books are picked up in this way, no copies of which can be
had by order, because long since “out of print.” The
stock in these shops is constantly changing, thus adding a
piquant and sometimes exciting element to the book[43]-hunter,
who is wise in proportion as he seizes quickly upon
all opportunities of new “finds” by frequent visits. To
mourn over a lost chance in rare books is often more grievous
to the zealous collector, than to lose a large share out
of his fortune; while to exult over a literary nugget long
sought and at length found is a pleasure to which few
others can be compared.

Of the many bouquinistes whose open-air shops line the
quays of Paris along the Seine, numbering once as many
as a hundred and fifty dealers in second-hand books, I have
no room to treat; books have been written about them,
and the littérateurs of France, of Europe, and of America
have profited by countless bargains in their learned wares.
Nor can I dwell upon the literary wealth of London book-shops,
dark and dingy, but ever attractive to the hungry
scholar, or the devotee of bibliomania.

Of the many second-hand booksellers (or rather sellers
of second-hand books) in American cities, the more notable
have passed from the stage of action in the last quarter of
a century. Old William Gowans, a quaint, intelligent
Scotchman, in shabby clothes and a strong face deeply
marked with small pox, was for many years the dean of this
fraternity in New York. His extensive book-shop in Nassau
street, with its dark cellar, was crowded and packed
with books on shelves, on stairways and on the floors,
heaped and piled in enormous masses, amid which the
visitor could hardly find room to move. On one of the
piles you might find the proprietor seated—

while he answered inquiries for books from clergymen and
students, or gruffly bargained with a boy or an old woman[44]
for a dilapidated lot of old books. He had a curious quizzical
way with strangers, who at once set him down as an
oddity, and his impatience with ignoramuses and bores
gave him the repute of crustiness, which was redeemed by
suavity enough whenever he met with people of intelligence.

Gowans issued scores of catalogues of his stock, in which
titles were often illustrated by notes, always curious and
often amusing, credited to “Western Memorabilia,” a work
which no bookseller or man of letters had ever heard of,
but which was shrewdly suspected to have been a projected
scrap-book of the observations and opinions of William
Gowans.

There was another eccentric book-dealer’s shop in Nassau
street kept by one John Doyle, who aimed so high in
his profession as to post over his door a sign reading “The
Moral Centre of the Intellectual Universe.” This establishment
was notably full of old editions of books of English
history and controversial theology.

The most famous second-hand book-shop in Boston was
Burnham’s, whose fore-name was Thomas Oliver Hazard
Perry, shortened into “Perry Burnham” by his familiars.
He was a little, pale-faced, wiry, nervous man, with piercing
black eyes and very brusque manners. In old and
musty books he lived and moved and had his being, for
more than a generation. He exchanged a stuffy, narrow
shop in Cornhill for more spacious quarters in Washington
street, near School street, where he bought and sold books
with an assiduous devotion to business, never trusting to
others what he could do himself. He was proud of his
collection and its extent. He bought books and pamphlets
at auction literally by the cart-load, every thing that
nobody else wanted being bid off to Burnham at an insignificant
price, almost nominal. He got a wide reputation[45]
for selling cheaply, but he always knew when to charge a
stiff price for a book, and to stick to it. Once when I was
pricing a lot of miscellaneous books picked out for purchase,
mostly under a dollar a volume, we came to a copy
of “The Constitutions of the Several Independent States
of America,” 1st edition, Philadelphia, 1781, of which two
hundred copies only were printed, by order of Congress.
This copy was in the original boards, uncut, and with the
autograph of Timothy Pickering on the title page. “If
the Congress Library wants that book,” said Mr. Burnham,
“it will have to pay eight dollars for it.” I took it, well
pleased to secure what years of search had failed to bring.
The next year my satisfaction was enhanced when an inferior
copy of the same book was offered at twenty dollars.

Burnham died a wealthy man, having amassed a million
dollars in trade and by rise in real estate, as he owned the
land on which the Parker House stands in Boston.

Among Philadelphia dealers in second-hand books, one
John Penington was recognized as most intelligent and
honorable. He was a book-lover and a scholar, and one
instinctively ranked him not as a bookseller, but as a gentleman
who dealt in books. On his shelves one always
found books of science and volumes in foreign languages.

Another notable dealer was John Campbell, a jolly,
hearty Irish-American, with a taste for good books, and an
antipathy to negroes, as keen as the proverbial hatred of
the devil for holy water. Campbell wrote a book entitled
“Negromania,” published in 1851, in which his creed was
set forth in strong language. He was a regular bidder at
book auctions, where his burly form and loud voice made
him a prominent figure.

Of notable auction sales of books, and of the extravagant
prices obtained for certain editions by ambitious and eager
competition, there is little room to treat. The oft-told[46]
story of the Valdarfer Boccaccio of 1471, carried off at the
Roxburghe sale in 1812, at £2,260 from Earl Spencer by
the Marquis of Blandford, and re-purchased seven years
after at another auction for £918, has been far surpassed in
modern bibliomania. “The sound of that hammer,” wrote
the melodramatic Dibdin, “echoed through Europe:” but
what would he have said of the Mazarin Bible of Gutenberg
and Fust (1450-55) sold in 1897, at the Ashburnham
sale, for four thousand pounds, or of the Latin Psalter of
Fust and Schoeffer, 2d ed. 1459, which brought £4,950 at
the Syston Park sale in 1884? This last sum (about twenty-four
thousand dollars) is the largest price ever yet recorded
as received for a single volume. Among books of
less rarity, though always eagerly sought, is the first folio
Shakespeare of 1623, a very fine and perfect copy of which
brought £716.2 at Daniel’s sale in 1864. Copies warranted
perfect have since been sold in London for £415 to £470.
In New York, a perfect but not “tall” copy brought $4,200
in 1891 at auction. Walton’s “Compleat Angler,”
London, 1st ed. 1653, a little book of only 250 pages, sold
for £310 in 1891. It was published for one shilling and
sixpence. The first edition of Robinson Crusoe brought
£75 at the Crampton sale in 1896.

The rage for first editions of very modern books reached
what might be called high-water mark some time since,
and has been on the decline. Shelley’s “Queen Mab,” 1st
ed. 1813, was sold at London for £22.10, and his “Refutation
of Deism,” 1814, was sold at £33, at a London sale in
1887. In New York, many first editions of Shelley’s
poems brought the following enormous prices in 1897.

• Shelley’s Adonais, 1st ed. Pisa, Italy, 1821, $335.
• Alastor, London, 1816, $130.
• The Cenci, Italy, 1819, $65.
• Hellas, London, 1822, $13.

[47]

But these were purely adventitious prices, as was clearly
shown in the sale at the same auction rooms, a year or two
earlier, of the following:

• Shelley’s Adonais, 1st ed. Pisa, 1821, $19.
• Alastor, London, 1816, $32.
• The Cenci, Italy, 1819, $21.
• Hellas, London, 1822, $2.

The sales occasionally made at auction of certain books
at extraordinary prices, prove nothing whatever as to the
real market value, for these reasons: (1) The auctioneer
often has an unlimited bid, and the price is carried up to
an inordinate height. (2) Two or more bidders present,
infatuated by the idea of extreme rarity, bid against one
another until all but one succumb, when the price has
reached a figure which it is a mild use of terms to call absurd.
(3) Descriptions in sale catalogues, though often
entirely unfounded, characterising a book as “excessively
rare;” “only — copies known,” “very scarce,” “never before
offered at our sales,” etc., may carry the bidding on a
book up to an unheard-of price.

The appeal always lies to the years against the hours;
and many a poor book-mad enthusiast has had to rue his
too easy credulity in giving an extravagant sum for books
which he discovers later that he could have bought for as
many shillings as he has paid dollars. Not that the rarissimi
of early printed books can ever be purchased for
a trifle; but it should ever be remembered that even at the
sales where a few—a very few—bring the enormous prices
that are bruited abroad, the mass of the books offered are
knocked down at very moderate figures, or are even sacrificed
at rates very far below their cost. The possessor of
one of the books so advertised as sold at some auction for a
hundred dollars or upwards, if he expects to realise a tithe[48]
of the figure quoted, will speedily find himself in the vocative.

While there are almost priceless rarities not to be found
in the market by any buyer, let the book collector be consoled
by the knowledge that good books, in good editions,
were never so easy to come by as now. A fine library can
be gathered by any one with very moderate means, supplemented
by a fair amount of sagacity and common sense.
The buyer with a carefully digested list of books wanted
will find that to buy them wisely takes more time and less
money than he had anticipated. The time is required to
acquaint himself with the many competing editions, with
their respective merits and demerits. This involves a comparison
of type, paper, and binding, as well as the comparative
prices of various dealers for the same books. No one
who is himself gifted with good perceptions and good taste,
should trust to other hands the selection of his library.
His enjoyment of it will be proportioned to the extent to
which it is his own creation. The passion for nobly written
books, handsomely printed, and clothed in a fitting
garb, when it has once dawned, is not to be defrauded of its
satisfaction by hiring a commission merchant to appease
it. What we do for ourselves, in the acquirement of any
knowledge, is apt to be well done: what is done for us by
others is of little value.

We have heard of some uninformed parvenus, grown
suddenly rich, who have first ordered a magnificent library
room fitted with rose-wood, marble and gilded trappings,
and then ordered it to be filled with splendidly bound volumes
at so much per volume. And it is an authentic fact,
that a bookseller to the Czar of Russia one Klostermann,
actually sold books at fifty to one hundred roubles by the
yard, according to the binding. The force of folly could[49]
no farther go, to debase the aims and degrade the intellect
of man.

In the chapter upon rare books, the reader will find instances
in great variety of the causes that contribute to the
scarcity and enhancement of prices of certain books, without
at all affecting their intrinsic value, which may be of
the smallest.

[50]

CHAPTER 3.

The Art of Book Binding.

In these suggestions upon the important question of the
binding of books, I shall have nothing to say of the history
of the art, and very little of its aesthetics. The plainest
and most practical hints will be aimed at, and if my experience
shall prove of value to any, I shall be well rewarded
for giving it here. For other matters readers will naturally
consult some of the numerous manuals of book-binding
in English, French and German. The sumptuous
bindings executed in the sixteenth century, under the patronage
and the eyes of Grolier, the famous tooled masterpieces
of Derome, Le Gascon, Padeloup, Trautz and other
French artists, and the beautiful gems of the binder’s art
from the hands of Roger Payne, Lewis, Mackenzie, Hayday
and Bedford, are they not celebrated in the pages of
Dibdin, Lacroix, Fournier, Wheatley, and Robert Hoe?

There are some professed lovers of books who affect
either indifference or contempt for the style in which their
favorites are dressed. A well known epigram of Burns is
sometimes quoted against the fondness for fine bindings
which widely prevails in the present day, as it did in that
of the Scottish Poet. A certain Scottish nobleman, endowed
with more wealth than brains, was vain of his
splendidly bound Shakespeare, which, however, he never
read. Burns, on opening the folio, found the leaves sadly
worm-eaten, and wrote these lines on the fly-leaf:

[51]Yet no real book-lover fails to appreciate the neatness
and beauty of a tasteful binding, any more than he is indifferent
to the same qualities in literary style. Slovenly
binding is almost as offensive to a cultivated eye as slovenly
composition. No doubt both are “mere externals,” as we
are told, and so are the splendors of scenery, the beauty of
flowers, and the comeliness of the human form, or features,
or costume. Talk as men will of the insignificance of
dress, it constitutes a large share of the attractiveness of
the world in which we live.

The two prime requisites of good binding for libraries
are neatness and solidity. It is pleasant to note the steady
improvement in American bindings of late years. As the
old style of “Half cloth boards,” of half a century ago, with
paper titles pasted on the backs, has given way to the neat,
embossed, full muslin gilt, so the clumsy and homely sheep-skin
binding has been supplanted by the half-roan or morocco,
with marble or muslin sides. Few books are issued,
however, either here or abroad, in what may be
called permanent bindings. The cheapness demanded by
buyers of popular books forbids this, while it leaves to the
taste and fancy of every one the selection of the “library
style” in which he will have his collection permanently
dressed.

What is the best style of binding for a select or a public
library? is a question often discussed, with wide discrepancies
of opinion. The so universally prevalent cloth
binding is too flimsy for books subjected to much use—as
most volumes in public collections and many in private libraries
are likely to be. The choice of the more substantial
bindings lies between calf and morocco, and between
half or full bindings of either. For nearly all books, half
binding, if well executed, and with cloth sides, is quite as
elegant, and very nearly as solid and lasting as full leather;[52]
for if a book is so worn as to need rebinding, it is generally
in a part where the full binding wears out quite as fast as
the other. That is, it gets worn at the hinges and on the
back, whether full or half-bound. The exceptions are the
heavy dictionaries, encyclopaedias, and other works of reference,
which are subjected to much wear and tear at the
sides, as well as at the back and corners. Full leather is
much more expensive than half binding, though not
doubly so.

Every librarian or book collector should understand
something of book-binding and its terms, so that he may
be able to give clear directions as to every item involved in
binding, repairing, or re-lettering, and to detect imperfect
or slighted work.

The qualities that we always expect to find in a well-bound
book are solidity, flexibility, and elegance. Special
examination should be directed toward each of these points
in revising any lot of books returned from a binder. Look
at each book with regard to:—

• 1. Flexibility in opening.
• 2. Evenness of the cover, which should lie flat and
  smooth—each edge being just parallel with the others
  throughout.
• 3. Compactness—see that the volumes are thoroughly
  pressed—solid, and not loose or spongy.
• 4. Correct and even lettering of titles, and other tooling.
• 5. Good wide margins.

A well-bound book always opens out flat, and stays open.
It also shuts up completely, and when closed stays shut.
But how many books do we see always bulging open at the
sides, or stiffly resisting being opened by too great tightness
in the back? If the books you have had bound do not
meet all these requirements, it is time to look for another
binder.

[53]The different styles of dressing books may all be summed
up in the following materials: Boards, cloth, vellum, sheep,
bock, pig-skin, calf, Russia, and morocco—to which may be
added of recent years, buckram, duck, linoleum, and the
imitations of leather, such as leatherette and morocco
paper, and of parchment. I take no account here of obsolete
styles—as ivory, wood, brass, silver and other metals,
nor of velvet, satin, and other occasional luxuries of the
binder’s art. These belong to the domain of the amateur,
the antiquary, or the book-fancier—not to that of the librarian
or the ordinary book-collector.

Roan leather is nothing but sheep-skin, stained or colored;
basil or basan is sheepskin tanned in bark, while roan
is tanned in sumac, and most of the so called moroccos are
also sheep, ingeniously grained by a mechanical process.
As all the manufactures in the world are full of “shoddy,”
or sham materials, the bookbinder’s art affords no exception.
But if the librarian or collector patronises shams,
he should at least do it with his eyes open, and with due
counting of the cost.

Now as to the relative merits and demerits of materials
for binding. No one will choose boards covered with
paper for any book which is to be subjected to perusal, and
cloth is too flimsy and shaky in its attachment to the book,
however cheap, for any library volumes which are to be
constantly in use. It is true that since the bulk of the
new books coming into any library are bound in cloth, they
may be safely left in it until well worn; and by this rule,
all the books which nobody ever reads may be expected to
last many years, if not for generations. Cloth is a very
durable material, and will outlast some of the leathers, but
any wetting destroys its beauty, and all colors but the darkest
soon become soiled and repulsive, if in constant use.
In most libraries, I hold that every cloth-bound book[54]
which is read, must sooner or later come to have a stout
leather jacket. It may go for years, especially if the book
is well sewed, but to rebinding it must come at last; and
the larger the volume, the sooner it becomes shaky, or
broken at some weak spot.

The many beautiful new forms of cloth binding should
have a word of praise, but the many more which we see of
gaudy, fantastic, and meretricious bindings, and frightful
combinations of colors must be viewed with a shudder.

Vellum, formerly much used for book-bindings, is the
modern name for parchment. Parchment was the only
known writing material up to the 12th century, when paper
was first invented. There are two kinds—animal and vegetable.
The vegetable is made from cotton fibre or paper,
by dipping it in a solution of sulphuric acid and [sometimes]
gelatine, then removing the acid by a weak solution
of ammonia, and smooth finishing by rolling the sheets
over a heated cylinder. Vegetable parchment is used to
bind many booklets which it is desired to dress in an elegant
or dainty style, but is highly unsuitable for library
books. Vellum proper is a much thicker material, made
from the skins of calves, sheep, or lambs, soaked in lime-water,
and smoothed and hardened by burnishing with a
hard instrument, or pumice-stone. The common vellum
is made from sheep-skin splits, or skivers, but the best
from whole calf-skins. The hard, strong texture of vellum
is in its favor, but its white color and tendency to
warp are fatal objections to it as a binding material.

Vellum is wholly unfit for the shelves of a library; the
elegant white binding soils with dust, or the use of the
hands, more quickly than any other; and the vellum warps
in a dry climate, or curls up in a heated room, so as to be
unmanageable upon the shelves, and a nuisance in the eyes
of librarian and reader alike. The thin vegetable parch[55]ment
lately in vogue for some books and booklets is too unsubstantial
for anything but a lady’s boudoir, where it may
have its little day—”a thing of beauty,” but by no means
“a joy forever.”

Sheepskin—once the full binding for most school-books,
and for a large share of law and miscellaneous works for
libraries, is now but little used, except in its disguised
forms. It is too soft a leather for hard wear and tear, and
what with abrasion and breaking at the hinges (termed by
binders the joints), it will give little satisfaction in the
long run. Under the effect of gas and heated atmospheres
sheep crumbles and turns to powder. Its cheapness is
about its only merit, and even this is doubtful economy,
since no binding can be called cheap that has to be rebound
or repaired every few years. In the form of half-roan or
bock, colored sheep presents a handsome appearance on the
shelf, and in volumes or sets which are reasonably secure
from frequent handling, one is sometimes justified in
adopting it, as it is far less expensive than morocco. Pig-skin
has been recently revived as a binding material, but
though extremely hard and durable, it is found to warp
badly on the shelves.

Calf bindings have always been great favorites with
book-lovers, and there are few things more beautiful—prima
facie, than a volume daintily bound in light French
calf, as smooth as glass, as fine as silk, with elegant gold
tooling without and within, gilt edges, and fly-leaves of
finest satin. I said beautiful, prima facie—and this calls
to mind the definition of that law term by a learned Vermont
jurist, who said: “Gentlemen of the jury, I must explain
to you that a prima facie case is a case that is very
good in front, but may be very bad in the rear.” So of our
so much lauded and really lovely calf bindings: they develop
qualities in use which give us pause. Calf is the[56]
most brittle of the leathers—hence it is always breaking
at the hinges; it is a very smooth leather—hence it shows
every scratch instantly; it is a light and delicate leather—hence
it shows soils and stains more quickly than any other.
Out of every hundred calf-bound volumes in any well-used
library, there will not remain ten which have not had to
be re-bound or repaired at the end of twenty or thirty
years. Heavy volumes bound in calf or half-calf leather
will break by their own weight on the shelves, without any
use at all; and smaller volumes are sure to have their brittle
joints snapped asunder by handling sooner or later—it
is only a question of time.

Next comes Russia leather, which is very thick and
strong, being made of the hides of cattle, colored, and perfumed
by the oil of birch, and made chiefly in Russia. The
objections to this leather are its great cost, its stiffness and
want of elasticity, and its tendency to desiccate and lose all
its tenacity in the dry or heated atmosphere of our libraries.
It will break at the hinges—though not so readily as
calf.

Lastly, we have the morocco leather, so called because it
was brought from Morocco, in Africa, and still we get the
best from thence, and from the Mediterranean ports of the
Levant—whence comes another name for the best of this
favorite leather, “Levant morocco,” which is the skin of
the mountain goat, and reckoned superior to all other
leathers. The characteristics of the genuine morocco,
sometimes called Turkey morocco, having a pebbled grain,
distinguishing it from the smooth morocco, are its toughness
and durability, combined with softness and flexibility.
It has a very tenacious fibre, and I have never found a real
morocco binding broken at the hinges. The old proverb—”there
is nothing like leather”—is pregnant with meaning,
and especially applies to the best morocco. As no ma[57]terial
yet discovered in so many ages can take the place of
leather for foot-wear and for harness, such is its tenacity
and elasticity—so for book coverings, to withstand wear
and tear, good leather is indispensable. There are thoroughly-bound
books existing which are five centuries old—representing
about the time when leather began to replace
wood and metals for binding. The three great enemies
of books are too great heat, too much moisture, and
coal gas, which produces a sulphurous acid very destructive
to bindings, and should never be used in libraries.
From the dangers which destroy calf and Russia leather,
morocco is measurably free.

As to color, I usually choose red for books which come
to binding or rebinding, for these reasons. The bulk of
every library is of dark and sombre color, being composed
of the old-fashioned calf bindings, which grow darker with
age, mingled with the cloth bindings of our own day, in
which dark colors predominate. Now the intermixture
of red morocco, in all or most of the newly bound books,
relieves the monotony of so much blackness, lights up the
shelves, and gives a more cheerful aspect to the whole library.
Some there are who insist upon varying the colors
of bindings with the subjects of the books—and the British
Museum Library actually once bound all works on botany
in green, poetry in yellow, history in red, and theology
in blue; but this is more fanciful than important. A second
reason for preferring red in moroccos is that, being
dyed with cochineal, it holds its color more permanently
than any other—the moroccos not colored red turning to
a dingy, disagreeable brown after forty or fifty years, while
the red are found to be fast colors. This was first discovered
in the National Library of France, and ever since
most books in that great collection have been bound in red.
A celebrated binder having recommended this color to a[58]
connoisseur who was having fine morocco binding done,
instanced the example of the Paris Library, whose books,
said he, are “mostly red,” to which the amateur replied
that he hoped they were.

Add to the merits of morocco leather the fact that it is
not easily scratched nor stained, that it is very tough in
wear, and resists better than any other the moisture and
soiling of the hands—and we have a material worthy of all
acceptance.

In half-binding chosen for the great majority of books
because it is much cheaper than full leather, the sides are
covered with muslin or with some kind of colored paper—usually
marble. The four corners of every book, however,
should always be protected by leather or, better still,
by vellum, which is a firmer material—otherwise they will
rapidly wear off, and the boards will break easily at their
corners. As to the relative merits of cloth and paper for
the sides of books, cloth is far more durable, though it
costs more. Paper becomes quickly frayed at the edges,
or is liable to peel where pasted on, though it may be renewed
at small expense, and may properly be used except
upon the much-read portion of the library. The cloth or
paper should always harmonize in color with the leather to
which it is attached. They need not be the same, but they
should be of similar shade.

One more reason for preferring morocco to other
leathers is that you can always dispense with lettering-pieces
or patches in gilding the titles on the back. All
light-colored bindings (including law calf) are open to the
objection that gold lettering is hardly legible upon them.
Hence the necessity of stamping the titles upon darker
pieces of leather, which are fastened to the backs. These
lettering-pieces become loose in over-heated libraries, and
tend continually to peel off, entailing the expense of re[59]pairing
or re-lettering. Every morocco bound book can
be lettered directly upon the leather. Bock is made of the
skin of the Persian sheep, and is called Persian in London.
It is a partially unsuccessful imitation of morocco, becoming
easily abraded, like all the sheep-skin leathers, and although
it is to be had in all colors, and looks fairly handsome
for a time, and is tougher than skiver (or split sheep-skin),
the books that are bound in it will sooner or later
become an eyesore upon the shelves. A skin of Persian
leather costs about one-third the price of genuine morocco,
or goat. But the actual saving in binding is in a far less
ratio—the difference being only six to eight cents per volume.
It is really much cheaper to use morocco in the first
place, than to undergo all the risks of deterioration and
re-binding.

Of the various imitations of leather, or substitutes for it,
we have leatherette, leather-cloth, duck, fibrette, feltine,
and buckram. Buckram and duck are strong cotton or
linen fabricks, made of different colors, and sometimes figured
or embossed to give them somewhat the look of
leather. Hitherto, they are made mostly in England, and
I have learned of no American experience in their favor
except the use of stout duck for covering blank books and
binding newspapers. The use of buckram has been mostly
abandoned by the libraries. Morocco cloth is American,
but has no advantage over plain muslin or book cloth, that
I am aware of. Leatherette, made principally of paper,
colored and embossed to simulate morocco leather, appears
to have dropped out of use almost as fast as it came in, having
no quality of permanence, elegance, or even of great
cheapness to commend it. Leatherette tears easily, and
lacks both tenacity and smoothness.

Both feltine and fibrette are made of paper—tear quickly,
and are unfit for use on any book that is ever likely to[60]
be read. All these imitations of leather are made of paper
as their basis, and hence can never be proper substitutes
for leather.

All torn leaves or plates in books should be at once
mended by pasting a very thin onion-skin paper on both
sides of the torn leaf, and pressing gently between leaves
of sized paper until dry.

Corners made of vellum or parchment are more durable
than any leather. When dry, the parchment becomes as
hard almost as iron and resists falls or abrasion. To use
it on books where the backs are of leather is a departure
from the uniformity or harmony of style insisted upon by
many, but in binding books that are to be greatly worn, use
should come before beauty.

In rebinding, all maps or folded plates should be mounted
on thin canvas, linen, or muslin, strong and fine, to protect
them from inevitable tearing by long use. If a coarse
or thick cloth is used, the maps will not fold or open easily
and smoothly.

The cutting or trimming of the edges of books needs to
be watched with jealous care. Few have reflected that the
more margin a binder cuts off, the greater his profit on any
job, white paper shavings having a very appreciable price
by the pound. A strictly uncut book is in many American
libraries a rarity. And of the books which go a second
time to the binder, although at first uncut, how many retain
their fair proportions of margin when they come back?
You have all seen books in which the text has been cut
into by the ruthless knife-machine of the binder. This is
called “bleeding” a book, and there are no words strong
enough to denounce this murderous and cold-blooded atrocity.
The trimming of all books should be held within
the narrowest limits—for the life of a book depends largely
upon its preserving a good margin. Its only chance of be[61]ing
able to stand a second rebinding may depend upon its
being very little trimmed at its first. If it must be cut at
all, charge your binder to take off the merest shaving from
either edge.

Every new book or magazine added to the library, if uncut,
should be carefully cut with a paper-knife before it
goes into the hands of any reader. Spoiled or torn or ragged
edges will be the penalty of neglecting this. You
have seen people tear open the leaves of books and magazines
with their fingers—a barbarism which renders him
who would be guilty of it worthy of banishment from the
resorts of civilization. In cutting books, the leaves should
always be held firmly down—and the knife pressed evenly
through the uncut leaves to the farthest verge of the back.
Books which are cut in the loose fashion which many use
are left with rough or ragged edges always, and often a
slice is gouged out of the margin by the mis-directed knife.
Never trust a book to a novice to be cut, without showing
him how to do it, and how not to do it.

The collation of new books in cloth or broché should be
done before cutting, provided they are issued to readers
untrimmed. In collating books in two or more volumes
double watchfulness is needed to guard against a missing
signature, which may have its place filled by the same
pages belonging to another volume—a mixture sometimes
made in binderies, in “gathering” the sheets, and which
makes it necessary to see that the signatures are right as
well as the pages. The collator should check off all plates
and maps called for by the table of contents to make sure
that the copy is perfect. Books without pagination are of
course to have their leaves counted, which is done first in
detail, one by one, and then verified by a rapid counting in
sections, in the manner used by printers and binders in
counting paper by the quire.

[62]The binding of books may be divided into two styles or
methods, namely, machine-made book-bindings, and hand-made
bindings. Binding by machinery is wholly a modern
art, and is applied to all or nearly all new books coming
from the press. As these are, in more than nine cases out
of ten, bound in cloth covers, and these covers, or cases, are
cut out and stamped by machinery, such books are called
“case-made.” The distinction between this method of
binding and the hand method is that in the former the
case is made separately from the book, which is then put
into it. After the sheets of any book come pressed and
dried from the printing office, the first step is to fold them
from the large flat sheets into book form. This is sometimes
done by hand-folders of bone or some other hard material,
but in large establishments for making books, it is
done by a folding machine. This will fold ten thousand
or more sheets in a day. The folded sheets are next
placed in piles or rows, in their numerical sequence, and
“gathered” by hand, i. e.: a bindery hand picks up the
sheets one by one, with great rapidity, until one whole
book is gathered and collated, and the process is repeated
so long as any sheets remain. Next, the books are thoroughly
pressed or “smashed” as it is called, in a powerful
smashing-machine, giving solidity to the book, which before
pressing was loose and spongy. Then the books are
sawed or grooved in the back by another machine, operating
a swiftly moving saw, and sewed on cords by still another
machine, at about half the cost of hand-sewing.
Next, they are cut or trimmed on the three edges in a cutting-machine.
The backs of the books are made round by
a rounding-machine, leaving the back convex and the front
concave in form, as seen in all finished books. The books
are now ready for the covers. These consist of binders’
board or mill-board, cut out of large sheets into proper[63]
size, with lightning-like rapidity, by another machine called
a rotary board-cutter. The cloth which is to form the
back and sides of the book is cut out, of proper size for the
boards, from great rolls of stamped or ribbed or embossed
muslin, by another machine. The use of cloth, now so
universal for book-binding, dates back little more than half
a century. About 1825, Mr. Leighton, of London, introduced
it as a substitute for the drab-colored paper then
used on the sides, and for the printed titles on the backs.
The boards are firmly glued to the cloth, the edges of
which are turned over the boards, and fastened on the inside
of the covers. The ornamental stamps or figures seen
on the covers, both at the back and sides are stamped in
with a heated die of brass, or other metal, worked by machinery.
The lettering of the title is done in the same
way, only that gold-leaf is applied before the die falls.
Lastly, the book is pasted by its fly leaves or end-leaves,
(sometimes with the addition of a cloth guard) to the inside
of the cloth case or cover, and the book is done, after
a final pressing. By these rapid machine methods a single
book-manufacturing house can turn out ten thousand volumes
in a day, with a rapidity which almost takes the
breath away from the beholder.

There is a kind of binding which dispenses entirely with
sewing the sheets of a book. The backs are soaked with a
solution of india-rubber, and each sheet must be thoroughly
agglutinated to the backs, so as to adhere firmly to its
fellows. This requires that all the sheets shall be folded
as single leaves or folios, otherwise the inner leaves of the
sheets, having no sewing, would drop out. This method
is employed on volumes of plates, music, or any books made
up of large separate sheets.

In notable contrast to these rapid methods of binding[64]
what are termed case-made books, comes the hand-made
process, where only partial use of machinery is possible.

The rebinding process is divided into three branches:
preparing, forwarding, and finishing. The most vital distinction
between a machine-made and a hand-made binding,
is that the cloth or case-made book is not fastened into
its cover in a firm and permanent way, as in leather-backed
books. It is simply pasted or glued to its boards—not interlaced
by the cords or bands on which it is sewed. Hence
one can easily tear off the whole cover of a cloth-bound
book, by a slight effort, and such volumes tend to come to
pieces early, under constant wear and tear of library service.

Let us now turn to the practical steps pursued in the
treatment of books for library use. In re-binding a book,
the first step is to take the book apart, or, as it is sometimes
called, to take it to pieces. This is done by first
stripping off its cover, if it has one. Cloth covers easily
come off, as their boards are not tied to the cords on which
the book is sewed, but are simply fastened by paste or glue
to the boards by a muslin guard, or else the cloth is glued
to the back of the book. If the book is leather-covered,
or half-bound, i. e.: with a leather back and (usually)
leather on its four corners, taking it to pieces is a somewhat
slower process. The binder’s knife is used to cut the
leather at the joints or hinges of the volume, so that the
boards may be removed. The cords that tie the boards to
the volume are cut at the same time. If the book has a
loose or flexible back, the whole cover comes easily off: if
bound with a tight back, the glued leather back must be
soaked with a sponge full of water, till it is soft enough to
peel off, and let the sheets be easily separated.

The book is now stripped of its former binding, and the
next step is to take it apart, signature by signature. A[65]
signature is that number of leaves which make up one sheet
of the book in hand. Thus, an octavo volume, or a volume
printed in eights, as it is called, has eight leaves, or sixteen
pages to a signature; a quarto four leaves; a duodecimo,
or 12 mo. twelve leaves. The term signature (from Lat.
signare, a sign) is also applied to a letter or figure printed
at the foot of the first page of each sheet or section of the
book. If the letters are used, the signatures begin with
A. and follow in regular sequence of the alphabet. If the
book is a very thick one, (or more than twenty-six signatures)
then after signature Z, it is customary to duplicate
the letters—A. A.—etc., for the remaining signatures. If
figures are used instead of letters, the signatures run on to
the last, in order of numbers. These letters, indicating
signatures are an aid to the binder, in folding, “gathering,”
and collating the consecutive sheets of any book, saving
constant reference to the “pagination,” as it is termed, or
the paging of the volume, which would take much more
time. In many books, you find the signature repeated in
the “inset,” or the inner leaves of the sheet, with a star or
a figure to mark the sequence. Many books, however, are
now printed without any signature marks whatever.

To return: in taking apart the sheets or signatures,
where they are stuck together at the back by adhesive glue
or paste, the knife is first used to cut the thread in the
grooves, where the book is sewed on cords or tape. Then
the back is again soaked, the sheets are carefully separated,
and the adhering substance removed by the knife or
fingers. Care has to be taken to lay the signatures in strict
order or sequence of pages, or the book may be bound up
wrongly. The threads are next to be removed from the
inside of every sheet. The sheets being all separated, the
book is next pressed, to render all the leaves smooth, and
the book solid for binding. Formerly, books were beaten[66]
by a powerful hammer, to accomplish this, but it is much
more quickly and effectively done in most binderies by the
ordinary screw press. Every pressing of books should
leave them under pressure at least eight hours.

After pressing, the next step is to sew the sheets on to
cords or twine, set vertically at proper distances in a frame,
called a “sewing bench,” for this purpose. No book can
be thoroughly well bound if the sewing is slighted in any
degree. Insist upon strong, honest linen thread—if it
breaks with a slight pull it is not fit to be used in a book.
The book is prepared for the sewer by sawing several
grooves across the back with a common saw. The two end
grooves are light and narrow, the central ones wider and
deeper. Into these inner grooves, the cords fit easily, and
the book being taken, sheet by sheet, is firmly sewed
around the cords, by alternate movements of the needle
and thread, always along the middle of the sheet, the
thread making a firm knot at each end (called the “kettle-stitch”)
as it is returned for sewing on the next sheet.
Sometimes the backs are not sawed at all, but the sheets of
the book are sewed around the cords, which thus project a
little from the back, and form the “bands,” seen in raised
form on the backs of some books. Books should be sewed
on three to six cords, according to their size. This raised-band
sewing is reckoned by some a feature of excellent
binding. The sunken-band style is apt to give a stiff back,
while the raised bands are usually treated with a flexible
back. When sewed, the book is detached from its fellows,
which may have been sewed on the same bench, by slipping
it along the cords, then cutting them apart, so as to leave
some two inches of each cord projecting, as ends to be fastened
later to the board. In careful binding, the thread is
sewed “all along,” i. e.: each sheet by itself, instead of
“two on,” as it is called.

[67]The next process is termed “lining up,” and consists of
putting on the proper fly-leaves or end-leaves, at the beginning
and end of the volume. These usually consist of
four leaves of ordinary white printing paper at each end,
sometimes finished out with two leaves of colored or marbled
paper, to add a touch of beauty to the book when
opened. Marbled paper is more durable in color than the
tinted, and does not stain so easily. One of these end-leaves
is pasted down to the inside cover, while the other is
left flying—whence “fly-leaf.”

After this comes the cutting of the book at the edges.
This is done by screwing it firmly in a cutting-machine,
which works a sharp knife rapidly, shaving off the edges
successively of the head, front and end, or “tail” as it is
called in book-binding parlance. This trimming used to
be done by hand, with a sharp cutting knife called by binders
a “plough.” Now, there are many forms of cutting
machines, some of which are called “guillotines” for an
obvious reason. In binding some books, which it is desired
to preserve with wide margins, only a mere shaving is
taken off the head, so as to leave it smooth at the top, letting
the front and tail leaves remain uncut. But in case
of re-binding much-used books, the edges are commonly so
much soiled that trimming all around may be required, in
order that they may present a decent appearance. Yet in
no case should the binder be allowed to cut any book
deeply, so as to destroy a good, fair margin. Care must
also be taken to cut the margins evenly, at right angles,
avoiding any crooked lines.

After cutting the book comes “rounding,” or giving the
back of the book a curved instead of its flat shape. This
process is done with the hand, by a hammer, or in a rounding
press, with a metallic roller. Before rounding, the
back of the book is glued up, that is, receives a coating[68]
of melted glue with a glueing brush, to hold the sections
together, and render the back firm, and a thorough rubbing
of the back with hot glue between the sections gives
strength to the volume.

Next comes the treatment of the edges of the book,
hitherto all white, in order to protect them from showing
soil in long use. Sometimes (and this is the cheaper process)
the books are simply sprinkled at the edges with a
brush dipped in a dark fluid made of burnt umber or red
ochre, and shaken with a quick concussion near the edges
until they receive a sprinkle of color from the brush.
Other books receive what is called a solid color on the
edges, the books being screwed into a press, and the color
applied with a sponge or brush.

But a marbled edge presents a far more handsome appearance,
and should harmonize in color and figure with
the marbled paper of the end leaves. Marbling, so called
from its imitation of richly veined colored marble, is staining
paper or book edges with variegated colors. The process
of marbling is highly curious, both chemically and aesthetically,
and may be briefly described. A large shallow
trough or vat is filled with prepared gum water (gum-tragacanth
being used); on the surface of this gum-water bright
colors, mixed with a little ox-gall, to be used in producing
the composite effect aimed at in the marbling are thrown
or sprinkled in liquid form. Then they are deftly stirred
or agitated on the surface of the water, with an implement
shaped to produce a certain pattern. The most commonly
used one is a long metallic comb, which is drawn across the
surface of the combined liquids, leaving its pattern impressed
upon the ductile fluid. The edges of the book to
be marbled are then touched or dipped on the top of the
water, on which the coloring matter floats, and at once
withdrawn, exhibiting on the edge the precise pattern of[69]
“combed marble” desired, since the various colors—red,
yellow, blue, white, etc., have adhered to the surface of the
book-edges. The serrated and diversified effect of most
comb-marbling is due to stroking the comb in waved lines
over the surface. The spotted effect so much admired in
other forms, is produced by throwing the colors on with a
brush, at the fancy of the skilled workman, or artist, as
you may call him. Marbled paper is made in the same
way, by dipping one surface of the white sheet, held in a
curved form, with great care on the surface of the coloring
vat. This is termed shell and wave marbling, as distinguished
from comb-marbling. The paper or the book
edges are next finished by sizing and burnishing, which
gives them a bright glistening appearance.

A still more ornate effect in a book is attained by gilding
the edges. Frequently the head of a book is gilt, leaving
the front and tail of an uncut book without ornament,
and this is esteemed a very elegant style by book connoisseurs,
who are, or should be solicitous of wide margins.
The gilding of the top edge is a partial protection from
dust falling inside, to which the other edges are not so
liable. To gild a book edge, it is placed in a press, the
edges scraped or smoothed, and coated with a red-colored
fluid, which serves to heighten the effect of the gold.
Then a sizing is applied by a camel’s-hair brush, being a
sticky substance, usually the white of an egg, mixed with
water (termed by binders “glaire”) and the gold-leaf is laid
smoothly over it. When the sizing is dry, the gold is burnished
with a tool, tipped with an agate or blood-stone,
drawn forcibly over the edge until it assumes a glistening
appearance.

After the edges have been treated by whatever process,
there follows what is termed the “backing” of the book.
The volume is pressed between iron clamps, and the back[70]
is hammered or rolled where it joins the sides, so as to form
a groove to hold the boards forming the solid portion of
the cover of every book. A backing-machine is sometimes
used for this process, making by pressure the joint or
groove for the boards. Then the “head-band” is glued on,
being a silk braid or colored muslin, fastened around a
cord, which projects a little above the head and the tail, at
the back of the book, giving it a more finished appearance.
At the same time, a book-mark for keeping the place is
sometimes inserted and fastened like the head-band. This
is often a narrow ribbon of colored silk, or satin, and helps
to give a finish to the book, as well as to furnish the reader
a trustworthy guide to keep a place—as it will not fall out
like bits of paper inserted for that purpose.

Next, the mill-boards are applied, cut so as to project
about an eighth to a quarter of an inch from the edges of
the book on three sides. The book is held to the boards
by the ends of its cords being interlaced, i. e.: passed twice
through holes pierced in the boards, the loose ends of the
cords being then wet with paste and hammered down flat
to the surface of the boards. The best tar-boards should
be used, which are made of old rope; no board made of
straw is fit to be used on any book. Straw boards are an
abomination—a cheap expedient which costs dearly in the
end. The binder should use heavy boards on the larger
and thicker volumes, but thin ones on all duodecimos and
smaller sizes.

Next, the books are subjected to a second pressing, after
which the lining of the back is in order. Good thick
brown paper is generally used for this, cut to the length of
the book, and is firmly glued to the back, and rubbed down
closely with a bone folder. A cloth “joint,” or piece of
linen (termed “muslin super,”) is often glued to the back,
with two narrow flaps to be pasted to the boards, on each[71]
side, thus giving greater tenacity to the covering. If the
book is to be backed so as to open freely, that is, to have a
spring back or elastic back, two thicknesses of a firm,
strong paper, or thin card-board are used, one thickness of
the paper being glued to the back of the book, while the
other—open in the middle, but fastened at the edges, is to
be glued to the leather of which the back is to be made.

After this, comes putting the book in leather. If full
bound a piece of leather cut full size of the volume, with
about half an inch over, is firmly glued or pasted to the
boards and the back, the leather being turned over the
edges of the boards, and nicely glued on their inside margin.
It is of great importance that the edges of the leather
should be smoothly pared down with a sharp knife, so as to
present an even edge where the leather joins the boards,
not a protuberance—which makes an ugly and clumsy
piece of work, instead of a neat one.

For half-binding, a piece of leather is taken large enough
to cover the back lengthwise, and turn in at the head and
tail, while the width should be such as to allow from one to
one and a half inches of the leather to be firmly glued to
the boards next the back. The four corners of the boards
are next to be leathered, the edges of the leather being
carefully pared down, to give a smooth surface, even with
the boards, when turned in. The leather is usually wet,
preparatory to being manipulated thus, which renders it
more flexible and ductile than in its dry state. The cloth
or marbled paper is afterwards pasted or glued to the sides
of the book, and turned neatly over the edge of the boards.

It may be added, that the edges of the boards, in binding
nice books, are sometimes ground off on a swiftly revolving
emery-wheel, giving the book a beveled edge, which
is regarded as handsomer and more finished than a straight
rectangular edge.

[72]All the processes hitherto described are called “forwarding”
the book: we now come to what is denominated “finishing.”
This includes the lettering of the title, and the
embellishing of the back and sides, with or without gilding,
as the case may be. Before this is taken in hand, the
leather of the book must be perfectly dry. For the lettering,
copper-faced types are used to set up the desired sequence
of letters and words, and care and taste should be
exercised to have (1) Types neither too large, which present
a clumsy appearance, nor too small, which are difficult
to read. (2) Proper spacing of the words and lines,
and “balancing” the component parts of the lettering on
the back, so as to present a neat and harmonious effect to
the eye. A word should never be divided or hyphenated
in lettering, when it can be avoided. In the case of quite
thin volumes, the title may be lettered lengthwise along
the back, in plain, legible type, instead of in very small
letters across the back, which are often illegible. The
method of applying gold lettering is as follows: the back
of the book where the title is to go, is first moistened with
a sticky substance, as albumen or glaire, heretofore mentioned,
laid on with a camel’s hair brush. The type (or the
die as the case may be) is heated in a binder’s charcoal furnace,
or gas stove, to insure the adhesion of the gold leaf.
The thin gold leaf (which comes packed in little square
“books,” one sheet between every two leaves) is then cut
the proper size by the broad thin knife of the “finisher,”
and carefully laid over the sized spot to receive the lettering.
Usually, two thicknesses of gold leaf are laid one
above another, which ensures a brighter and more decided
effect in the lettering. The type metal or die is then
pressed firmly and evenly down upon the gold-leaf, and the
surplus shavings of the gold carefully brushed off and husbanded,
for this leaf is worth money. The gold leaf gener[73]ally
in use costs about $6.50 for 500 little squares or sheets.
It is almost inconceivably thin, the thickness of one gold
leaf being estimated at about 1/280000 of an inch.

Besides the lettering, many books receive gold ornamentation
on the back or side of a more or less elaborate
character. Designs of great artistic beauty, and in countless
variety, have been devised for book ornaments, and
French and English book-binders have vied with each
other for generations in the production of decorative borders,
fillets, centre-pieces, rolls, and the most exquisite
gold-tooling, of which the art is capable.

These varied patterns of book ornamentation are cut in
brass or steel, and applied by the embossing press with a
rapidity far exceeding that of the hand-work formerly executed
by the gilders of books. But for choice books and
select jobs, only the hands are employed, with such fillets,
stamps, pallets, rolls, and polishing irons as may aid in the
nice execution of the work. If a book is to be bound in
what is called “morocco antique,” it is to be “blind-tooled,”
i. e.: the hot iron wheels which impress the fillets or rolls,
are to be worked in blank, or without gold-leaf ornamentation.
This is a rich and tasteful binding, especially with
carefully beveled boards, and gilded edges.

On some books, money has been lavished on the binding
to an amount exceeding by many fold the cost of the book
itself. Elegant book-binding has come to be reckoned as
a fine art, and why should not “the art preservative of
all other arts”—printing—be preserved in permanent and
sumptuous, if not splendid style, in its environment?
Specimens of French artistic binding from the library of
Grolier, that celebrated and munificent patron of art, who
died in 1565, have passed through the hands of many eager
connoisseurs, always at advancing prices. The Grolier
binding was notable for the elegant finish of its interlaced[74]
ornaments in gold-leaf, a delicacy of touch, and an inimitable
flowing grace, which modern binders have struggled
after in vain. At the Beckford Library sale in London, in
1884, there was a great array of fine French bindings of
early date. A book from Grolier’s library, the “Toison
d’Or,” 1563, brought £405, or over $2,000, and a Heptameron,
which had belonged to Louis XIV, in beautiful
brown morocco, with crown, fleur-de-lys, a stag, a cock, and
stars, as ornaments, all exquisitely worked in gold, lined
with vellum, was sold for £400. Following the Grolier
patterns, came another highly decorative style, by the
French binders, which was notable for the very delicate
gold tooling, covering the whole sides of the book with exquisite
scroll-work, and branches of laurel.

The most celebrated of English book-binders was Roger
Payne, who was notable for the careful labor bestowed on
the forwarding and finishing of his books, specimens of
which are still reckoned among the chefs-d’oeuvre of the
art. His favorite style was a roughly-grained red morocco,
always full-bound, and he kept in view what many binders
forget, that the leather is the main thing in a finely executed
binding, not to be overlaid by too much gilding and
decoration. He charged twelve guineas each (over $60)
for binding some small volumes in his best style. Payne’s
most notable successors have been Lewis, Hayday, Bedford,
and Zaehnsdorf, the latter of whom is the author of a treatise
on book-binding. At the art exhibition of 1862, a
book bound by Bedford was exhibited, which took two
months merely to finish, and the binding cost forty
guineas; and a Doré’s Dante, exquisitely bound by Zaehnsdorf,
in Grolier style, cost one hundred guineas.

A decorative treatment not yet mentioned is applied to
the covers of some books, which are bound in elegant full
calf. To give to this leather the elegant finish known as[75]
“tree-calf binding”, it is first washed with glaire or albumen.
The boards of the book are then bent to a convex
shape, and water sprinkled over, until it runs down from
the centre in many little branches or rivulets. While running,
a solution of copperas is sprinkled on, and carried
along the branches which radiate from the central trunk,
producing the dark-mottled colored effect which resembles,
more or less nearly, a tree with its spreading branches.

To make the book beautiful should be the united aim of
all who are concerned in its manufacture—the paper-maker,
the printer, and the book-binder. While utility
comes first in the art of book-making for libraries, yet neatness
and even elegance should always be united with it.
An ill-forwarded book, or a badly finished one, presents a
clumsy, unattractive look to the eye; while an evenly
made piece of work, and a careful and tasteful ornamentation
in the gilding, attract every discerning reader by their
beauty. One writer upon book-binding terms the forwarder
of the book an artizan, and the finisher an artist;
but both should have the true artist’s taste, in order to produce
the work that shall commend itself by intrinsic excellence.
The form and shape of the book depend wholly,
indeed, on the forwarder.

We are told that the great beauty of the Grolier bindings
lay in the lavish and tasteful adornment of the sides.
In fact, much depends upon the design, in every piece of
decorative work. The pretty scroll patterns, the interlaced
figures, the delicate tracery, the circles, rosettes, and
stars, the lovely arabesques, the flowers and leaves borrowed
from the floral kingdom, the geometric lines, the
embroidered borders, like fine lace-work,—all these lend
their separate individual charms to the finish of the varied
specimens of the binder’s art. There are some books that[76]
look as brilliant as jewels in their rich, lustrous adornment,
the design sometimes powdered with gold points and stars.
Some gems of art are lined with rich colored leather in the
inside covers, which are stamped and figured in gold. This
is termed “doublé” by the French. Some have their edges
gilded over marbling, a refinement of beauty which adds
richness to the work, the marble design showing through
the brilliant gold, when the edge is turned. Others have
pictorial designs drawn on the edges, which are then gilded
over the pictures. This complex style of gilding, the
French term gaufré. It was formerly much in vogue, but
is latterly out of fashion. Many gems of binding are
adorned with fly-leaves of moire silk, or rich colored satin.
Color, interspersed with gold in the finish of a book covering,
heightens the effect. The morocco of the side-cover
is sometimes cut, and inlaid with leather of a different
color. Inlaying with morocco or kid is the richest style of
decoration which the art has yet reached. Beautiful bindings
have been in greater request during the past twenty
years than ever before. There was a renaissance of the
ancient styles of decoration in France, and the choice
Grolier and Maioli patterns were revived with the general
applause of the lovers of fine books.

In vivid contrast to these lovely specimens of the binder’s
art, are found innumerable bibliopegic horrors, on the
shelves of countless libraries, public and private. Among
these are to be reckoned most law books, clad in that dead
monotony of ugliness, which Charles Dickens has described
as “that under-done pie-crust cover, which is technically
known as law calf.” There are other uncouth and
unwholesome specimens everywhere abroad, “whom Satan
hath bound”, to borrow Mr. Henry Stevens’s witty application
of a well-known Scripture text. Such repellant bind[77]ings
are only fit to serve as models to be avoided by the
librarian.

The binding that is executed by machinery is sometimes
called “commercial binding”. It is also known as “edition
binding”, because the whole edition of a book is bound in
uniform style of cover. While the modern figured cloth
binding originated in England, it has had its fullest development
in the United States. Here, those ingenious
and powerful machines which execute every branch of the
folding and forwarding of a book, and even the finishing
of the covers, with almost lightning speed, were mostly
invented and applied. Very vivid is the contrast between
the quiet, humdrum air of the old-fashioned bindery hand-work,
and the ceaseless clang and roar of the machinery
which turns out thousands of volumes in a day.

I believe that I failed to notice, among the varieties of
material for book-bindings heretofore enumerated, some of
the rarer and more singular styles. Thus, books have been
bound in enamel, (richly variegated in color) in Persian
silk, in seal-skin, in the skin of the rabbit, white-bear,
crocodile, cat, dog, mole, tiger, otter, buffalo, wolf, and
even rattle-snake. A favorite modern leather for purses
and satchels, alligator-skin, has been also applied to the
clothing of books. Many eccentric fancies have been exemplified
in book-binding, but the acme of gruesome oddity
has been reached by binding books in human skin, of
which many examples are on record. It is perhaps three
centuries old, but the first considerable instance of its use
grew out of the horrors of the French Revolution. In
England, the Bristol law library has several volumes bound
in the skin of local criminals, flayed after execution, and[78]
specially tanned for the purpose. It is described as rather
darker than vellum. A Russian poet is said to have bound
his sonnets in human leather—his own skin—taken from
a broken thigh—and the book he presented to the lady of
his affections! Such ghoulish incidents as these afford
curious though repulsive glimpses of the endless vagaries
of human nature.

It is said that the invention of half-binding originated
among the economists of Germany; and some wealthy
bibliophiles have stigmatized this style of dressing books
as “genteel poverty.” But its utility and economy have
been demonstrated too long to admit of any doubt that
half-binding has come to stay; while, as we have seen, it
is also capable of attractive aesthetic features. Mr. William
Matthews, perhaps the foremost of American binders,
said that “a book when neatly forwarded, and cleanly
covered, is in a very satisfactory condition without any
finishing or decorating.” It was this same binder who exhibited
at the New York World’s Fair Exhibition of 1853,
a copy of Owen Jones’s Alhambra, bound by him in full
Russia, inlaid with blue and red morocco, with gold tooling
all executed by hand, taking six months to complete,
and costing the binder no less than five hundred dollars.

Book lettering, or stamping the proper title on the back
of the book, is a matter of the first importance. As the
titles of most books are much too long to go on the back,
a careful selection of the most distinctive words becomes
necessary. Here the taste and judgment of the librarian
come indispensably into play. To select the lettering of
a book should never be left to the binder, because it is not
his business, and because, in most cases, he will make a mistake
somewhere in the matter. From want of care on this
point, many libraries are filled with wrongly lettered books,
misleading titles, and blunders as ludicrous as they are dis[79]tressing.
I have had to have thousands of volumes in the
Library of Congress re-lettered. A copy of Lord Bacon’s
“Sylva Sylvarum”, for example, was lettered “Verlum’s
Sylva”—because the sapient binder read on the title-page
“By Baron Verulam”, and it was not his business to find
out that this was the title of honor which Bacon bore; so,
by a compound blunder, he converted Verulam into Verlum,
and gave the book to an unknown writer. This is
perhaps an extreme case, but you will find many to match
it. Another folio, Rochefort’s History of the Caribby Islands,
was lettered “Davies’ Carriby Islands,” because the
title bore the statement “Rendered into English by John
Davies.” In another library, the great work of the naturalist,
Buffon, was actually lettered “Buffoon’s Natural
History.” Neither of these blunders was as bad as that
of the owner of an elegant black-letter edition of a Latin
classic, which was printed without title-page, like most
fifteenth century books, and began at the top of the first
leaf, in large letters—”HOC INCIPIT,” signifying “This
begins”, followed by the title or subject of the book. The
wiseacre who owned it had the book richly bound, and directed
it to be lettered on the back—”Works of Hoc Incipit,
Rome, 1490.” This is a true story, and the hero of it
might perhaps, on the strength of owning so many learned
works, have passed for a philosopher, if he had not taken
the pains to advertise himself as a blockhead.

Some of the commonest blunders are stamping on the
back the translator’s or the editor’s name, instead of that
of the author of the book; putting on adjectives instead
of substantives for titles; modernizing ancient and characteristic
spelling, found in the title, (the exact orthography
of which should always be followed); mixing up the number
and the case of Latin titles, and those in other foreign[80]
languages; leaving off entirely the name of the writer;
and lettering periodicals by putting on the volume without
the year, or the year, without the number of the volume.
“No one but an idiot”, said Mr. C. Walford to the London
Librarians’ Conference, “would send his books to the
binder, without indicating the lettering he desires on the
backs.” The only safe-guard is for the librarian or owner
to prescribe on a written slip in each volume, a title for
every book, before it goes to the binder, who will be only
too glad to have his own time saved—since time is money
to him. I would not underrate the book-binders, who are
a most worthy and intelligent class, numbering in their
ranks men who are scholars as well as artists; but they are
concerned chiefly with the mechanics and not with the
metaphysics of their art, and moreover, they are not bound
by that rigid rule which should govern the librarian—namely—to
have no ignoramus about the premises.

In writing letterings (for I take it that no one would
be guilty of defacing his title-pages by marking them up
with directions to the binder) you should definitely write
out the parts of the title as they are to run on the back of
the book, spaced line upon line, and not “run together.”
I think that the name of the author should always stand
first at the head of the lettering, because it affords the
quickest guide to the eye in finding any book, as well as
in replacing it upon the shelves. Especially useful and
time-saving is this, where classes of books are arranged in
alphabetical sequence. Is not the name of the author
commonly uppermost in the mind of the searcher? Then,
let it be uppermost on the book sought also. Follow the
name of the author by the briefest possible words selected
from the title which will suffice to characterize the subject
of the work. Thus, the title—”On the Origin of Species[81]
by means of Natural Selection”, by Charles Darwin, should
be abbreviated into

Darwin
——————
Origin of Species.

Here are no superfluous words, to consume the binder’s
time and gold-leaf, and to be charged in the bill; or to
consume the time of the book-searcher, in stopping to
read a lot of surplusage on the back of the book, before
seizing it for immediate use. Books in several volumes
should have the number of each volume plainly marked in
Arabic (not Roman) numerals on the back. The old-fashioned
method of expressing numerals by letters, instead
of figures, is too cumbrous and time-consuming to be
tolerated. You want to letter, we will say, vol. 88 of
Blackwood’s Magazine. If you follow the title-page of
that book, as printed, you have to write

“Volume LXXXVIII,” eight letters, for the number of
the volume, instead of two simple figures—thus—88.

Now can any one give a valid reason for the awkward and
tedious method of notation exhibited in the Roman numerals?
If it were only the lost time of the person who writes
it, or the binder’s finisher who letters it, it would be comparatively
insignificant. But think of the time wasted by
the whole world of readers, who must go through a more or
less troublesome process of notation before they get a clear
notion of what all this superfluous stuff stands for instead
of the quick intuition with which they take in the
Arabic figures; and who must moreover, by the antiquated
method, take valuable time to write out LXXXVIII,
eight figures instead of two, to say nothing of the added
liability to error, which increases in the exact ratio of the
number of figures to be written. Which of these two[82]
forms of expression is more quickly written, or stamped,
or read? By which method of notation will the library
messenger boys or girls soonest find the book? This leads
me to say what cannot be too strongly insisted upon; all
library methods should be time-saving methods, and so
devised for the benefit alike of the librarian, the assistants,
and the readers. Until one has learned the supreme value
of moments, he will not be fit for a librarian. The same
method by Arabic numerals only, should be used in all
references to books; and it would be well if the legal
fashion of citing authorities by volume and page, now
adopted in most law books, were extended to all literature—thus:

“3 Macaulay’s England, 481. N. Y. 1854,” instead of
“Macaulay’s England, N. Y. ed. 1854. vol. 3, page 481.”
It is a matter of congratulation to all librarians, as well as
to the reading public, that Poole’s Indexes to Periodical
Literature have wisely adopted Arabic figures only, both
for volume and page. The valuable time thus saved to all
is quite incalculable.

Every book which is leather-bound has its back divided
off into panels or sections, by the band across the back or
by the gold or plain fillet or roll forming part of the finish
of the book. These panels are usually five or six in number,
the former being the more common. Now it is the
librarian’s function to prescribe in which of these panels
the lettering of the book—especially where there is double
lettering—shall go. Thus

Many books, especially dramatic works, and the collected
works of authors require the contents of the various vol[83]umes
to be briefed on the back. Here is a Shakespeare,
for example, in 10 volumes, or a Swift in 19, or Carlyle in
33, and you want to find King Lear, or Gulliver’s Travels,
or Heroes and Hero Worship. The other volumes concern
you not—but you want the shortest road to these. If the
name of each play is briefed by the first word upon the
different volumes of your Shakespeare, or the contents of
each volume upon the Swift and the Carlyle,—as they
should be—you find instantly what you want, with one
glance of the eye along the backs. If put to the trouble
of opening every volume to find the contents, or of hunting
it in the index, or the library catalogue, you lose precious
time, while readers wait, thus making the needless
delay cumulative, and as it must be often repeated, indefinite.

Each volume should have its date and place of publication
plainly lettered at the lower end, or what binders
term the tail of the book. This often saves time, as you
may not want an edition of old date, or vice versa, while the
place and date enable readers’ tickets to be filled out quickly
without the book. The name of the library might well be
lettered also on the back, being more obvious as a permanent
means of identification than the book-plate or inside
stamp.

Books should never be used when fresh from the binder’s
hands. The covers are then always damp, and warp on
exposure to air and heat. Unless pressed firmly in shelves,
or in piles, for at least two weeks, they may become incurably
warped out of shape. Many an otherwise handsomely
bound book is ruined by neglect of this caution, for
once thoroughly dried in its warped condition, there is no
remedy save the costly one of rebinding.

Books are frequently lettered so carelessly that the
titles instead of aligning, or being in straight horizontal[84]
lines, run obliquely upward or downward, thus defacing
the volume. Errors in spelling words are also liable to
occur. All crooked lettering and all mistakes in spelling
should at once be rejected, and the faulty books returned
to the binder, to be corrected at his own expense. This
severe revision of all books when newly bound, before they
are placed upon the shelves, should be done by the librarian’s
or owner’s own eye—not entrusted to subordinates,
unless to one thoroughly skilled.

One should never receive back books from a binder without
collating them, to see if all are perfect as to pages, and
if all plates or maps are in place. If deficiencies are found,
the binder, and not the library is responsible, provided the
book was known to be perfect when sent for binding.

In the Congressional Library I had the periodicals which
are analyzed in Poole’s Index of Periodical Literature
thoroughly compared and re-lettered, wherever necessary,
to make the series of volumes correspond with the references
in that invaluable and labor-saving index. For instance,
the Eclectic Review, as published in London, had
eight distinct and successive series (thus confusing reference
by making eight different volumes called 1, 2, 3, etc.)
each with a different numbering, “First series, 2d series,”
etc., which Poole’s Index very properly consolidated into
one, for convenient reference. By adding the figures as
scheduled in that work—prefixed by the words Poole’s Index
No. —— or simply Poole, in small letters, followed by
the figure of the volume as given in that index, you will
find a saving of time in hunting and supplying references
that is almost incalculable. If you cannot afford to have
this re-numbering done by a binder in gilt letters, it will
many times repay the cost and time of doing it on thin
manila paper titles, written or printed by a numbering
machine and pasted on the backs of the volumes.

[85]In all periodicals,—magazines and serials of every kind,—the
covers and their advertisements should be bound in
their proper place, with each month or number of the
periodical, though it may interrupt the continuity of the
paging. Thus will be preserved valuable contemporary
records respecting prices, bibliographical information, etc.,
which should never be destroyed, as it is illustrative
of the life and history of the period. The covers of the
magazines, too, frequently contain the table of contents of
the number, which of course must be prefixed to it, in order
to be of any use. If advertising pages are very numerous
and bulky, (as in many popular periodicals of late
years) they may well be bound at the end of the volume, or,
if so many as to make the volume excessively thick, they
might be bound in a supplementary volume. In all books,
half-titles or bastard titles, as they are called, should be
bound in, as they are a part of the book.

With each lot of books to be bound, there should always
be sent a sample volume of good work as a pattern, that
the binder may have no excuse for hasty or inferior workmanship.

The Grolier Club was founded in New York in 1884,
having for its objects to promote the literary study and
progress of the arts pertaining to the production of books.
It has published more than twenty books in sumptuous
style, and mostly in quarto form, the editions being limited
to 150 copies at first, since increased to 300, under the
rapidly enlarging membership of the Club. Most of these
books relate to fine binding, fine printing, or fine illustration
of books, or are intended to exemplify them, and by
their means, by lectures, and exhibitions of fine book-work,
this society has contributed much toward the diffusion of
correct taste. More care has been bestowed upon fine
binding in New York than in London itself. In fact, ele[86]gant
book-binding is coming to be recognized as one of the
foremost of the decorative arts.

The art of designing book-covers and patterns for gilding
books has engaged the talents of many artists, among
whom may be named Edwin A. Abbey, Howard Pyle, Stanford
White, and Elihu Vedder. Nor have skilful designs
been wanting among women, as witness Mrs. Whitman’s
elegant tea-leaf border for the cover of Dr. O. W. Holmes’s
“Over the Tea-cups,” and Miss Alice Morse’s arabesques
and medallions for Lafcadio Hearn’s “Two Years in the
French West Indies.” Miss May Morris designed many
tasteful letters for the fine bindings executed by Mr. Cobden-Sanderson
of London, and Kate Greenaway’s many
exquisite little books for little people have become widely
known for their quaint and curious cover designs. A new
field thus opens for skilled cultivators of the beautiful who
have an eye for the art of drawing.

Mr. William Matthews, the accomplished New York
binder, in an address before the Grolier Club in 1895, said:
“I have been astonished that so few women—in America,
I know none—are encouragers of the art; they certainly
could not bestow their taste on anything that would do
them more credit, or as a study, give them more satisfaction.”
It is but fair to add that since this judgment was
put forth, its implied reproach is no longer applicable: a
number of American women have interested themselves in
the study of binding as a fine art; and some few in practical
work as binders of books.

There is no question that readers take a greater interest
in books that are neatly and attractively bound, than in
volumes dressed in a mean garb. No book owner or librarian
with any knowledge of the incurable defects of calf,
sheep, or roan leather, if he has any regard for the usefulness
or the economies of his library, will use them in bind[87]ing
books that are to possess permanent value in personal
or public use. True economy lies in employing the best
description of binding in the first instance.

When it is considered that the purposed object of book-binding
is to preserve in a shape at once attractive and permanent,
the best and noblest thoughts of man, it rises to a
high rank among the arts. Side by side with printing, it
strives after that perfection which shall ensure the perpetuity
of human thought. Thus a book, clothed in morocco,
is not a mere piece of mechanism, but a vehicle in
which the intellectual life of writers no longer on earth is
transmitted from age to age. And it is the art of book-binding
which renders libraries possible. What the
author, the printer, and the binder create, the library takes
charge of and preserves. It is thus that the material and
the practical link themselves indissolubly with the ideal.
And the ideal of every true librarian should be so to care
for the embodiments of intelligence entrusted to his guardianship,
that they may become in the highest degree useful
to mankind. In this sense, the care bestowed upon
thorough and enduring binding can hardly be overrated,
since the life of the book depends upon it.

[88]

CHAPTER 4.

Preparation for the Shelves: Book Plates, etc.

When any lot of books is acquired, whether by purchase
from book-dealers or from auction, or by presentation, the
first step to be taken, after seeing that they agree with the
bill, and have been collated, in accordance with methods
elsewhere given, should be to stamp and label each volume,
as the property of the library. These two processes are
quite distinct, and may be performed by one or two persons,
according to convenience, or to the library force employed.
The stamp may be the ordinary rubber one, inked
by striking on a pad, and ink of any color may be used,
although black or blue ink has the neatest appearance.
The stamp should bear the name of the library, in clear,
legible, plain type, with year of acquisition of the book in
the centre, followed by the month and day if desired. A
more permanent kind of stamp is the embossing stamp,
which is a steel die, the letters cut in relief, but it is very
expensive and slow, requiring the leaf to be inserted between
the two parts of the stamp, though the impression,
once made, is practically indelible.

The size of the stamp (which is preferably oval in shape)
should not exceed 1¼ to 1½ inches in diameter, as a large,
coarse stamp never presents a neat appearance on a book.
Indeed, many books are too small to admit any but a stamp
of very moderate dimensions. The books should be stamped
on the verso (reverse) of the title page, or if preferred,
on the widest unprinted portion of the title-page, preferably
on the right hand of the centre, or just below the centre
on the right. This, because its impression is far more[89]
legible on the plain white surface than on any part of the
printed title. In a circulating library, the stamps should
be impressed on one or more pages in the body of the book,
as well as on the last page, as a means of identification
if the book is stolen or otherwise lost; as it is very easy to
erase the impression of a rubber stamp from the title-page,
and thereby commit a fraud by appropriating or selling the
book. In such a case, the duplicate or triplicate impression
of the stamp on some subsequent page (say page 5 or
16, many books having but few pages) as fixed upon by the
librarian, is quite likely to escape notice of the thief, while
it remains a safe-guard, enabling the librarian to reclaim
the book, wherever found. The law will enforce this right
of free reclamation in favor of a public library, in the case
of stolen books, no matter in what hands found, and even
though the last holder may be an innocent purchaser. All
libraries are victimized at some time by unscrupulous or
dishonest readers, who will appropriate books, thinking
themselves safe from detection, and sometimes easing their
consciences, (if they have any) by the plea that the book is
in a measure public property.

In these cases, there is no absolute safe-guard, as it is
easy to carry off a book under one’s coat, and the librarian
and his few aids are far too busy to act as detectives in
watching readers. Still, a vigilant librarian will almost
always find out, by some suspicious circumstance—such as
the hiding of books away, or a certain furtive action observed
in a reader—who are the persons that should be
watched, and when it is advisable to call in the policeman.

The British Museum Library, which has no circulation
or book lending, enforces a rule that no one making his
exit can have a book with him, unless checked as his own
property, all overcoats and other wraps being of course
checked at the door.

[90]It is a melancholy fact, duly recorded in a Massachusetts
paper, that no less than two hundred and fifty volumes,
duly labeled and stamped as public library books, were
stolen from a single library in a single year, and sold to
second-hand booksellers.

The impression of the stamp in the middle of a certain
page, known to the librarian, renders it less liable to detection
by others, while if stamped on the lower unprinted
margin, it might be cut out by a designing person.

Next to the stamping, comes the labeling of the books
to be added to the library. This is a mechanical process,
and yet one of much importance. Upon its being done
neatly and properly, depends the good or bad appearance
of the library books, as labels with rough or ragged edges,
or put on askew, or trimmed irregularly at their margins,
present an ugly and unfinished aspect, offensive to the eye
of good taste, and reflecting discredit on the management.
A librarian should take pride in seeing all details of his
work carefully and neatly carried out. If he cannot have
perfection, from want of time, he should always aim at it,
at least, and then only will he come near to achieving it.

The label, or book-plate (for they are one and the same
thing) should be of convenient size to go into books both
small and large; and a good size is approximately 2¼ inches
wide by 1½ inches high when trimmed. As comparatively
few libraries care to go to the expense, which is about ten
times that of printing, of an engraved label (although such
work adds to the attractiveness of the books containing it)
it should be printed in clear, not ornamental type, with
the name of the library, that of the city or town in which
it is located (unless forming a part of the title) and the
abbreviation No. for number, with such other spaces for
section marks or divisions, shelf-marks, etc., as the classification
adopted may require. The whole should be en[91]closed
in an ornamental border—not too ornate for good
taste.

The labels, nicely trimmed to uniform size by a cutting
machine, (if that is not in the library equipment, any
binder will do it for you) are next to be pasted or gummed,
as preferred. This process is a nice one, requiring
patience, care, and practice. Most libraries are full of
books imperfectly labelled, pasted on in crooked fashion, or
perhaps damaging the end-leaves by an over-use of paste,
causing the leaves to adhere to the page labelled—which
should always be the inside left hand cover of the book.
This slovenly work is unworthy of a skilled librarian, who
should not suffer torn waste leaves, nor daubs of over-running
paste in any of his books. To prevent both these
blunders in library economy, it is only needful to instruct
any intelligent assistant thoroughly, by practical example
how to do it—accompanied by a counter-example how not
to do it. The way to do it is to have your paste as thin as
that used by binders in pasting their fly-leaves, or their
leather, or about the consistency of porridge or pea soup.
Then lay the label or book-plate face downward on a board
or table covered with blotting paper, dip your paste brush
(a half inch bristle brush is the best) in the paste, stroke it
(to remove too much adhering matter) on the inner side of
your paste cup, then apply it across the whole surface of
the label, with light, even strokes of the brush, until you
see that it is all moistened with paste. Next, take up the
label and lay it evenly in the middle of the left inner cover
page of the book to be labelled, and with a small piece of
paper (not with the naked fingers) laid over it, stroke it
down firmly in its place, by rubbing over a few times the
incumbent paper. This being properly done (and it is
done by an expert, once learned, very rapidly) your book-plate
will be firmly and smoothly pasted in, with no exud[92]ing
of paste at the edges, to spoil the fly-leaves, and no
curling up of edges because insufficiently pasted down.

So much for the book-plate—for the inside of the volumes;
now let us turn attention to the outside label. This
is necessarily very much smaller than the book-plate: in
fact, it should not be larger than three-quarters or seven-eighths
of an inch in diameter, and even smaller for the
thinner volumes, while in the case of the very smallest, or
thinnest of books, it becomes necessary to paste the labels
on the side, instead of on the back. This label is to contain
the section and shelf-mark of the book, marked by
plain figures, according to the plan of classification adopted.
When well done, it is an inexpressible comfort to any
librarian, because it shows at one glance of the eye, and
without opening the book at all, just where in the wide
range of the miscellaneous library it is to go. Thus the
book service of every day is incalculably aided, and the
books are both found when sought on the shelves, and replaced
there, with no trouble of opening them.

This outer-label system once established, in strict correspondence
with the catalogue, the only part of the librarian’s
work remaining to be prescribed in this field, concerns
the kind of label to be selected, and the method of
affixing them to the books. The adhesive gummed labels
furnished by the Library Bureau, or those manufactured
by the Dennison Company of New York have the requisite
qualities for practical use. They may be purchased in
sheets, or cut apart, as convenient handling may dictate.
Having first written in ink in plain figures, as large as the
labels will bear, the proper locality marks, take a label
moistener (a hollow tube filled with water, provided with a
bit of sponge at the end and sold by stationers) and wet
the label throughout its surface, then fix it on the back of
the book, on the smooth part of the binding near the lower[93]
end, and with a piece of paper (not the fingers) press it
down firmly to its place by repeated rubbings. If thoroughly
done, the labels will not peel off nor curl up at the
edges for a long time. Under much usage of the volumes,
however, they must occasionally be renewed.

When the books being prepared for the shelves have all
been duly collated, labelled and stamped, processes which
should precede cataloguing them, they are next ready for
the cataloguer. His functions having been elsewhere described,
it need only be said that the books when catalogued
and handed over to the reviser, (or whoever is to
scrutinize the titles and assign them their proper places in
the library classification) are to have the shelf-marks of
the card-titles written on the inside labels, as well as upon
the outside.

When this is done, the title-cards can be withdrawn and
alphabeted in the catalogue drawers. Next, all the books
thus catalogued, labelled, and supposed to be ready for the
shelves, should be examined with reference to three points:

1st. Whether any of the volumes need re-lettering.

2nd. Whether any of them require re-binding.

3rd. If any of the bindings are in need of repair.

In any lot of books purchased or presented, are almost
always to be found some that are wrongly or imperfectly
lettered on the back. Before these are ready for the
shelves, they should be carefully gone through with, and
all errors or shortcomings corrected. It is needful to send
to the binder

1st. All books which lack the name of the author on the
back. This should be stamped by the binder at the head,
if there is room—if not, in the middle panel on the back
of the book.

2nd. All books lettered with mis-spelled words.

3rd. All volumes in sets, embracing several distinct[94]
works—to have the name of each book in the contents
plainly stamped on the outside.

4th. All books wholly without titles on the back, of
which many are published—the title being frequently
given on the side only, or in the interior alone.

5th. All periodicals having the volume on the back,
without the year, to have the year lettered; and periodicals
having the year, but not the volume, are to have the number
of the volume added.

If these things, all essential to good management and
prompt library service, are not done before the books go to
their shelves, the chances are that they will not be done at
all.

The second requisite to be attended to is to examine
whether any of the volumes catalogued require to be bound
or re-bound. In any lot of books of considerable extent,
there will always be some (especially if from auction sales)
dilapidated and shaken, so as to unfit them for use. There
will be others so soiled in the bindings or the edges as to
be positively shabby, and they should be re-bound to render
them presentable.

The third point demanding attention is to see what volumes
need repair. It very often happens that books otherwise
pretty well bound have torn corners, or rubbed or
shop-worn backs, or shabby marbled paper frayed at the
sides, or some other defect, which may be cured by mending
or furbishing up, without re-binding. This a skilful
binder is always competent to take in charge; and as in the
other cases, it should have attention immediately upon the
acquisition of the books.

All books coming into a library which contain autographs,
book-plates of former owners, coats of arms, presentation
inscriptions from the author, monograms, or[95]
other distinguishing features, should preserve them as of
interest to the present or the future.

And all printed paper covers should be carefully preserved
by binding them inside the new cover which the
book receives, thus preserving authentic evidence of the
form in which the book was first issued to the public, and
often its original price. In like manner, when a cloth-bound
book comes to re-binding, its side and back covers
may be bound in at the end of the book, as showing the
style in which it was originally issued, frequently displaying
much artistic beauty.

Whoever receives back any books which have been out in
circulation, whether it be the librarian or assistant, must
examine each volume, to see if it is in apparent good order.
If it is found (as frequently happens) that it is shaky and
loose, or if leaves are ready to drop out, or if the cover is
nearly off, it should never be allowed to go back to the
shelves, but laid aside for re-binding or repair with the
next lot sent to the binder. Only prompt vigilance on this
point, combined with the requirement of speedy return by
the binder, will save the loss or injury beyond repair of
many books. It will also save the patrons of the library
from the frequent inconvenience of having to do without
books, which should be on the shelves for their use. How
frequent this sending of books to repair should be, cannot
be settled by any arbitrary rule; but it would be wise, in
the interest of all, to do it as often as two or three dozen
damaged books are accumulated.

If you find other injury to a book returned, than the
natural wear and tear that the library must assume, if a
book, for example, is blotched with ink, or soiled with
grease, or has been so far wet as to be badly stained in the
leaves, or if it is found torn in any part on a hasty inspection,
or if a plate or a map is missing, or the binding is[96]
violently broken (as sometimes happens) then the damage
should be borne by the reader, and not by the library.
This will sometimes require the purchase of a fresh copy
of the book, which no fair-minded reader can object to
pay, who is favored with the privileges of free enjoyment
of the treasures of a public library. Indeed, it will be
found in the majority of cases that honest readers themselves
call attention to such injuries as books have accidentally
received while in their possession, with voluntary
offer to make good the damage.

All unbound or paper covered volumes should be reserved
from the shelves, and not supplied to readers until
bound. This rule may be relaxed (as there is almost no
rule without some valid exception) in the case of a popular
new book, issued only in paper covers, if it is desired to
give an opportunity of early perusal to readers frequenting
the library. But such books should not be permitted to
circulate, as they would soon be worn to pieces by handling.
Only books dressed in a substantial covering are fit
to be loaned out of any library. In preparing for the
bindery any new books, or old ones to be re-bound or repaired,
lists should be made of any convenient number set
apart for the purpose, prompt return should be required,
and all should be checked off on the list when returned.

No shelf in a well-regulated library should be unprovided
with book-supports, in order to prevent the volumes
from sagging and straining by falling against one another,
in a long row of books. Numerous different devices are
in the market for this purpose, from the solid brick to the
light sheet-iron support; but it is important to protect the
end of every row from strain on the bindings, and the cost
of book supports is indefinitely less than that of the re-binding
entailed by neglecting to use them.

Some libraries of circulation make it a rule to cover all[97]
their books with paper or thin muslin covers, before they
are placed on the shelves for use. This method has its advantages
and its drawbacks. It doubtless protects the
bindings from soiling, and where books circulate widely
and long, no one who has seen how foul with dirt they become,
can doubt the expediency of at least trying the experiment
of clean covers. They should be of the firmest
thin but tough Manila paper, and it is claimed that twenty
renewals of clean paper covers actually cost less than one
re-binding. On the other hand, it is not to be denied that
books thus covered look shabby, monotonous, and uninteresting.
In the library used for reference and reading
only, without circulation, covers are quite out of place.

Book-plates having been briefly referred to above, a few
words as to their styles and uses may here be pertinent.
The name “book-plate” is a clumsy and misleading title,
suggesting to the uninitiated the illustrations or plates
which embellish the text of a book. The name Ex libris,
two latin words used for book-plate in all European languages,
is clearer, but still not exact, as a definition of the
thing, signifying simply “out of books.” A book-plate is
the owner’s or the library’s distinctive mark of ownership,
pasted upon the inside cover, whether it be a simple name-label,
or an elaborately engraved heraldic or pictorial device.
The earliest known book-plates date back to the fifteenth
century, and are of German origin, though English
plates are known as early as 1700. In France, specimens
appear for the first time between 1600 and 1650.

Foreign book-plates are, as a rule, heraldic in design, as
are also the early American plates, representing the coat of
arms or family crest of the owner of the books, with a
motto of some kind. The fashion of collecting these owners’
marks, as such, irrespective of the books containing
them, is a recent and very possibly a passing mania. Still,[98]
there is something of interest in early American plates,
and in those used by distinguished men, aside from the collector’s
fad. Some of the first American engravers showed
their skill in these designs, and a signed and dated plate
engraved by Nathaniel Hurd, for example, of Boston, is of
some historic value as an example of early American art.
He engraved many plates about the middle of the last century,
and died in 1777. Paul Revere, who was an engraver,
designed and executed some few plates, which are
rare, and highly prized, more for his name than for his
skill, for, as generally known, he was a noted patriot of the
Revolutionary period, belonging by his acts to the heroic
age of American history.

A book of George Washington’s containing his book-plate
has an added interest, though the plate itself is an
armorial design, not at all well executed. Its motto is
“exitus acta probat“—the event justifies the deed. From
its rarity and the high price it commands, it has probably
been the only American book-plate ever counterfeited.
At an auction sale of books in Washington in 1863, this
counterfeit plate had been placed in many books to give a
fictitious value, but the fraud was discovered and announced
by the present writer, just before the books were
sold. Yet the sale was attended by many attracted to bid
upon books said to have been owned by Washington, and
among them the late Dr. W. F. Poole, then librarian of the
Boston Athenaeum, which possesses most of the library
authentically known to have been at Mount Vernon.

John Adams and John Quincy Adams used book-plates,
and James Monroe and John Tyler each had a plain name-label.
These are all of our presidents known to have used
them, except General Garfield, who had a printed book-plate
of simple design, with the motto “inter folia fructus.”
Eleven of the signers of the Declaration of Independence[99]
are known to have had these signs of gentle birth—for in
the early years of the American Colonies, it was only the
families of aristocratic connection and scholarly tastes who
indulged in what may be termed a superfluous luxury.

The plates used among the Southern settlers were generally
ordered from England, and not at all American. The
Northern plates were more frequently of native design and
execution, and therefore of much greater value and interest,
though far inferior in style of workmanship and elaboration
of ornament to the best European ones.

The ordinary library label is also a book-plate, and some
of the early libraries and small collections have elaborate
designs. The early Harvard College library plate was a
large and fine piece of engraving by Hurd. The Harvard
Library had some few of this fine engraved label printed
in red ink, and placed in the rarer books of the library—as
a reminder that the works containing the rubricated
book-plates were not to be drawn out by students.

The learned bibliophile and librarian of Florence, Magliabecchi,
who died in 1714, devised for his library of thirty
thousand volumes, which he bequeathed to the Grand
Duke of Tuscany, a book-plate representing his own profile
on a medal surrounded with books and oak boughs,
with the inscription—”Antonius Magliabecchius Florentinus.”

Some book-plates embody designs of great beauty. The
late George Bancroft’s, engraved on copper, represented a
winged cherub (from Raphael) gazing sun-ward, holding a
tablet with the inscription “Eis phaos,” toward the light.

Some French book-plates aim at humor or caricature.
One familiar example represents an old book-worm mounted
on a tall ladder in a library, profoundly absorbed in
reading, and utterly unconscious that the room beneath
him is on fire.

[100]To those who ask of what possible utility it can be to
cultivate so unfruitful a pursuit as the devising or the collecting
of book-plates, it may be pertinent to state the
claim made in behalf of the amateurs of this art, by a connoisseur,
namely, “Book-plates foster the study of art, history,
genealogy, and human character.” On this theory,
we may add, the coat of arms or family crest teaches heraldry;
the mottoes or inscriptions chosen cultivate the
taste for language and sententious literature; the engraving
appeals to the sense of the artistic; the names of early
or ancient families who are often thus commemorated
teach biography, history, or genealogy; while the great variety
of sentiments selected for the plates illustrate the
character and taste of those selecting them.

On the other hand, it must be said that the coat of arms
fails to indicate individual taste or genius, and might better
be supplanted by original and characteristic designs,
especially such as relate to books, libraries, and learning.

[101]

CHAPTER 5.

The Enemies of Books.

We have seen in former chapters how the books of a
library are acquired, how they are prepared for the shelves,
or for use, and how they are or should be bound. Let us
now consider the important questions which involve the
care, the protection, and the preservation of the books.

Every librarian or book owner should be something more
than a custodian of the books in his collection. He should
also exercise perpetual vigilance with regard to their safety
and condition. The books of every library are beset by
dangers and by enemies. Some of these are open and palpable;
others are secret, illusive, little suspected, and liable
to come unlooked for and without warning. Some of
these enemies are impersonal and immaterial, but none the
less deadly; others are personally human in form, but most
inhuman in their careless and brutal treatment of books.
How far and how fatally the books of many libraries have
been injured by these ever active and persistent enemies
can never be adequately told. But we may point out what
the several dangers are which beset them, and how far the
watchful care of the librarian and his assistants may fore-stall
or prevent them.

One of the foremost of the inanimate enemies of books is
dust. In some libraries the atmosphere is dust-laden, to a
degree which seems incredible until you witness its results
in the deposits upon books, which soil your fingers, and
contaminate the air you breathe, as you brush or blow it
away. Peculiarly liable to dust are library rooms located
in populous towns, or in business streets, and built close to[102]
the avenues of traffic. Here, the dust is driven in at the
windows and doors by every breeze that blows. It is an
omnipresent evil, that cannot be escaped or very largely
remedied. As preventive measures, care should be taken
not to build libraries too near the street, but to have ample
front and side yards to isolate the books as far as may be
consistent with convenient access. Where the library is
already located immediately on the street, a subscription
for sprinkling the thoroughfare with water, the year
round, would be true economy.

In some cities, the evils of street dust are supplemented
by the mischiefs of coal smoke, to an aggravated degree.
Wherever soft coal is burned as the principal fuel, a black,
fuliginous substance goes floating through the air, and
soils every thing it touches. It penetrates into houses and
public buildings, often intensified by their own interior use
of the same generator of dirt, and covers the books of the
library with its foul deposits. You may see, in the public
libraries of some western cities, how this perpetual curse
of coal smoke has penetrated the leaves of all the books,
resisting all efforts to keep it out, and slowly but surely deteriorating
both paper and bindings. Here, preventive
measures are impossible, unless some device for consuming
the coal smoke of chimneys and factories were made compulsory,
or the evil somewhat mitigated by using a less
dangerous fuel within the library.

But, aside from these afflictions of dust, in its most aggravated
form, every library and every room in any building
is subject to its persistent visitations. Wherever carpets
or rugs cover the floors, there dust has an assured
abiding-place, and it is diffused throughout the apartment
in impalpable clouds, at every sweeping of the floors.
Hence it would be wise to adopt in public libraries a floor-covering
like linoleum, or some substance other than[103]
woolen, which would be measurably free from dust, while
soft enough to deaden the sound of feet upon the floors.
Even with this preventive precaution, there will always be
dust enough, and too much for comfort, or for the health
of the books. Only a thorough dusting, carried on if possible
daily, can prevent an accumulation of dust, at once
deleterious to the durability of the books, and to the comfort
both of librarians and readers. Dust is an insidious
foe, stealing on its march silently and unobserved, yet,
however impalpable in the atmosphere of a library, it will
settle upon the tops of every shelf of books, it will penetrate
their inner leaves, it will lodge upon the bindings,
soiling books and readers, and constituting a perpetual
annoyance.

It is not enough to dust the tops of the books periodically;
a more full and radical remedy is required, to render
library books presentable. At no long intervals, there
should be a thorough library cleaning, as drastic and complete
as the house-cleaning which neat housewives institute
twice a year, with such wholesome results. The books are
to be taken down from the shelves, and subjected to a shaking-up
process, which will remove more of the dust they
have absorbed than any brush can reach. To do this effectually,
take them, if of moderate thickness, by the half-dozen
at a time from the shelf, hold them loosely on a
table, their fronts downward, backs uppermost, then with
a hand at either side of the little pile, strike them smartly
together a few times, until the dust, which will fly from
them in a very palpable cloud, ceases to fall. Then lay
them on their ends, with the tops uppermost on the table,
and repeat the concussion in that posture, when you will
eliminate a fresh crop of dust, though not so thick as the
first. After this, let each volume of the lot be brushed
over at the sides and back with a soft (never stiff) brush,[104]
or else with a piece of cotton or woolen cloth, and so restored
clean to the shelves. While this thorough method
of cleansing will take time and pains, it will pay in the long
run. It will not eliminate all the dust (which in a large
collection is a physical impossibility) but it will reduce it
to a minimum. Faithfully carried out, as a periodical supplement
to a daily dusting of the books as they stand on
the shelves, it will immensely relieve the librarian or book-owner,
who can then, (and then only) feel that he has done
his whole duty by his books.

Another dangerous enemy of the library book is damp,
already briefly referred to. Books kept in any basement
room, or near any wall, absorb moisture with avidity; both
paper and bindings becoming mildewed, and often covered
with blue mould. If long left in this perilous condition,
sure destruction follows; the glue or paste which fastens
the cover softens, the leather loses its tenacity, and the
leaves slowly rot, until the worthless volumes smell to
heaven. Books thus injured may be partially recovered,
before the advanced stage of decomposition, by removal to
a dry atmosphere, and by taking the volumes apart, drying
the sheets, and rebinding—a very expensive, but necessary
remedy, provided the books are deemed worth preserving.

But a true remedy is the preventive one. No library
should ever be kept, even in part, in a basement story, nor
should any books ever be located near the wall of a building.
All walls absorb, retain, and give out moisture, and
are dangerous and oft-times fatal neighbors to books. Let
the shelves be located at right angles to every wall—with
the end nearest to it at least twelve to eighteen inches removed,
and the danger will be obviated.

A third enemy of the book is heat. Most libraries are
unfortunately over-heated,—sometimes from defective
means of controlling the temperature, and sometimes from[105]
carelessness or want of thought in the attendant. A high
temperature is very destructive to books. It warps their
covers, so that volumes unprotected by their fellows, or by
a book support, tend to curl up, and stay warped until they
become a nuisance. It also injures the paper of the volumes
by over-heating, and weakening the tenacity of the
leaves held together by the glue on the back, besides drying
to an extreme the leather, till it cracks or crumbles
under the heat. The upper shelves or galleries of any library
are most seriously affected by over-heating, because
the natural law causes the heat to rise toward the ceiling.
If you put your hand on some books occupying the highest
places in some library rooms, in mid-winter, when the fires
are kept at their maximum, the heat of the volume will almost
burn your fingers. If these books were sentient beings,
and could speak, would they not say—”our sufferings
are intolerable?”

The remedy is of course a preventive one; never to suffer
the library to become over-heated, and to have proper
ventilation on every floor, communicating with the air outside.
Seventy degrees Fahrenheit is a safe and proper
maximum temperature for books and librarian.

The mischief arising from gas exhalations is another
serious source of danger to books. In many well-lighted
libraries, the heat itself from the numerous gas-burners is
sufficient to injure them, and there is besides a sulphuric
acid escaping from the coal-gas fluid, in combustion, which
is most deleterious to bindings. The only remedy appears
to be, where libraries are open evenings, to furnish them
with electric lights. This improved mode of illumination
is now so perfected, and so widely diffused, that it may be
reckoned a positive boon to public libraries, in saving their
books from one of their worst and most destructive enemies.

[106]Another of the potent enemies of books is fire. I refer,
not to over-heating the rooms they occupy, but to the risk
they continually run, in most libraries, of total destruction.
The chronicle of burned libraries would make a long and
melancholy record, on which there is no space here to enter.
Irreparable losses of manuscripts and early printed
books, and precious volumes printed in small editions, have
arisen from men’s neglect of building our book-repositories
fire-proof. In all libraries not provided with iron or steel
shelves, there is perpetual danger. Books do not burn
easily, unless surrounded with combustibles, but these are
furnished in nearly all libraries, by surrounding the books
on three sides with wooden shelves, which need only to be
ignited at any point to put the whole collection in a blaze.
Then follows the usual abortive endeavor to save the library
by the aid of fire engines, which flood the building,
until the water spoils nearly all which the fire does not
consume. The incalculable losses which the cause of learning
has sustained from the burning of public, university
and ecclesiastical libraries are far greater than the cost
which the provision of fire-proof repositories would have
entailed.

Of late years, there has been a partial reform in library
construction. Some have been built fire-proof throughout,
with only stone, brick, concrete and iron material,
even to the floors and window casings. Many more have
had iron shelves and iron stacks to hold the shelves constructed,
and there are now several competing manufacturers
of these invaluable safeguards to books. The first
library interior constructed wholly of iron was that of the
Library of Congress at Washington, which had been twice
consumed, first when the Capitol was burned by the British
army in 1814, and again in 1851, through a defective flue,
when only 20,000 volumes were saved from the flames, out[107]
of a total of 55,000. The example of iron construction
has been slowly followed, until now the large cities have
most of their newly-constructed libraries approximately
fire-proof, although many are exposed to fire in parts,
owing to a niggardly and false economy. The lesson that
what is worth doing at all is worth doing well, and that
every neglect of security brings sooner or later irreparable
loss, is very slowly learned. Whole hecatombs of books
have been sacrificed to the spirit of commercial greed,
blind or short-sighted enough not to see that secure protection
to public property, though costlier at first, is far
cheaper in the end. You may speak of insurance against
library losses by fire, but what insurance could restore the
rare and costly Shakespearean treasures of the Birmingham
Free Library, or the unique and priceless manuscripts
that went up in flames in the city library of Strasburg, in
1870, or the many precious and irreplaceable manuscript
archives of so many of our States, burned in the conflagration
of their capitols?

One would think that the civilized world had had lessons
enough, ever since that seventh century burning of the
Alexandrian library by the Caliph Omar, with that famous
but apocryphal rhetorical dilemma, put in his mouth perhaps
by some nimble-witted reporter:—”If these books
agree with the Koran, they are useless, and should be
burned: if not, they are pernicious, and must not be
spared.” But the heedless world goes carelessly on, deaf
to the voice of reason, and the lessons of history, amid the
holocausts of literature and the wreck of blazing libraries,
uttering loud newspaper wails at each new instance of destruction,
forgotten in a week, then cheerfully renewing
the business of building libraries that invite the flames.

Nothing here said should be interpreted as advice not to
insure any library, in all cases where it is not provided with[108]
iron cases for the books, or a fire-proof building. On the
contrary, the menaced destruction of books or manuscripts
that cannot be replaced should lead to securing means in
advance for replacing all the rest in case of loss by fire.
And the experience of the past points the wisdom of locating
every library in an isolated building, where risks of
fire from other buildings are reduced to a minimum, instead
of in a block whose buildings (as in most commercial
structures) are lined with wood.

You will perhaps attach but small importance at first
thought, to the next insidious foe to library books that I
shall name—that is, wetting by rain. Yet most buildings
leak at the roof, sometime, and some old buildings are subject
to leaks all the time. Even under the roof of the Capitol
at Washington, at every melting of a heavy snow-fall,
and on occasion of violent and protracted rains, there have
been leaks pouring down water into the libraries located
in the old part of the building. Each of these saturated
and injured its quota of books, some of which could only
be restored to available use by re-binding, and even then
the leaves were left water-stained in part. See to it that
your library roof is water-tight, or the contents of your
library will be constantly exposed to damage against which
there is no insurance.

Another besetting danger to the books of our libraries
arises from insects and vermin. These animated foes appear
chiefly in the form of book-worms, cockroaches, and
mice. The first-named is rare in American libraries,
though its ravages have extended far and wide among the
old European ones. This minute little insect, whose scientific
name is the anobium paniceum, bores through the
leaves of old volumes, making sometimes holes which deface
and mutilate the text. All our public libraries,
doubtless, have on their shelves old folios in vellum or[109]
leather bindings, which present upon opening the disagreeable
vision of leaves eaten through (usually before they
crossed the sea) by these pernicious little borers. It is
comforting to add, that I have never known of any book-worm
in the Congressional Library—except the human variety,
which is frequently in evidence. Georgetown College
library once sent me a specimen of the insect, which
was found alive in one of its volumes, but the united testimony
of librarians is that this pest is rare in the United
States. As to remedies, the preventive one of sprinkling
the shelves twice a year with a mixture of powdered camphor
and snuff, or the vapor of benzine or carbolic acid, or
other repellant chemicals, is resorted to abroad, but I have
not heard of any similar practice in this country. I may
remark in passing, that the term “book-worm” is a misnomer,
since it is not a worm at all, but an insect. A more
serious insect menace is the cockroach, a hungry, unclean
little beast, which frequents a good many libraries, and devours
bindings (especially fresh ones) to get at the paste
or savory parts of the binding. The remedy for this evil,
when once found to exist, is to scatter the most effective
roach poison that can be found, which may arrest further
ravages.

Another insect pest is the Croton bug, (Blatta Germanica)
which eats into cloth bindings to get at the sizing or
albumen. The late eminent entomologist, Dr. C. V. Riley,
pronounced them the worst pest known in libraries, but
observed that they do not attack books bound in leather,
and confine their ravages to the outside of cloth-bound
books, never troubling the leaves. The remedy prescribed
is a powder in which pyrethrum is the chief ingredient,
sprinkled about the shelves.

Among the rodents, mice are apt to be busy and mischievous
infesters of libraries. They are extremely fond[110]
of paste, and being in a chronic state of hunger, they watch
opportunities of getting at any library receptacle of it.
They will gnaw any fresh binding, whether of cloth, board,
or leather, to get at the coveted food. They will also gnaw
some books, and even pamphlets, without any apparent
temptation of a succulent nature. A good library cat or
a series of mouse traps, skilfully baited, may rid you of this
evil.

The injury that comes to library books from insufficient
care in protecting them on the shelves is great and incalculable.
There are to be seen in every library, volumes all
twisted out of shape by the sagging or leaning, to which
the end-book is subjected, and which is often shared by all
its neighbors on the shelf. The inevitable result is that
the book is not only spoiled in its good looks, but (which is
vastly more important) it is injured in its binding, which
is strained and weakened just in proportion to the length
of time in which it is subjected to such risks. The plain
remedy is to take care that every volume is supported upright
upon the shelf, in some way. When the shelf is full,
the books will support one another. But when volumes
are withdrawn, or when a shelf is only partly filled with
books, the unsupported volumes tumble by force of gravitation,
and those next them sag and lean, or fall like a row
of bricks, pushing one another over. No shelf of books
can safely be left in this condition. Some one of the numerous
book-supports that have been contrived should be
always ready, to hold up the volumes which are liable to
lean and fall.

We come now to the active human enemies of books, and
these are unhappily found among some of the readers who
frequent our libraries. These abuses are manifold and
far-reaching. Most of them are committed through ignorance,
and can be corrected by the courteous but firm in[111]terposition
of the librarian, instructing the delinquent
how to treat a book in hand. Others are wilful and unpardonable
offences against property rights and public
morals, even if not made penal offences by law. One of
these is book mutilation, very widely practiced, but rarely
detected until the mischief is done, and the culprit gone.
I have found whole pages torn out of translations, in the
volumes of Bohn’s Classical Library, doubtless by students
wanting the translated text as a “crib” in their study of
the original tongue. Some readers will watch their opportunity,
and mutilate a book by cutting out plates or a
map, to please their fancy, or perhaps to make up a defective
copy of the same work. Those consulting bound files
of newspapers will ruthlessly despoil them by cutting out
articles or correspondence, or advertisements, and carrying
off the stolen extracts, to save themselves the trouble of
copying. Others, bolder still, if not more unscrupulous,
will deliberately carry off a library book under a coat, or
in a pocket, perhaps signing a false name to a reader’s
ticket to hide the theft, or escape detection. Against
these scandalous practices, there is no absolute safeguard
in any library. Even where a police watch is kept, thefts
are perpetrated, and in most libraries where no watchman
is employed, the librarian and his assistants are commonly
far too busy to exercise close scrutiny of all readers. As
one safeguard, no rare or specially costly book should be
entrusted to a reader except under the immediate eye of
the librarian or assistant. Ordinary books can be replaced
if carried off, and by watching the rarities, risk of theft
can be reduced to a minimum.

When newspapers are given out to readers, it should always
be in a part of the library where those using them are
conscious of a surveillance exercised over their movements.
The penalty of neglecting this may at any time be the mu[112]tilation
of an important file, and it must be remembered
that such damage, once done, cannot be repaired. You
can replace a mutilated book usually by buying a new one,
but a newspaper can almost never be replaced. Even in
the city of Boston, the librarian of the Athenaeum library
records the disgraceful fact, that “the temptation to avoid
the trouble of copying, by cutting out articles from newspapers
is too strong for the honesty of a considerable part
of the public.” And it was recorded by the custodian of
a public library in Albany that all the plates were missing
from certain books, that the poetry and best illustrations
were cut from magazines before they had lain on the tables
a week, and strange to say, that many of these depredations
were committed by women.

It is a difficult problem how to prevent such outrages to
decency, and such irreparable depredations on the books in
our libraries as destroy, in great part, their value. A
posted notice, reminding readers that mutilation of books
or periodicals is a penal offence, will warn off many, if not
all, from such acts of vandalism. If there is no law punishing
the offence, agitate until you get one. Expose
through the press such thefts and mutilations as are discovered.
Interest readers whom you know, to be watchful
of those you do not know, and to quietly report any observed
violation of rules. When a culprit is detected, push
the case to prompt legal hearing, and let the penalty of
the law be enforced. Let it be known that the public
property in books is too sacred a right to be violated with
impunity. Inculcate by every means and on every opportunity
the sentiment that readers who freely benefit by the
books supplied should themselves feel personal concern in
their cleanliness and preservation, and that the interest of
the library is really the interest of all.

A daily abuse practiced by many readers in libraries,[113]
though without wrongful intent, is the piling of one book
on top of another while open. This is inexcusable ill-treatment,
for it subjects the open book thus burdened, to
injury, besides probably soiling its pages with dust. Especially
harmful is such careless treatment of large volumes
of newspapers or illustrated works.

Careless use of ink is the cause of much injury to library
books. As a rule (to which the very fewest exceptions
should be made) pencils only should be allowed to readers,
who must forego the use of ink, with the inevitable risk of
dropping it upon the book to its irreparable injury. The
use of ink in fountain pens is less objectionable. Tracing
of maps or plates should not be allowed, unless with a soft
pencil. Under no circumstances should tracing with a
pen or other hard instrument be permitted to any reader.
Failure to enforce this rule may result in ruin of valuable
engravings or maps.

There is one class of books which demand special and
watchful care at the hands of the librarian. These are the
fine illustrated works, mostly in large folio, which include
the engravings of the art galleries of Europe, and many
other specially rare or costly publications. These should
be carefully shelved in cases where they can lie on their
sides, not placed upright, as in some collections, to lean
over, and, sooner or later to break their backs, and necessitate
rebinding. When supplied to readers, there should
not be more than one volume at a time given out, to avoid
the risk, always threatening, of careless handling or of
opening one volume on top of another that is open. There
should also be a printed notice or label affixed to the side
cover of every illustrated work reading, “Never touch an
engraving,” or an equivalent warning. This will go far,
by its plain reminder, to prevent soiling the pages by the
fingers, a practice which rapidly deteriorates fine books,[114]
and if long continued, renders them unfit to be exhibited
to clean-handed readers.

All plates should be stamped at some portion of their
surface (it is often done on the back) with the embossing
stamp of the library, as a means of identification if abstracted
from the volume to which they belong.

Such books should, moreover, be consulted on a large
table, or better an adjustable stand (to avoid frequent lifting
or shifting of the position of the volume when inspecting
the plates) and always under the eye of the librarian
or an assistant not far removed. These precautions will
insure far more careful treatment, and will result in handing
down to a new generation of readers many a rare and
precious volume, which would otherwise be destroyed or
irretrievably injured in a very few years. The library
treasures which cost so much to bring together should
never be permitted to suffer from want of care to preserve
them.

All writing upon the margins of books should be prohibited—other
than simple pencil corrections of the text, as
to an erroneous date, name, etc., which corrections of errors
should not only be permitted, but welcomed, upon due
verification. The marking of passages for copying or citation
should be tolerated only upon the rigid condition that
every user of the book rubs out his own pencil marks before
returning it. I have seen lawyers and others thoughtless
enough of right and wrong to mark long passages in
pen and ink in books belonging to public libraries. This
is a practice to be sternly repressed, even at the cost of denying
further library privileges to the offender.

Turning down leaves in a book to keep the place is one of
the easily besetting sins of too many readers. Those who
thus dogs-ear a volume should be taught that the vile practice
weakens and wears out the leaves thus folded down,[115]
and makes the book a more easy prey to dust and disintegration.
However busy I may be, I instinctively turn
back every turned-down leaf I notice in any book, before
using it, or handing it to another. A good safe-guard
would be to provide a supply of little narrow strips of
paper, in the ticket boxes at the library tables to serve as
the book-markers so frequently needed by readers. For
this purpose, no thick or smooth calendered paper should
be used, which falls out of any loosely bound book too readily—but
a thin soft paper un-sized, which will be apt to retain
its place. I have lost valuable time (which I shall
never see again) in trying to find the pages marked for me
by a searcher who had thoughtlessly inserted bits of card-board
as markers—which kept falling out by their own
weight. The book-marks should be at least two inches
long, and not more than half an inch wide; and rough
edges are better than smooth ones, for they will adhere
better to the head of the volume where placed. Better
still it is, to provide paper book-marks forked at the lower
end by slitting, then doubled so that the mark will go on
both sides of the leaf at once. This is the only sure safe-guard
against these bits of paper falling out, and thus losing
the place. Never put cards, or letters, or documents,
or any solid substance into a book. It weakens the binding,
and if continued, often breaks the back. The fact
that most of the injuries to which books are exposed are
unintentional injuries does not alter the fact that they are
none the less injuries to be guarded against. Wilful perpetration
of the many abuses referred to may be rare, but
the unconscious perpetrators should be instructed how to
use books by a vigilant librarian. And they who have thus
been taught to be careful of the books in a public library
will learn to be more careful of their own, which is a great
step in the education of any one.

[116]It ought not to be needful to charge any one never to
wet the finger to turn over the leaves of a book—a childish
habit, akin to running out the tongue when writing, or
moving the lips when reading to one’s self. The only
proper way to turn the leaf is at the upper right-hand corner,
and the index-finger of the right hand will always be
found competent to that duty.

Still less should it be needful to insist upon the importance
to every reader of books, of coming to their perusal
clean-handed. When you reflect that nine-tenths of the
soiling and spoiling which books undergo comes from the
dirty hands of many readers, this becomes a vital point.
Fouquet, a learned book collector of France, used to keep
a pile of white gloves in the ante-room of his library, and
no visitor was allowed to cross the threshold, or to handle
a book without putting on a pair, lest he should soil the
precious volumes with naked hands. Such a refinement
of care to keep books immaculate is not to be expected in
this age of the world; and yet, a librarian who respects his
calling is often tempted to wish that there were some
means of compelling people to be more careful about books
than they are.

It ought not ever to be true that an enemy to the welfare
of library books is found in the librarian himself, or in
any of his assistants, yet there have been those employed in
the care of books who have abused their positions and the
volumes entrusted to their charge, not only by neglect of
care, (which is a negative injury) but by positive and continual
ill treatment. This may arise from ignorance of
better methods, but ignorance is a poor excuse for one
credited with the intelligence of a librarian. In some libraries,
books are treated with positive indignity, and are
permanently injured by tightly wedging them together.
Never crowd books by main force into shelves too short or[117]
too small for them. It strains the backs, and seriously injures
the bindings. Every book should slip easily past its
fellows on the shelf. If a volume is too tall to go in its
place, it should be relegated to lower shelves for larger
books, never letting its head be crowded against the shelf
above it.

One should never pull books out from the shelf by their
head-bands, or by pulling at the binding, but place the
finger firmly on the top of the book, next to the binding,
and press down while drawing out the volume. From failure
to observe this simple precaution, you will find in all
libraries multitudes of torn or broken bindings at the top—a
wholly needless defacement and waste.

Never permit a book to be turned down on its face to
keep the place. This easily besetting habit weakens the
book, and frequently soils its leaves by contact with a dusty
table. For the same reason, one volume should not be
placed within the leaves of another to keep the place where
a book-mark of paper, so easily supplied, should always be
used. Books should not be turned down on the fore-edges
or fronts on the library tables, as practiced in most book-stores,
in order to better display the stock. The same
habit prevails in many libraries, from careless inattention.
When necessary, in order to better read the titles, they
should never be left long in such position. This treatment
weakens the back infallibly, and if long continued breaks
it. Librarians, of all persons in the world, should learn,
and should lead others to learn, never to treat a book with
indignity, and how truly the life of a book depends upon
proper treatment, as well as that of an animated being.

These things, and others of my suggestions, may seem
trifles to some; but to those who consider how much success
in life depends upon attention to what are called
trifles—nay, how much both human taste and human hap[118]piness
are promoted by care regarding trifles, they will not
appear unimportant. The existence of schools to teach
library science, and of manuals devoted to similar laudable
aims, is an auspicious omen of the new reign of refined
taste in those nobler arts of life which connect themselves
with literature, and are to be hailed as authentic evidences
of the onward progress of civilization.

[119]

CHAPTER 6.

The Restoration and Reclamation of Books.

We are now to consider carefully the restoration and
the reclamation of the books of a library, whether public
or private.

Nothing can be more important than the means of restoring
or reclaiming library books that are lost or injured,
since every such restoration will save the funds of
the library or collector from replacing them with fresh or
newly bought copies, and will enable it to furnish its stores
with as many new books as the money thus saved represents.
The cardinal thing to be kept always in view is a
wise economy of means. An every-day prudence is the
price of successful administration. A management which
permits any of the enemies of books to destroy or damage
them, thereby wasting the substance of the library without
repair, is a fatally defective management, which should be
changed as soon as possible.

This consideration assumes added importance when it
is remembered that the means of nearly all our libraries
are very limited and inadequate to the drafts upon them,
year by year. A great many libraries are compelled to let
their books needing rebinding accumulate, from the mere
want of money to pay for reclothing the nearly worn-out
volumes, thus depriving the readers for a considerable time,
of the use of many coveted books. And even with those
which have large means, I have never yet heard of a library
that had enough, either to satisfy the eager desire of
the librarian to fill up deficiencies, or to meet fully the
manifold wants of readers. So much the more important,[120]
then, is it to husband every dollar that can be saved, to
keep the books in such good condition that they will not
need frequent rebinding, and to reduce to a minimum all
the evils which beset them, menacing their safety, or injuring
their condition.

To attain these great ends, the librarian who is qualified
for his responsible position, must be both a preserver and
a restorer of books. If not personally able to go through
the mechanical processes which belong to the art of restoration,
(and this is the case in all libraries except the
smallest) he should at least learn all about them, so as to
be able to teach them thoroughly and intelligently to an
assistant. It is frequently made an excuse for the soiled
and slovenly and even torn condition of books and bindings
in a much used public library, that neither the librarian
nor his aids have any time to look into the condition
of the books, much less to repair any of the numerous damages
they sustain. But it should be remembered that in
most libraries, even the busiest, there are seasons of the
day, or periods of very stormy weather, when the frequentation
of readers is quite small. Those times should
always be seized upon to take hold of volumes which have
had to be laid aside as damaged, in the hurry of business.
To arrest such damages at the threshold is the duty and
the interest of the library. A torn leaf can be quickly
mended, a slightly broken binding can be pasted or glued,
turned-down leaves can be restored where they belong, a
plate or map that is started can be fastened in, by devoting
a few minutes at the proper time, and with the proper appliances
ready at hand. Multitudes of volumes can be
so treated in the course of the year, thus saving the
heavy cost of rebinding. It is the proverbial stitch in
time that saves nine. Never wait, in such matters, for the
leisure day that never comes, but seize the golden moment[121]
as it flies, when no reader is interrupting you, and clear
off at least one of the little jobs that are awaiting your attention.
No one who does not know how to use the odd
moments is qualified for the duties of a librarian. I have
seen, in country libraries, the librarian and his lady assistant
absorbed in reading newspapers, with no other readers
in the room. This is a use of valuable time never to be
indulged in during library hours. If they had given those
moments to proper care of the books under their charge,
their shelves would not have been found filled with neglected
volumes, many of which had been plainly badly
treated and injured, but not beyond reclamation by timely
and provident care.

It is amazing how any one can expect long employment
as a librarian, who takes no interest in the condition of the
books under his charge. The way to build up a library,
and to establish the reputation of a librarian at the same
time, is to devote every energy and intelligence to the great
work in hand. Convince the library directors, by incessant
care of the condition of the books, that you are not
only a fit, but an indispensable custodian of them. Let
them see your methods of preserving and restoring, and
they will be induced to give you every facility of which
you stand in need. Show them how the cost of binding or
re-buying many books can be saved by timely repair within
the library, and then ask for another assistant to be always
employed on such work at very moderate cost. Library
directors and trustees are commonly intensely practical
men, and quick to see into the heart of good management.
They do not want a librarian who has a great reputation
as a linguist, or an educator, or a book-worm, but one who
knows and cares about making their funds go as far as possible,
and can show them how he has saved by restoring[122]
old books, enough money to pay for a great many new
ones.

Nothing is more common in public lending libraries
than to find torn leaves in some of the books. If the leaf
is simply broken, without being absolutely detached, or if
part is torn off, and remains on hand, the volume may be
restored by a very simple process. Keep always at hand
in some drawer, a few sheets of thin “onion-skin” paper,
or the transparent adhesive paper supplied by the Library
Bureau. Paste this on either side of the torn leaf, seeing
that it laps over all the points of juncture where the tear
occurred, and that the fitting of the text or reading matter
is complete and perfect. The paper being transparent,
there will be no difficulty in reading the torn page through
it.

This little piece of restoration should always be effected
immediately on discovery, both that the torn piece or fragment
may be saved, and that the volume may be restored
to use.

In case of absolute loss of a leaf or a part of a page,
there are only three remedies known to me.

1. The book may be condemned as imperfect, and a new
copy purchased.

2. The missing part may be restored from a perfect copy
of the same work, by copying the portions of the text wanting,
and inserting them where they belong. This can be
done with a pen, and the written deficiency neatly inserted,
in fac-simile of the type, or in ordinary script hand; or
else the part wanting may be photographed or heliotyped
by the best modern process from a duplicate copy of the
book.

3. If the book is of very recent issue, the publishers may
furnish a signature or sheet which would make good the[123]
deficiency, from the “imperfections” left in the bindery,
after making up the edition of the work.

In most cases, the last named means of replacement will
not be found available. The first, or buying a fresh copy,
may entail a greater expense than the library authorities
would deem proper at the time, and it might be preferred
to continue the book in use, with a slight imperfection.

The second method, more or less troublesome according
to circumstances, or the extent of the matter to be copied
is sometimes the most economical. Of course, it is subject
to the drawback of not being, when done, a bona fide
or genuine copy of the book as published. This diminishes
the commercial value of even the rarest book, although
so fully restored as to text that the reader has it all
before him, so that it supplies every requisite of a perfect
copy for the purposes of a public library, or a private
owner who is not a connoisseur in books.

When the corners of a book are found to be broken (as
often happens by falling to the floor or severe handling)
the book may be restored by a treatment which will give it
new leather corners. With paste or glue well rubbed in,
apply thick brown paper on the corners, which, when dry,
will be as hard as desired, and ready to receive the leather.
Then the sides may be covered with marbled paper or
cloth, and the volume is restored.

When the back of a book becomes loose, the remedy is
to take it out of the cover, re-sew it, and glue it firmly into
the former back. This will of course render the back of
the volume more rigid, but, in compensation, it will be
more durable.

In these cases of loose or broken backs, the study should
be to save the leather cover and the boards or sides of the
book intact, so as to diminish by more than one-half the
cost of repair. As the volume cannot be restored to a[124]
solid and safe condition without being re-sewed, it may be
carefully separated from the cover by cutting the cords or
bands at their junction with the boards, then slowly stripping
the book out of its cover, little by little, and treating
the sheets when separated as already indicated in the chapter
on rebinding.

One of the most common defacements which library
books undergo is marking up the margins with comments
or references in pencil. Of course no thoughtful reader
would be guilty of this practice, but thoughtless readers
are often in the majority, and the books they read or fancy
that they read, get such silly commentaries on the margins
as these: “beautiful,” “very sad,” “perfectly splendid,” “I
think Becky is horrid,” or, “this book ends badly.” Such
vile practices or defacements are not always traceable to
the true offender, especially in a circulating library, where
the hours are so busy as to prevent the librarian from looking
through the volumes as they come in from the readers.
But if detected, as they may be after a few trials of suspected
parties, by giving them out books known to be clean
and free from pencil marks when issued to them, the
reader should be required always to rub out his own marks,
as a wholesome object-lesson for the future. The same
course should be pursued with any reader detected in scribbling
on the margin of any book which is being read within
the library. Incorrigible cases, amounting to malicious
marking up of books, should be visited by severe penalties—even
to the denial of further library privileges to the
offender.

Not long ago, I bought at an auction sale a copy of the
first edition of Tennyson’s “In Memoriam,” which was
found on receipt to be defaced by marking dozens of verses
in the margin with black lines drawn along them, absolutely
with pen and ink! The owner of that book, who[125]
did the ruthless deed, never reflected that it might fall into
hands where his indelible folly would be sharply denounced.

The librarian or assistant librarian who will instinctively
rub out all pencil marks observed in a library book
deserves well of his countrymen. It is time well spent.

The writing on book-margins is so common a practice,
and so destructive of the comfort and satisfaction which
readers of taste should find in their perusal of books, that
no legitimate means of arresting it or repairing it should
be neglected. In a public library in Massachusetts, a
young woman of eighteen who was detected as having
marked a library copy of “Middlemarch” with gushing effusions,
was required to read the statute prescribing fine
and imprisonment for such offenses, with very tearful effect,
and undoubtedly with a wholesome and permanent
improvement in her relations to books and libraries.

In some libraries, a warning notice is posted up like this:
“Readers finding a book injured or defaced, are required to
report it at once to the librarian, otherwise they will be
held responsible for the damage done.” This rule, while
its object is highly commendable, may lead in practice to
injustice to some readers. So long as the reader uses the
book inside of the library walls, he should of course report
such defects as meet his eye in reading, whether missing
pages, plates, or maps, or serious internal soiling, torn
leaves, etc. But in the case of drawing out books for home
reading, the rule might embarrass any reader, however well
disposed, if too strictly construed. A reader finding any
serious defect in a library volume used at home, should
simply place a mark or slip in the proper place with the
word “damaged,” or “defective” written on it. Then, on
returning the book to the library, his simple statement of
finding it damaged or defective when he came to read it[126]
should be accepted by the librarian as exonerating him
from blame for any damage. And this gives point to the
importance of examining every book, at least by cursory
inspection, before it is handed out for use. A volume can
be run through quickly by a practiced hand, so as to show
in a moment or two any leaves started or torn, or, usually,
any other important injury. If any such is found, the
volume should under no circumstances be given out, but
at once subjected to repair or restoration. This degree of
care will not only save the books of the library from rapid
deterioration, but will also save the feelings of readers, who
might be anxious lest they be unjustly charged with damaging
while in their hands.

The treatment of their imperfect books (which tend perpetually
to accumulate) is very different in different libraries.
Some libraries, where funds are ample enough to enable
them to do it, condemn any book that has so much as
a sentence torn out, and replace it on the shelves with a
new copy. The imperfect volumes are sold for waste
paper, or put into some sale of duplicate books, marked as
imperfect, with note of the damage upon a slip inserted at
the proper place in the book, and also in the catalogue, if
sold at auction or in a printed list of duplicates offered by
the library. This notice of what imperfection exists is
necessary, so that no incautious purchaser may think that
he is securing a perfect copy of the work.

Other libraries not blessed with means to pursue this
course, do as best they can afford, supplying what is deficient
when possible without much cost of time or money,
or else continuing the damaged book in use “with all its
imperfections on its head.”

The loss of a single plate does not destroy the value of
the book for readers, however to be regretted as diminishing
the satisfaction to be derived from the volume. And[127]
one can sometimes pardon the loss of a part of a page in a
mutilated book, especially when he is made aware of the
fact that the library which welcomes him to the free enjoyment
of its treasures cannot well afford to buy another.

It is disheartening to read, in an annual report of a public
library of circulation in Massachusetts, that many of its
popular books are so soiled and defaced, after a few readings,
as to be unfit for further service; that books of poetry
are despoiled by the scissors to save trouble of copying
verses wanted; that plates are often abstracted, and that
many magazines “seem to be taken from the library for no
other reason than that private scrap-books may be enriched
or restless children amused.” The only remedy suggested
is to examine each book before again giving it out, and, if
returned defaced, to hold the borrower responsible.

The art of cleaning books that are stained or dirty, is a
matter not widely known, and in this country there are
few experts at it. Some of these keep closely guarded the
methods they use to cleanse a book. Comparatively few
libraries avail themselves of the practice of washing their
soiled volumes, as the process is too expensive for most of
them, and so they are accustomed to let the library books
remain in use and re-issue them again and again, until
they become so filthy as to be quite unfit to be seen—much
less handled by any reader.

But there are often valuable or rare works which have
sustained interior injury, and which it is desired to restore
to a clean condition. The best method is to take the book
apart as the first step. When separated into sheets, those
leaves which are merely dirty should be placed in a bath
composed of about four ounces of chloride of lime, dissolved
in a quart of water. They should soak until all
stains are removed, and the paper is restored to its proper
color. Then the pages should be washed in cold water[128]—running
water is preferable—and allowed to soak about six
hours. This removes all traces of the lime, which would
otherwise tend to rot or injure the book. After this, the
sheets are to be “sized,” i. e., dipped in a bath of size and
water, and laid out to dry. This process gives firmness
and consistency to the paper, which would otherwise remain
too soft to handle. The sheets should be pressed a
few hours between glazed paste-boards, as used in printing
offices. A cheap and simple size for this purpose may be
made by mixing white gelatine with water, and this may
be kept in a bottle, so as to be always conveniently at hand.
The art of restoring and rendering fit for handling books
and rare early pamphlets by sizing all the leaves is in constant
use in Europe. By this means, and by piecing out
margins, the most rotten paper, ready to drop apart in
turning the leaves, may be restored to use, if not quite to
its pristine condition.

Ink-spots or mildew stains may be wholly removed, when
freshly made, by applying a solution of oxalic or citric acid,
and then washing the leaf with a wet sponge. It is more
effectual to follow the bath of oxalic acid by applying a
solution of one part hydrochloric acid to six parts of water,
after which bathe in cold water, and dry slowly. Or an
infusion of hypochlorite of potash in twice its volume of
water may be used instead of the preceding.

If a leather-bound book has grease on its cover, it can be
removed by scraping French chalk or magnesia over the
place, and ironing with a warm (not hot) iron. A simpler
method is to apply benzine to the grease spots, (which dissolves
the fatty material) and then dry the spot quickly
with a fine cloth. This operation may be repeated, if not
effectual at the first trial. The same method of applying
benzine to oily spots upon plates or engravings, will remove
the stains.

[129]Ink-stains may also be taken off from the leather covers
of books bound in calf or morocco by the use of oxalic acid.
Care should be taken first to try the acid on a piece of similar
leather or on a discarded book of the same color. If
the leather is discolored after removing the black spot, one
may apply, after taking out the traces of oxalic acid by
some alkali, a coloring matter similar to the tint of the
leather.

Spots or stains of grease or oil are often found in books.
They may be wholly removed by applying carbonate of
magnesia on both sides of the leaf stained, backed by
paper, and pressing with a hot iron, after which the sheets
should be washed and left under pressure over night. Another
method is to dilute spirits of salts with five times its
bulk of water, then let the stained leaves lie in the liquid
four minutes, after which they are to be washed. Still another
method is to make a mixture of one pound of soap,
half a pound of clay and two ounces of lime, dissolved in
water to a proper consistency; apply it to the spots; fifteen
minutes after, dip the leaf in a bath of warm water for half
an hour, after which dry and press until smooth.

Stains left by mud on the leaves of a book (a not uncommon
fate of volumes falling in a wet street) can be removed
thus: spread over the spots a jelly composed of
white soap and water, letting it remain about half an hour.
Then dip the leaf in clear water, and remove the soap with
a fine sponge dipped in warm water; all the mud stains
will disappear at the same time. To remove the last traces
of the soap, dip a second time in clear water, place the leaf
between two sheets of blotting paper, and dry slowly in a
cool and shady place.

The same process, of washing in soap and water, will remove
what are doubtless the most common of all the soil[130]ings
that library books undergo, namely, the soil that
comes from the dirty hands and fingers of readers.

It is sometimes necessary to color the sheets that have
been washed white, so as to correspond in tint with the
rest of the volume, which has not needed that treatment.
An infusion of cheap tobacco leaves, or a bath of brown
stout will effect this.

In all these methods of removing soil from the pages of
books, it is absolutely necessary to give attention to thorough
washing after the chemicals are used. Otherwise
there will remain an element of destruction which will
sooner or later spoil the book, to restore which so much
pains may have been expended.

And one can readily learn how to restore a valuable
book by these methods. He should, however, first practice
on the restoration of a volume of little worth—and venture
upon the treatment of a precious volume only after
practice has made him an expert.

To restore a fresher look to volumes whose bindings are
much rubbed or “scuffed” as it is sometimes called, one
may spread over their surface a little wet starch pretty
thick, with a little alum added, applied with an old leather
glove. With this the back of the book, and the sides and
edges of the boards should be smartly rubbed, after which,
with a fine rag rub off the thicker part of the starch, and
the book will present a much brighter appearance, besides
being rid of dust and soil.

There will remain on the volume a very slight deposit
of gelatine or gluten; before it dries completely, the palm
of the hand may be passed over it at all points, and the
leather, which may have assumed a dull color from the
starch, will resume a bright brown or other tint. If this
fails to appear, a bit of flannel, impregnated with a few
drops of varnish, should be rubbed over the leather, and[131]
when nearly dry, rub with a white rag slightly touched
with olive oil, and a brilliant appearance will be given to
the binding.

When leaves are started, or a signature becomes loose in
any volume, it should be at once withdrawn from circulation,
or the loss of an important part of the book may result.
The remedy commonly resorted to, of patching up
the book by pasting in the loose leaves, is a mere makeshift
which will not last. The cause of a loose signature
is generally to be found in a broken thread in the sewing,
and the only permanent cure is to take the book out of its
cover, and re-sew it, when it may usually be re-inserted in
the same binding. This is for cloth-bound books. When
bound in leather, it is best to take out the loose sheet,
“overcast” it, that is, secure all the leaves by sewing, then
carefully lay some paste along the outer edge or back of
the sheet, insert the sheet in its place, pressing it firmly
with a paper knife along the middle of the sheet, and the
volume will be restored ready for use after a few days drying
under weight.

On occasion of a fire next to the Mercantile Library
rooms in Philadelphia, in 1877, great damage was done,
from water thrown by the fire-engines, to many thousands
of books. The library authorities tried various methods
of restoring the volumes, and among others, drying them
in ovens was resorted to. This was found, however, to dry
the books so rapidly, that the bindings cracked, and in
many cases came off, while many volumes were much
warped. The most advantageous method that was adopted
was to prepare a large number of frames on which many
wires were strung horizontally across a large room. The
wet books (many of which were soaked through) were suspended
on these wires in such a way as to dry them by de[132]grees,
the temperature of the room being raised considerably
by furnace heat.

The condition in which the books were found after the
wetting varied greatly. Nearly all that were printed on
soft paper were wet through, while those next to them
printed on thick paper, and with solid leather bindings,
were scarcely damaged at all. The water stains constituted
the most serious injury to the volumes, and multitudes of
fine books that were wet will always bear the marks of the
stain. Some of the more costly books were restored by
taking them apart, washing them thoroughly, then placing
them in a heated press, and drying them, so that the water-stains
were removed. All the books, however different the
degree of damage from the water, retained their legibility,
and were put to the same uses in the library as before the
fire occurred. None were burned, the actual fire being
confined to the neighboring buildings of the block in the
midst of which the library was unfortunately located.

The whole number of volumes damaged was about 55,000,
and the insurance, which was assessed by referees at
the amount of $42,000, would nearly have replaced the
books by new ones. Many of the volumes had to be rebound
as the damage by wetting the glue and paste which
are such important elements in binding securely, led to
the falling apart of the covers.

There are multitudes of books restored by some one of
the processes which have been ingeniously contrived to
make an old book as good as new, or an imperfect volume
perfect. The art of reproducing in facsimile, by mere
manual dexterity with the pen, letters, words, and whole
pages, has been carried to a high degree of perfection, notably
in London. A celebrated book restorer named Harris,
gained a great reputation among book lovers and librarians
by his consummate skill in the reproduction of the[133]
text of black-letter rarities and early-printed books of
every kind. To such perfection did he carry the art of
imitating an original that in many cases one could not distinguish
the original from the imitation, and even experts
have announced a Harris facsimile in a Shakespeare folio
to be the printed original. The art has even been extended
to engravings, with such success that the famous Droeshout
portrait of Shakespeare, which illustrates the title-page
of the first folio of 1623, has been multiplied in pen-made
facsimile, so as to deceive the most careful scrutiny.

This nice and difficult art is not widely pursued in this
country, though there are some experts among New York
and Philadelphia book-binders, who practice it. The British
Museum Library has a corps of workers engaged in the
restoration both of books and of manuscripts (as well as engravings)
who are men of the highest training and skill.

The process is necessarily quite expensive, because of the
time required and of the small number of competing artists
in this field. It is chiefly confined to the restoration
of imperfect copies of early printed and rare books, which
are so frequently found in imperfect condition, often wanting
title-pages or the final leaves, or parts of pages in any
part of the volume.

So costly, indeed, is this skilful hand-restoration of imperfect
books, that it has been a great boon to the collectors
of libraries and rare works, to see the arts of photography
so developed in recent years, as to reproduce with almost
exact fidelity printed matter of any kind from the
pages of books. The cost of such facsimiles of course
varies with the locality, the work, the skill, or the competition
involved. But it may be said in general that the
average cost of book-page facsimiles by photographic process
need not exceed one dollar a page.

An entire edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica has[134]
been printed from plates made in replica from photographs
of the original text of the Edinburgh edition. The reproduction
in this case can hardly be commended, as it is trying
to the eyes to read, when compared with the original,
presenting a somewhat blurred and irregular aspect to
the eyes.

It is very difficult to lay down rules which shall be effective
in checking the abuse of books which compels exercise
of the means of restoration. Writing upon margins
(already referred to) may sometimes be checked by putting
a printed slip in every library book bearing the warning—”Never
write in a library book.” To this may be added—”Never
turn down leaves,” an equally important injunction.
Indeed, a whole list of “Dont’s” might be inserted,
but for the chance that too many warnings might operate
to warn off a reader from absorbing any of them. Thus—

• “Don’t soil any book
• Don’t write on margins
• Don’t turn down leaves
• Don’t lay a book on its face open
• Don’t wet fingers to turn leaves
• Don’t fail to use the book-mark
• Don’t read with unclean hands.”

As a loose slip is liable to fall out, some such reminder
should be pasted into the fly-leaf of every book, next the
book-plate.

A self-respecting reader will generally heed such hints,
which a moment’s reflection will teach him are meant to
preserve the library book clean and presentable for his
own use, as well as for that of others. But there will always
be some rude, boorish people who will persist in their
brutal and destructive treatment of books, in the face of
whatever warnings. How to deal with such unwelcome
persons is an ever-present problem with the librarian. If[135]
sustained by the other library authorities, a really effectual
remedy is to deny the further use of the library to any offender
clearly proven to have subjected library books to
damage while in his hands. Some librarians go so far as
to post the names of such offenders in the library hall, stating
that they are denied the privileges of the library by
the authorities, for mutilating books.

In any case, great care must be taken to have the clearest
proof, before proceeding to fasten the offense upon a
particular individual. This involves, where the injury is
not committed in the presence of any library officer, so as
to be observed, but has been done while the book was
drawn out, an examination of each volume before giving it
out. If this rule were to be observed as to all, it would entail
an expense that few libraries could afford. In a large
circulating library in a city, it might require the entire
time of two assistants to collate the books before re-issuing
them. The circumstances of each library must determine
how to deal with this matter. Probably the majority will
limit the close examination of books before giving them
out, to cases where there is reason to suspect wilful continued
soiling, scribbling, or dog’s-earing. A few such
cases once detected and dealt with will have a most salutary
restraining influence upon others, especially if re-enforced
by frequent and judicious paragraphs in the local
press, setting forth the offense and the remedy.

But all in vain will be the endeavor to abate these defacements
and consequent waste of the library books, unless
it is enforced by a positive law, with penal provisions,
to punish offenders who mutilate or deface books that are
public property. A good model of such a statute is the
following, slightly abridged as to verbiage, from an act of
Congress, of which we procured the enactment in the year
1878:

[136]“Any person who steals, defaces, injures, mutilates,
tears, or destroys any book, pamphlet, work of art, or manuscript,
belonging to any public library, or to the United
States, in the District of Columbia, shall be fined ten dollars
to one hundred dollars, and punished by imprisonment
from one to twelve months, for every such offense.”

This act will be found in the United States Statutes at
Large, Vol. 20, p. 171. It would be well if the term “periodical”
were added to the list of objects to be protected,
to avoid all risk of a failure to punish the mutilation of
newspapers and magazines, by pleading technical points,
of which lawyers are prone to avail themselves in aiding offenders
to escape conviction.

It will be observed, that the word “deface,” employed in
this statute, actually covers the marking of margins by any
reader, all such marking constituting a defacement within
the meaning of the law.

While the great multitude of readers who frequent our
public libraries are honest and trustworthy, there are always
some who are conspicuously the reverse. It is rarely
safe in a large public library to admit readers to the
shelves, without the company or the surveillance of an attendant.
And it is not alone the uncultivated reader who
cannot be trusted; the experience of librarians is almost
uniform to the effect that literary men, and special scholars,
as well as the collectors of rare books, are among those
who watch the opportunity to purloin what they wish to
save themselves the cost of buying. Sometimes, you may
find your most valuable work on coins mutilated by the abstraction
of a plate, carried off by some student of numismatics.
Sometimes, you may discover a fine picture or
portrait abstracted from a book by some lover of art or collector
of portraits. Again, you may be horrified by finding
a whole sermon torn out of a volume of theology by a[137]
theological student or even a clergyman. All these things
have happened, and are liable to happen again. No library
is safe that is not closely watched and guarded. In
the Astor library a literary man actually tore out sixty
pages of the Revue de Paris, and added to the theft the
fraud of plagiarism, by translating from the stolen leaves
an article which he sold to Appleton’s Journal as an original
production!

In this case, the culprit, though detected, could not be
punished, the law of New York requiring the posting in
the library of the statute prohibiting mutilation or other
injury to the books, and this posting had not been done.
The law has since been amended, to make the penalties absolute
and unconditional.

In the Astor Library, over six hundred volumes were
discovered to have been mutilated, including art works,
Patent office reports, magazines, newspapers, and even encyclopaedias.
The books stolen from that library had been
many, until several exposures and punishment of thieves
inspired a wholesome dread of a similar fate.

At a meeting of the American Library Association, one
member inquired whether there was any effectual way to
prevent the abstraction of books. He was answered by
another librarian (from Cincinnati) who replied that he
knew of only one effectual method, and that was to keep a
man standing over each book with a club. Of course this
was a humorous paradox, not to be taken literally, but it
points a moral.

Seriously, however, the evil may be greatly curtailed,
(though we may be hopeless of absolute prevention) by
adopting the precautions already referred to. In the Library
of the British Museum, a great library of reference,
from which no book is permitted to be taken under any circumstances,
the evil of mutilation was much reduced by[138]
prosecuting and posting the offenders publicly. After a
few years, the obnoxious practice had so far ceased, that
the placards, having an unpleasant aspect, were taken
down. But on renewal of such depredations and defacements
of books by readers, the placards were renewed, and
some of the mutilated books, suitably labelled, were posted
in the great reading room before the eyes of all. The authorities
of the British Museum are convinced of the salutary
effects of such warnings, though books are sometimes
stolen or mutilated under the liberal management which
leaves several thousand volumes open for reference, without
tickets.

The late Dr. Wm. F. Poole, the Chicago librarian, recorded
his experience in dealing with some clergymen,
who, said he, seem to have as regards books, an imperfect
appreciation of the laws of meum and tuum. He had
found ministers more remiss in returning books than any
other class of men. He would by no means reflect on a
noble and sacred profession by charging the derelictions of
a few upon the many. But he had had unpleasant experiences
with men of that profession, who had absolutely purloined
books from the Public Library, removed the book-plates
and library stamp, and covered the volumes with
paper carefully pasted down inside of the covers.

A librarian in Massachusetts testified that it was common
experience that clergymen and professional men gave
the most trouble. Second-hand book-dealers in Boston
had found a judge of the court purloining rare pamphlets,
and ministers making away with pamphlet sermons under
their coats. Without insisting here upon any such extenuations
of such practices as the prevalence of kleptomania,
it has been made abundantly manifest that theft and mutilation
of books are sufficiently common to demonstrate the
weakness of human nature, and the necessity of every safe[139]guard
which public libraries can provide against such
abuses of their treasures.

A Boston librarian stated that the thieves or mutilators
of books included school-boys, clerks, students, teachers,
soldiers, physicians, lawyers, clergymen, etc. In only one
case was the crime committed through want or suffering.
Yet, though the offenders had been proven guilty in every
instance, only two cases were known in which the penalty
of the law had been enforced. Does not this bespeak laxity
of public morals in Boston in regard to such abuses of
library property?

The Union Theological Seminary at New York recorded
its experience with ministers and theological students, to
the effect that its library had lost more than a thousand
volumes, taken and not returned. This of course included
what were charged out, but could not be recovered.

A librarian in Auburn, N. Y., returning from vacation,
found that the American Architect, an important illustrated
weekly, had been mutilated in seven different volumes,
and that 130 pages in all had been stolen. Fortunately,
she was able to trace the reader who had been using
the work, and succeeded in recovering the abstracted
plates. The offender was prosecuted to conviction, and
had to pay a fine of fifty dollars.

It often happens that books which disappear mysteriously
from a public library re-appear quite as mysteriously.
Those taking them, finding that the rules do not allow certain
books to leave the library, make a law unto themselves,
carry off the book wanted, keep it until read, and
then return it surreptitiously, by replacing it on some shelf
or table, when no one is looking. This is where no intention
of stealing the book exists, and the borrower wilfully
makes his own convenience override the library regulations,
in the belief that he will not be found out. The[140]
Buffalo Young Men’s Library reported in one year eighteen
illustrated works on the fine arts, reserved from being
taken out by its by-laws, as disappearing for weeks, but
brought back in this underhanded manner. In other
cases of such return, it is likely that the purpose was to
keep the book, but that conscience or better thoughts, or
fear of detection prevailed, and secured its return.

Some instances where leniency has been exercised to
save book thieves from penalties may be instructive. One
man who had carried off and sold two volumes from the
Astor Library was traced and arrested, when he pleaded
that absolute want had driven him to the act. He had a
wife ill and starving at his home, and this on investigation
proving true, he was pardoned and saved further misery.

In another case, a poor German had stolen a volume of
the classics which he pawned for a small sum to get bread
for himself, being long out of work, and in a condition
bordering closely upon starvation. He was released, the
book reclaimed, and the offender turned over to the agencies
of public charity.

A librarian of New York gave it as his experience that
some ministers are not to be trusted any more than other
people. Some of them like to write their opinions on the
margins of the books. He found one of the library books
written on in thirty pages, recognized the hand-writing,
and wrote to the reverend gentleman asking an interview.
He came, admitted the fact, and said that his notes made
the book more valuable. This ingenious excuse did not
satisfy the librarian, who said, “others do not think so, sir;
so if you will get us a new book, you may keep the more
valuable one.” He soon brought in a new copy, and the
matter ended.

At the New York Mercantile Library, a young lady,
amply able to buy all the books she could want, was dis[141]covered
going out of the library with one book in her hand
which she was entitled to, it being charged, and with five
others hidden under her cloak, without permission.

Mr. Melvil Dewey has truly said that it is very hard
to tell a library thief at sight. Well-dressed, gentlemanly,
even sanctimonious looking men are among them, and the
wife of a well-known college professor, detected in purloining
books, begged so hard not to be exposed, that she
was reluctantly pardoned, and even restored to library
privileges.

A prominent lawyer of Brooklyn, of distinguished appearance
and fine manners, did not steal books, but his
specialty was magazines and newspapers, which he carried
off frequently. Being caught at it one day, and accused
by the librarian, he put on an air of dignity, declared he
was insulted, and walked out. The librarian found the
periodical he had taken thrown down in the entry, and he
never after frequented that library.

It is curious and instructive to know the experience of
some libraries regarding the theft or mutilation of books.
Thus, in the public library of Woburn, Mass., a case of
mutilation occurred by the cutting out of a picture from
“Drake’s Historic Fields and Mansions of Middlesex
County.” On discovery of the loss, a reward of $10 was offered
for information leading to detection of the culprit.
This was published in the town paper, and an article was
printed calling attention to these library thefts and abuses,
followed by citing the State law making such depredations
a penal offense. Within a week the missing plate came
back to the librarian through the mail—anonymously of
course, the person who had abstracted it finding that it
was rather an unsafe picture to keep or exhibit, and so
choosing to make his best policy honesty, though rather
tardy in coming to that wise conclusion.

[142]This experience, and others here cited, may serve as a
hint what course to pursue under similar circumstances,
in the reclamation of library books.

In the Library of the London Institution, continuous
thefts of valuable editions of the classics had occurred.
Putting a detective in the library, a young man of suspicious
demeanor was soon identified as the thief, and was followed
and arrested in the very act of selling a library book.
He proved to be a young man of good family, education
and previous good character; but the library had suffered
such losses from his depredations, that no mercy was
shown, and he received and underwent the sentence to two
months imprisonment.

It may be added as an instance of methods availed of in
London to trace missing books, that the librarian, knowing
from the vacancies on the shelves what books had been abstracted,
printed a list of them, sent it to every second-hand
book-dealer in London, at the same time supplying
it to the police, who circulate daily a list of missing property
among all the pawn-brokers’ shops in the city, and
recovered all the books within twenty-four hours.

The Mercantile Library of Philadelphia missed a number
of valuable books from its shelves, and on a watch
being set, a physician in the most respectable rank in society
was detected as the purloiner, and more than fifty volumes
recovered from him.

A library at Lancaster, Pa., reported the almost incredible
incident of a thief having hidden under his coat, and
carried off, a Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary!

In most cases of detected theft or mutilation of books,
strong appeals are made by the culprit or his friends to
save exposure by public prosecution. These are commonly,
in the case of persons in very respectable circumstances
in life, not so much to avoid paying fines imposed[143]
by law as to avoid the disgrace attached to publicity, and
the consequent damage done to the character of the individual.
It is probably true that in a majority of cases,
such influences have been strong enough to overcome the
determination of the librarian or library authorities to let
the law take its course. Now, while it must be admitted
that there is no rule without some valid exception that may
be made, it is nevertheless to be insisted upon that due protection
to public property in libraries demands the enforcement
of the laws enacted to that end. The consequence
of leniency to the majority of book thieves would be not
only an indirect encouragement to the culprits to continue
their depredations, but it would also lead to a lax and dangerous
notion of the obligations of readers, and the sacredness
of such property, in the public mind. Enforcement
of the penalties of wrong-doing, on the other hand, tends
unquestionably to deter others, both by the fear of publicity
which must follow detection, and by terror of the
penalty which is or may be imprisonment for a considerable
term, besides the imposing of a fine.

At the Worcester, Mass., Public Library, a young man
of twenty-two was detected in stealing a book, obliged to
confess, and prosecuted. Much pressure was brought to
bear by his family and friends, very respectable people, to
save him from the penalty. The Court, however, imposed
a fine of thirty dollars, and it being represented that his
relatives would have to pay the amount, though innocent
parties, the judge suspended the sentence until the young
man should pay it in instalments from his own earnings,
one of the family giving bail. The valuable lesson was in
this way not lost, either to the offender or to the community;
the law was enforced, and the young man perhaps
saved from a life of wrong-doing, while if he had been let[144]
off scot-free, in deference to the influence exerted to that
end, he might have gone from bad to worse.

At the Pratt Institute Free Library in Brooklyn, books
had been disappearing from the reference department at
intervals of about a week, and a watch was instituted. After
some weeks’ fruitless watching, a young man who came
frequently to consult books was singled out as the probable
offender, and the eyes of the library staff were centered
upon him. The janitor watched his movements for some
days, from a concealed post of observation, as the young
man walked back and forth between the book stacks, and
one day caught him in the act of slipping a book into his
pocket, and arrested him as he was leaving the building.
He had stolen a dozen books from the library, all but three
of which were recovered. He claimed to be a theological
student, and that he had taken the books merely for the
purposes of study. Much sympathy was expressed for him
by people who believed that this was his motive, and that
it was some partial atonement for his offense. The grief
of his relatives at his disgrace was intense. The Court
sentenced him to eight years in the penitentiary, but suspended
the sentence in view of the fact that it was a first
offense, by a youth of twenty-one years. He was put under
police surveillance for his good behavior (equivalent to
being paroled) but the sentence becomes active upon any
further transgression of the law on his part.

It may be gathered from these many cases of library
depredations, that they are very common, that perpetual
vigilance is the price of safety, that punishment in nearly
all cases is wiser than pardon, and that the few exceptions
made should be mostly confined to offenders who steal
books under desperate necessity or actual want.

[145]

CHAPTER 7.

Pamphlet Literature.

What is a pamphlet? is a question which is by no means
capable of being scientifically answered. Yet, to the librarian
dealing continually with a mass of pamphlets, books,
and periodicals, it becomes important to define somewhere,
the boundary line between the pamphlet and the book.
The dictionaries will not aid us, for they all call the pamphlet
“a few sheets of printed paper stitched together, but not
bound.” Suppose (as often happens) that you bind your
pamphlet, does it then cease to be a pamphlet, and become
a book? Again, most pamphlets now published are not
stitched at all, but stabbed and wired to fasten the leaves
together. The origin of the word “pamphlet,” is in great
doubt. A plausible derivation is from two French words,
“paume,” and “feuillet,” literally a hand-leaf; and another
derives the word from a corruption of Latin—”papyrus,”
paper, into pampilus, or panfletus, whence pamphlet. The
word is in Shakespeare:

But we also find “pamphlets and bookys,” in a work
printed by Caxton in 1490, a hundred years before Shakespeare.

Whatever the origin, the common acceptation of the
word is plain, signifying a little book, though where the
pamphlet ends, and the book begins, is uncertain. The
rule of the British Museum Library calls every printed
publication of one hundred pages or less, a pamphlet.
This is arbitrary, and so would any other rule be. As[146]
that library binds its pamphlets separately, and counts
them in its aggregate of volumes, the reason for any distinction
in the matter is not plain. Some of the government
libraries in Europe are greatly overrated numerically
by reckoning pamphlets as volumes. Thus, the Royal Library
at Munich, in Bavaria, has been ranked fourth among
the libraries of the world, claiming over a million volumes,
but as it reckons every university thesis, or discussion of
some special topic by candidates for degrees, as a volume,
and has perhaps 400,000 of this prolific class of publications,
it is actually not so large as some American libraries,
which count their pamphlets as distinct from books in
their returns.

The pamphlet, or thin book, or tract (as some prefer to
call it) is reckoned by some librarians as a nuisance, and
by others as a treasure. That it forms rather a troublesome
asset in the wealth of a library cannot be doubted.
Pamphlets taken singly, will not stand upon the shelves;
they will curl up, become dogs-eared, accumulate dust, and
get in the way of the books. If kept in piles, as is most
frequent, it is very hard to get at any one that is wanted
in the mass. Then it is objected to them, that the majority
of them are worthless, that they cost altogether too
much money, and time, and pains, to catalogue them, and
that they are useless if not catalogued; that if kept bound,
they cost the library a sum out of all proportion to their
value; that they accumulate so rapidly (much faster, in
fact, than books) as to outrun the means at the disposal of
any library to deal with them; in short, that they cost more
than they come to, if bound, and if unbound, they vex the
soul of the librarian day by day.

This is one side of the pamphlet question; and it may
be candidly admitted, that in most libraries, the accumulation
of uncatalogued and unbound pamphlets is one of the[147]
chief among those arrears which form the skeleton in the
closet of the librarian. But there is another side to the
matter. It is always possible to divide your pamphlets
into two classes—the important, and the insignificant.
Some of them have great historical, or economic, or intellectual
value; others are as nearly worthless as it is possible
for any printed matter to be. Why should you treat a
pamphlet upon Pears’s soap, or a quack medicine, or advertising
the Columbia bicycle, with the same attention
which you would naturally give to an essay on international
politics by Gladstone, or a review of the Cuban
question by a prominent Spaniard, or a tract on Chinese
immigration by Minister Seward, or the pamphlet genealogy
of an American family? Take out of the mass of
pamphlets, as they come in, what appear to you the more
valuable, or the more liable to be called for; catalogue and
bind them, or file them away, according to the use which
they are likely to have: relegate the rest, assorted always
by subject-matters or classes, to marked piles, or to pamphlet
cases, according to your means; and the problem is approximately
solved.

To condemn any pamphlet to “innocuous desuetude,”
or to permanent banishment from among the intellectual
stores of a library, merely because it is innocent of a stiff
cover, is to despoil the temple of learning and reject the
good things of Providence. What great and influential
publications have appeared in the world in the guise of
pamphlets! Milton’s immortal “Areopagitica, or Plea for
Unlicenced Printing,” was a pamphlet of only forty pages;
Webster’s speech for the Union, in reply to Hayne, was a
pamphlet; every play of Shakespeare, that was printed in
his life-time, was a pamphlet; Charles Sumner’s discourse
on “The True Grandeur of Nations” was a pamphlet; the
“Crisis” and “Common Sense” of Thomas Paine, which[148]
fired the American heart in the Revolution, were pamphlets.
Strike out of literature, ancient and modern, what
was first published in pamphlets, and you would leave it
the poorer and weaker to an incalculable degree.

Pamphlets are not only vehicles of thought and opinion,
and propagandists of new ideas; they are often also store-houses
of facts, repositories of history, annals of biography,
records of genealogy, treasuries of statistics, chronicles of
invention and discovery. They sometimes throw an unexpected
light upon obscure questions where all books are
silent. Being published for the most part upon some subject
that was interesting the public mind when written,
they reflect, as in a mirror, the social, political, and religious
spirit and life of the time. As much as newspapers,
they illustrate the civilization (or want of it) of an
epoch, and multitudes of them, preserved in great libraries,
exhibit this at those early periods when no newspapers existed
as vehicles of public opinion. Many of the government
libraries of Europe have been buying up for many
years past, the rare, early-printed pamphlets of their respective
countries, paying enormous prices for what, a century
ago, they would have slighted, even as a gift.

When Thomas Carlyle undertook to write the life of
Oliver Cromwell, and to resurrect from the dust-bins of
two centuries, the letters and speeches of the great Protector,
he found his richest quarry in a collection of
pamphlets in the British Museum Library. An indefatigable
patriot and bookseller, named Thomason, had carefully
gathered and kept every pamphlet, book, periodical,
or broadside that appeared from the British press, during
the whole time from A. D. 1649 to 1660, the period of the
interregnum in the English monarchy, represented by
Cromwell and the Commonwealth. This vast collection,
numbering over 20,000 pamphlets, bound in 2,000 vol[149]umes,
after escaping the perils of fire, and of both hostile
armies, was finally purchased by the King, and afterward
presented to the British Museum Library. Its completeness
is one great source of its value, furnishing, as it does,
to the historical student of that exceedingly interesting
revolution, the most precious memorials of the spirit of the
times, many of which have been utterly lost, except the
single copy preserved in this collection.

Several great European libraries number as many
pamphlets as books in their collections. The printed catalogue
of the British Museum Library is widely sought by
historical students, because of the enormous amount of
pamphlet literature it contains, that is described nowhere
else. And the Librarian of the Boston Athenaeum said
that some readers found the great interest in his catalogue
of that collection lay in its early American pamphlets.

As another instance of the value to the historical stores
of a public library of this ephemeral literature, it may be
noted that the great collection of printed matter, mostly
of a fugitive character, relating to the French Revolutionary
period, gathered by the late M. de La Bedoyère,
amounted to 15,000 volumes and pamphlets. Fifty years
of the life of the wealthy and enthusiastic collector, besides
a very large sum of money, were spent in amassing
this collection. With an avidity almost incredible, he ransacked
every book-store, quay, and private shelf that might
contribute a fresh morsel to his stores; and when Paris
was exhausted, had his agents and purveyors busy in executing
his orders all over Europe. Rival collectors, and
particularly M. Deschiens, who had been a contemporary
in the Revolution, and had laid aside everything that appeared
in his day, only contributed at their decease, to
swell the precious stores of M. de La Bedoyère. This vast
collection, so precious for the history of France at its most[150]
memorable period, contained several thousands of volumes
of newspapers and ephemeral journals, and was acquired
in the year 1863, for the National Library of France,
where it will ever remain a monument to the enlightened
and far-sighted spirit of its projector.

In like manner, the late Peter Force, Mayor of Washington
City, and historiographer of the “American Archives,”
devoted forty years to amassing an extensive collection of
Americana, or books, pamphlets, newspapers, manuscripts,
and maps, relating to the discovery, history, topography,
natural history, and biography of America. He carried
off at auction sales, from all competitors, six great collections
of early American pamphlets, formed by Ebenezer
Hazard, William Duane, Oliver Wolcott, etc., representing
the copious literature of all schools of political opinion.
He sedulously laid aside and preserved every pamphlet that
appeared at the capital or elsewhere, on which he could lay
hands, and his rich historical collection, purchased by the
government in 1866, thirty-three years ago, now forms an
invaluable portion of the Congressional Library.

Of the multitudinous literature of pamphlets it is not
necessary to speak at length. Suffice it to say that the library
which neglects the acquisition and proper preservation
and binding of these publications is far behind its
duty, both to those of its own generation, and to those
which are to follow. The pamphlet literature of every
period often furnishes the most precious material to illustrate
the history and development of that period. The
new ideas, the critical sagacity, the political controversies,
the mechanical and industrial development, the religious
thought, and the social character of many epochs, find
their best expression in the pamphlets that swarmed from
the press while those agencies were operating. The fact[151]
that multitudes of these productions are anonymous, does
not detract from their value as materials for students.

Pamphlets, from their peculiar style of publication, and
the difficulty of preserving them, tend to disappear more
quickly than any class of publications except newspapers,
and broad-sides, and hand-bills. They are far less likely
to be preserved in the hands of private holders than even
reviews and magazines. It is the common experience of
librarians that a pamphlet is far more difficult to procure
than a book. Multitudes of pamphlets are annually lost
to the world, from the want of any preserving hand to
gather them and deposit them permanently in some library.
So much the more important is it that the custodians
of all our public libraries should form as complete
collections as possible of all pamphlets, at least, that appear
in their own city or neighborhood. How to do this
is a problem not unattended with difficulty. Pamphlets
are rarely furnished for sale in the same manner as books,
and when they are, book-sellers treat them with such indignity
that they are commonly thrust aside as waste
paper, almost as soon as they have appeared from the press.
If all the writers of pamphlets would take pains to present
them to the public libraries of the country, and especially
to those in their own neighborhood, they would at once
enrich these collections, and provide for the perpetuity of
their own thought. A vigilant librarian should invite and
collect from private libraries all the pamphlets which their
owners will part with. It would also be a wise practice to
engage the printing-offices where these fugitive leaves of
literature are put in type, to lay aside one copy of each for
the library making the collection.

Our local libraries should each and all make it a settled
object to preserve not only full sets of the reports of all
societies, corporations, charity organizations, churches,[152]
railroads, etc., in their own neighborhood, but all catalogues
of educational institutions, all sermons or memorial
addresses, and in short, every fugitive publication which
helps to a knowledge of the people or the region in which
the library is situated.

The binding of pamphlets is a mooted point in all libraries.
While the British Museum and the Library of Congress
treat the pamphlets as a book, binding all separately,
this is deemed in some quarters too vexatious and troublesome,
as well as needlessly expensive. It must be considered,
however, that the crowding together of a heterogenous
mass of a dozen or twenty pamphlets, by different
authors, and on various subjects, into a single cover, is just
as objectionable as binding books on unrelated subjects together.
Much time is consumed in finding the pamphlet
wanted, among the dozen or more that precede or follow
it, and, if valuable or much sought-for pamphlets are thus
bound, many readers may be kept waiting for some of
them, while one reader engrosses the volume containing
all. Besides, if separately bound, a single pamphlet can be
far more easily replaced in case of loss than can a whole
volume of them. Pamphlets may be lightly bound in
paste-board, stitched, with cloth backs, at a small cost; and
the compensating advantage of being able to classify them
like books upon the shelves, should weigh materially in the
decision of the question. If many are bound together,
they should invariably be assorted into classes, and those
only on the same general topic should be embraced in the
same cover. The long series of annual reports of societies
and institutions, corporations, annual catalogues, etc.,
need not be bound separately, but should be bound in
chronological series, with five to ten years in a volume,
according to thickness. So may several pamphlets, by the
same writer, if preferred, be bound together. Libraries[153]
which acquire many bound volumes of pamphlets should
divide them into series, and number them throughout
with strict reference to the catalogue. There will thus
be accumulated a constantly increasing series of theological,
political, agricultural, medical, educational, scientific,
and other pamphlets, while the remaining mass, which cannot
be thus classified, may be designated in a consecutive
series of volumes, as “Miscellaneous Pamphlets.” When
catalogued, the title-page or beginning of each pamphlet in
the volume, should be marked by a thin slip of unsized
paper, projected above the top of the book, to facilitate
quick reference in finding each one without turning many
leaves to get at the titles. In all cases, the contents of each
volume of pamphlets should be briefed in numerical order
upon the fly-leaf of the volume, and its corresponding number,
or sequence in the volumes written in pencil on the
title page of each pamphlet, to correspond with the figures
of this brief list. Then the catalogue of each should indicate
its exact location, thus: Wilkeson (Samuel) How our
National Debt may become a National Blessing, 21 pp.
8vo. Phila., 1863 [Miscellaneous pamphlets, v. 347:3],
meaning that this is the third pamphlet bound in vol. 347.

The only objection to separate binding of each pamphlet,
is the increased expense. The advantage of distinct
treatment may or may not outweigh this, according to the
importance of the pamphlet, the circumstances of the library,
and the funds at its command. If bound substantially
in good half-leather, with leather corners, the
cost is reckoned at 1s. 4d. each, in London. Here, they
cost about thirty cents with cloth sides, which may be reduced
by the use of marble or Manila paper, to twenty
cents each. Black roan is perhaps the best leather for
pamphlets, as it brings out the lettering on the backs more
distinctly—always a cardinal point in a library.

[154]But there is a more economical method, which dispenses
with leather entirely. As no patent is claimed for the invention,
or rather the modification of well-known methods,
it may be briefly described. The thinnest tar-board is
used for the sides, which, i. e., the boards, are cut down to
nearly the size of the pamphlet to be bound. The latter is
prepared for the boards by adding two or more waste leaves
to the front and back, and backing it with a strip of common
muslin, which is firmly pasted the full length of the
back, and overlaps the sides to the width of an inch or
more. The pamphlet has to be stitched through, or
stabbed and fastened with wire, in the manner commonly
practiced with thin books; after which it is ready to receive
the boards. These are glued to a strip of book muslin,
which constitutes the ultimate back of the book, being
turned in neatly at each end, so as to form, with the
boards, a skeleton cover, into which the pamphlet is inserted,
and held in its place by the inner strip of muslin before
described, which is pasted or glued to the inside of the
boards. The boards are then covered with marbled paper,
turned in at each edge, and the waste leaves pasted
smoothly down to the boards on the inside. The only remaining
process is the lettering, which is done by printing
the titles in bronze upon glazed colored paper, which is
pasted lengthwise on the back. A small font of type, with
a hand-press, will suffice for this, and a stabbing machine,
with a small pair of binding shears, constitutes the only
other apparatus required. The cost of binding pamphlets
in this style varies from seven to twelve cents each, according
to the material employed, and the amount of labor
paid for. The advantages of the method are too obvious
to all acquainted with books to require exemplification.

Two still cheaper methods of binding may be named.
What is known as the Harvard binder, employed in that[155]
library at Cambridge, Mass., consists simply of thin board
sides with muslin back, and stubs also of cloth on the inside.
The pamphlet is inserted and held in place by paste
or glue. The cost of each binding is stated at six cents.

The cheapest style of separate treatment for pamphlets
yet suggested is of stiff Manila paper, with cloth back, costing
about three cents each.

I think that the rule of never mixing incongruous subjects
within the same cover should be adhered to. The expense,
by the cheaper method of binding referred to, is but
slightly greater than must be incurred by binding several
in a volume, in solid half morocco style. But, whenever
pamphlets are bound together, the original printed paper
covers should never be destroyed, but should be bound in.

Another method of preserving pamphlets is to file them
away in selected lots, placed inside of cloth covers, of considerable
thickness. These may be had from any book-binder,
being the rejected covers in which books sent for
re-binding were originally bound. If kept in this way,
each volume, or case of pamphlets, should be firmly tied
with cord (or better with tape) fastened to the front edge
of the cloth cover. Never use rubber or elastic bands for
this, or any other purpose where time and security of fastening
are involved, because the rubber will surely rot in
a few weeks or months, and be useless as a means of holding
together any objects whatever.

Still another means of assorting and keeping pamphlets
is to use Woodruff’s file-holders, one of which holds from
ten to thirty pamphlets according to their thickness.
They should be arranged in classes, placing in each file case
only pamphlets on similar subjects, in order of the authors’
names, arranged alphabetically. Each pamphlet should be
plainly numbered at its head by colored pencil, with the
figure of its place in the volume, and the number of the[156]
case, containing it, which should also be volumed, and assigned
to shelves containing books on related subjects. I
need not add that all these numbers should correspond
with the catalogue-title of each pamphlet. Then, when
any one pamphlet is wanted, send for the case containing
it, find it and withdraw it at once by its number, place it
in one of the Koch spring-back binders, and give it to the
reader precisely like any book that is served at the library
counter.

A more economical plan still, for libraries which cannot
afford the expense of the Woodruff file-holders, is to cut
out cases for the pamphlets, of suitable size, from tough
Manila board, which need not cost more than about three
cents each case.

In whatever way the unbound pamphlets are treated,
you should always mark them as such on the left-hand
margin of each catalogue-card, by the designation “ub.”
(unbound) in pencil. If you decide later, to bind any of
them, this pencil-mark should be erased from the cards,
on the return of the pamphlets from the bindery.

[157]

CHAPTER 8.

Periodical Literature.

The librarian who desires to make the management of
his library in the highest degree successful, must give
special attention to the important field of periodical literature.
More and more, as the years roll on, the periodical
becomes the successful rival of the book in the claim for
public attention. Indeed, we hear now and then, denunciations
of the ever-swelling flood of magazines and newspapers,
as tending to drive out the book. Readers, we are
told, are seduced from solid and improving reading, by the
mass of daily, weekly, and monthly periodicals which lie in
wait for them on every hand. But no indiscriminate censure
of periodicals or of their reading, can blind us to the
fact of their great value. Because some persons devote an
inordinate amount of time to them, is no reason why we
should fail to use them judiciously ourselves, or to aid
others in doing so. And because many periodicals (and
even the vast majority) are of little importance, and are
filled with trifling and ephemeral matter, that fact does
not discredit the meritorious ones. Counterfeit currency
does not diminish the value of the true coin; it is very sure
to find its own just level at last; and so the wretched or
the sensational periodical, however pretentious, will fall
into inevitable neglect and failure in the long run.

It is true that the figures as to the relative issues of
books and periodicals in the publishing world are startling
enough to give us pause. It has been computed that of
the annual product of the American press, eighty-two per
cent. consists of newspapers, ten per cent. of magazines and[158]
reviews, and only eight per cent. of books. Yet this vast
redundancy of periodical literature is by no means such
a menace to our permanent literature as it appears at
first sight;—and that for three reasons: (1) a large share
of the books actually published, appear in the first instance
in the periodicals in serial or casual form; (2) the
periodicals contain very much matter of permanent value;
(3) the steady increase of carefully prepared books in the
publishing world, while it may not keep pace with the
rapid increase of periodicals, evinces a growth in the right
direction. It is no longer so easy to get a crude or a poor
book published, as it was a generation ago. The standard
of critical taste has risen, and far more readers are judges
of what constitutes a really good book than ever before.
While it is true that our periodical product has so grown,
that whereas there were twenty years ago, in 1878, only
7,958 different newspapers and magazines published in the
United States, there are now, in 1899, over 20,500 issued,
it can also be stated that the annual product of books has
increased in the same twenty years from less than two
thousand to more than five thousand volumes of new issues
in a year. Whatever may be the future of our American
literature, it can hardly be doubted that the tendency is
steadily toward the production of more books, and better
ones.

Whether a public library be large or small, its value to
students will depend greatly upon the care and completeness
with which its selection of periodical works is made,
and kept up from year to year. Nothing is more common
in all libraries, public and private, than imperfect and partially
bound sets of serials, whether newspapers, reviews,
magazines or the proceedings and reports of scientific and
other societies. Nothing can be more annoying than to
find the sets of such publications broken at the very point[159]
where the reference or the wants of those consulting them
require satisfaction. In these matters, perpetual vigilance
is the price of completeness; and the librarian who is not
willing or able to devote the time and means requisite to
complete the files of periodical publications under his
charge is to be censured or commiserated, according to the
causes of the failure. The first essential in keeping up the
completeness of files of ephemeral publications, next to
vigilance on the part of their custodian, is room for the
arrangement of the various parts, and means for binding
with promptitude. Some libraries, and among them a
few of the largest, are so hampered for want of room, that
their serials are piled in heaps without order or arrangement,
and are thus comparatively useless until bound. In
the more fortunate institutions, which possess adequate
space for the orderly arrangement of all their stores, there
can be no excuse for failing to supply any periodical,
whether bound or unbound, at the moment it is called for.
It is simply necessary to devote sufficient time each day to
the systematic arrangement of all receipts: to keep each
file together in chronological order; to supply them for the
perusal of readers, with a proper check or receipt, and to
make sure of binding each new volume as fast as the publication
of titles and index enables it to be done properly.
While some libraries receive several thousands of serials,
the periodical publications taken by others amount to a
very small number; but in either case, the importance of
prompt collation and immediate supply of missing parts
or numbers is equally imperative. While deficiencies in
daily newspapers can rarely be made up after the week, and
sometimes not after the day of their appearance, the missing
parts of official and other publications, as well as of
reviews and magazines appearing at less frequent intervals,
can usually be supplied within the year, although a more[160]
prompt securing of them is often necessary. In these
publications, as in the acquisition of books for any library,
the collation of each part or number is imperative, in order
to avoid imperfections which may be irreparable.

First in the ranks of these ephemeral publications, in
order of number, if not of importance, come the journals
of all classes, daily and weekly, political, illustrated, literary,
scientific, mechanical, professional, agricultural, financial,
etc. From the obscure and fugitive beginnings of
journalism in the sixteenth century to the establishment
of the first continuous newspaper—the London Weekly
News, in 1622, and Renaudot’s Gazette (afterwards the
Gazette de France) in 1631, followed by the issue of the first
daily newspaper, the London Daily Courant, in 1702, and
the Boston Weekly News-letter in 1704, (the first American
journal)—to the wonderful fecundity of the modern
periodical press, which scatters the leaves of more than
thirty thousand different journals broadcast over the
world, there is a long and interesting history of the trials
and triumphs of a free press. In whatever respect American
libraries may fall behind those of older lands (and their
deficiencies are vast, and, in many directions permanent)
it may be said with confidence, that in the United States
the newspaper has received its widest and most complete
development. Numerically, the fullest approximate return
of the newspaper and periodical press gives a total
number of 21,500 periodical publications, regularly appearing
within the limits of the United States.

While no one library, however large and comprehensive,
has either the space or the means to accumulate a tithe of
the periodicals that swarm from a productive press, there
are valid reasons why more attention should be paid by the
librarian to a careful preservation of a wise selection of the
best of all this current literature. The modern newspaper[161]
and other periodical publications afford the fullest and
truest, and on the whole, the most impartial image of the
age we live in, that can be derived from a single source.
Taken together, they afford the richest material for the
historian, or the student of politics, of society, of literature,
and of civilization in all its varied aspects. What
precious memorials of the day, even the advertisements
and brief paragraphs of the newspapers of a century ago
afford us! While in a field so vast, it is impossible for any
one library to be more than a gleaner, no such institution
can afford to neglect the collection and preservation of at
least some of the more important newspapers from year to
year. A public library is not for one generation only, but
it is for all time. Opportunities once neglected of securing
the current periodicals of any age in continuous and
complete form seldom or never recur. The principle of
selection will of course vary in different libraries and localities.
While the safest general rule is to secure the best
and most representative of all the journals, reviews, and
magazines within the limit of the funds which can be devoted
to that purpose, there is another principle which
should largely guide the selection. In each locality, it
should be one leading object of the principal library to
gather within its walls the fullest representation possible,
of the literature relating to its own State and neighborhood.
In every city and large town, the local journals and
other periodicals should form an indispensable part of a
public library collection. Where the means are wanting
to purchase these, the proprietors will frequently furnish
them free of expense, for public use; but no occasion
should be lost of securing, immediately on its issue from
the press, every publication, large or small, which relates
to the local history or interests of the place where the
library is maintained.

[162]While the files of the journals of any period furnish unquestionably
the best instruments for the history of that
epoch, it is lamentable to reflect that so little care has ever
been taken to preserve a fair representation of those of any
age. The destiny of nearly all newspapers is swift destruction;
and even those which are preserved, commonly survive
in a lamentably fragmentary state. The obvious
causes of the rapid disappearance of periodical literature,
are its great volume, necessarily increasing with every year,
the difficulty of lodging the files of any long period in our
narrow apartments, and the continual demand for paper
for the uses of trade. To these must be added the great
cost of binding files of journals, increasing in the direct
ratio of the size of the volume. As so formidable an expense
can be incurred by very few private subscribers to
periodicals, so much the more important is it that the public
libraries should not neglect a duty which they owe to
their generation, as well as to those that are to follow.
These poor journals of to-day, which everybody is willing
to stigmatize as trash, not worth the room to store or the
money to bind, are the very materials which the man of the
future will search for with eagerness, and for some of
which he will be ready to pay their weight in gold. These
representatives of the commercial, industrial, inventive,
social, literary, political, moral and religious life of the
times, should be preserved and handed down to posterity
with sedulous care. No historian or other writer on any
subject who would write conscientiously or with full information,
can afford to neglect this fruitful mine of the journals,
where his richest materials are frequently to be
found.

In the absence of any great library of journals, or of that
universal library which every nation should possess, it becomes
the more important to assemble in the various local[163]
libraries all those ephemeral publications, which, if not
thus preserved contemporaneously with their issue, will
disappear utterly, and elude the search of future historical
inquirers. And that library which shall most sedulously
gather and preserve such fugitive memorials of the life of
the people among which it is situated will be found to have
best subserved its purpose to the succeeding generations of
men.

Not less important than the preservation of newspapers
is that of reviews and magazines. In fact, the latter are
almost universally recognized as far more important than
the more fugitive literature of the daily and weekly press.
Though inferior to the journals as historical and statistical
materials, reviews and magazines supply the largest fund
of discussion concerning such topics of scientific, social,
literary, and religious interest as occupy the public mind
during the time in which they appear. More and more
the best thought of the times gets reflected in the pages
of this portion of the periodical press. No investigator in
any department can afford to overlook the rich stores contributed
to thought in reviews and magazines. These articles
are commonly more condensed and full of matter
than the average books of the period. While every library,
therefore, should possess for the current use and
ultimate reference of its readers a selection of the best,
as large as its means will permit, a great and comprehensive
library, in order to be representative of the national
literature, should possess them all.

The salient fact that the periodical press absorbs, year
by year, more of the talent which might otherwise be expended
upon literature of more permanent form is abundantly
obvious. This tendency has both its good and its
evil results. On the one hand, the best writing ability is[164]
often drawn out by magazines and journals, which are keen
competitors for attractive matter, and for known reputations,
and sometimes they secure both in combination.
On the other hand, it is a notable fact that writers capable
of excellent work often do great injustice to their reputations
by producing too hastily articles written to order, instead
of the well-considered, ripe fruits of their literary
skill. Whether the brief article answering the limits of
a magazine or a review is apt to be more or less superficial
than a book treating the same topic, is a question admitting
of different views. If the writer is capable of skilful
condensation, without loss of grace of composition, or of
graphic power, then the article, measured by its influence
upon the public mind, must be preferred to the more diffuse
treatise of the book. It has the immense advantage
of demanding far less of the reader’s time; and whenever
its conclusions are stated in a masterly way, its impression
should be quite as lasting as that of any book treating a
similar theme. Such is doubtless the effect of the abler
articles written for periodicals, which are more condensed
and full of matter in speedily available form, than the
average book of the period. In this sense it is a misuse of
terms to call the review article ephemeral, or to treat the
periodicals containing them as perishable literary commodities,
which serve their term with the month or year that
produced them. On the contrary, the experience of librarians
shows that the most sought-for, and the most useful
contributions to any subject are frequently found, not in
the books written upon it, but in the files of current periodicals,
or in those of former years. It is especially to be
noted that the book may frequently lose its adaptation and
usefulness by lapse of time, and the onward march of science,
while the article is apt to reflect the latest light which
can help to illustrate the subject.

[165]While, therefore, there is always a liability of finding
many crude and sketchy contributions in the literature of
the periodical press, its conductors are ever on the alert
to reduce to a minimum the weak or unworthy offerings,
and to secure a maximum of articles embodying mature
thought and fit expression. The pronounced tendency toward
short methods in every channel of human activity, is
reflected in the constantly multiplying series of periodical
publications.

The publishing activities of the times are taking on
a certain coöperative element, which was not formerly
known. Thus, the “literary syndicate” has been developed
by degrees into one of the most far-reaching agencies for
popular entertainment. The taste for short stories, in
place of the ancient three volume novel, has been cultivated
even in conservative England, and has become so
wide-spread in the United States, that very few periodicals
which deal in fiction at all, are without their stories begun
and finished in a single issue. The talent required to produce
a fascinating and successful fiction in this narrow
compass is a peculiar one, and while there are numerous
failures, there are also a surprising number of successes.
Well written descriptive articles, too, are in demand, and
special cravings for personal gossip and lively sketches of
notable living characters are manifest. That perennial interest
which mankind and womankind evince in every individual
whose name, for whatever reason, has become
familiar, supplies a basis for an inexhaustible series of light
paragraphic articles. Another fruitful field for the syndicate
composition is brief essays upon any topic of the times,
the fashions, notable events, or new inventions, public
charities, education, governmental doings, current political
movements, etc. These appear almost simultaneously,
in many different periodicals, scattered throughout the[166]
country, under the copyright imprimatur, which warns off
all journals from republishing, which have not subscribed
to the special “syndicate” engaging them. Thus each
periodical secures, at extremely moderate rates, contributions
which are frequently written by the most noted and
popular living writers, who, in their turn, are much better
remunerated for their work than they would be for the
same amount of writing if published in book form.
Whether this now popular method of attaining a wide and
remunerative circulation for their productions will prove
permanent, is less certain than that many authors now find
it the surest road to profitable employment of their pens.
The fact that it rarely serves to introduce unknown writers
of talent to the reading world, may be laid to the account
of the eagerness of the syndicates to secure names that already
enjoy notoriety.

The best method for filing newspapers for current reading
is a vexed question in libraries. In the large ones,
where room enough exists, large reading-stands with sloping
sides furnish the most convenient access, provided with
movable metal rods to keep the papers in place. Where
no room exists for these stands, some of the numerous portable
newspaper-file inventions, or racks, may be substituted,
allowing one to each paper received at the library.

For filing current magazines, reviews, and the smaller
newspapers, like the literary and technical journals, various
plans are in use. All of these have advantages, while
none is free from objection. Some libraries use the ordinary
pamphlet case, in which the successive numbers are
kept until a volume is accumulated for binding. This requires
a separate case for each periodical, and where many
are taken, is expensive, though by this method the magazines
are kept neat and in order. Others use small newspaper
files or tapes for periodicals. Others still arrange[167]
them alphabetically on shelves, in which case the latest issues
are found on top, if the chronology is preserved. In
serving periodicals to readers, tickets should be required
(as for books) with title and date, as a precaution against
loss, or careless leaving upon tables.

Whether current periodicals are ever allowed to be
drawn out, must depend upon several weighty considerations.
When only one copy is taken, no circulation should
be permitted, so that the magazines and journals may be
always in, at the service of readers frequenting the library.
But in some large public libraries, where several copies of
each of the more popular serials are subscribed to, it is the
custom to keep one copy (sometimes two) always in, and to
allow the duplicate copies to be drawn out. This circulation
should be limited to a period much shorter than is allowed
for keeping books.

In no case, should the bound volumes of magazines, reviews,
and journals of whatever kind be allowed to leave
the library. This is a rule which should be enforced for
the common benefit of all the readers, since to lend to one
reader any periodical or work of general reference is to deprive
all the rest of its use just so long as it is out of the
library. This has become all the more important since the
publication of Poole’s Indexes to periodical literature has
put the whole reading community on the quest for information
to be found only (in condensed form, or in the
latest treatment) in the volumes of the periodical press.
And it is really no hardship to any quick, intelligent
reader, to require that these valuable serials should be used
within the library only. An article is not like a book;—a
long and perhaps serious study, requiring many hours or
days to master it. The magazine or review article, whatever
other virtues it may lack, has the supreme merit of
brevity.

[168]The only valid exception which will justify loaning the
serial volumes of periodicals outside the library, is when
there are duplicate sets of any of them. Some large libraries
having a wide popular circulation are able to buy two
or more sets of the magazines most in demand, and so to
lend one out, while another is kept constantly in for use
and reference. And even a library of small means might
secure for its shelves duplicate sets of many periodicals, by
simply making known that it would be glad to receive from
any families or other owners, all the numbers of their
magazines, etc., which they no longer need for use. This
would bring in, in any large town or city, a copious supply
of periodicals which house-keepers, tired of keeping, storing
and dusting such unsightly property, would be glad to
bestow where they would do the most good.

Whatever periodicals are taken, it is essential to watch
over their completeness by keeping a faithfully revised
check-list. This should be ruled to furnish blank spaces
for each issue of all serials taken, whether quarterly,
monthly, weekly, or daily, and no week should elapse without
complete scrutiny of the list, and ordering all missing
numbers from the publishers. Mail failures are common,
and unceasing vigilance is the price that must be paid for
completeness. The same check-list, by other spaces,
should show the time of expiration of subscriptions, and
the price paid per year. And where a large number of
periodicals are received, covering many parts of the country,
they should be listed, not only by an alphabet of titles,
but by another alphabet of places where published, as well.

If a new library is to be formed, having no sets of periodicals
on which to build, effort should be made to secure full
sets from the beginning of as many of the prominent magazines
and reviews, American and foreign, as the funds will
permit. It is expedient to wait a little, rather than to take[169]
up with incomplete sets, as full ones are pretty sure to turn
up, and competition between the many dealers should
bring down prices to a fair medium. In fact, many old
sets of magazines are offered surprisingly cheap, and usually
well-bound. But vigilant care must be exercised
to secure perfect sets, as numbers are often mutilated, or
deficient in some pages or illustrations. This object can
only be secured by collation of every volume, page by page,
with due attention to the list of illustrations, if any are
published.

In the absence of British bibliographical enterprise (a
want much to be deplored) it has fallen to the lot of American
librarians to produce the only general index of subjects
to English periodical literature which exists. Poole’s
Index to Periodical Literature is called by the name of its
senior editor, the late Dr. Wm. F. Poole, and was contributed
to by many librarians on a coöperative division of
labor, in indexing, under direction of Mr. Wm. I. Fletcher,
librarian of Amherst College. This index to leading periodicals
is literally invaluable, and indispensable as an aid
to research. Its first volume indexes in one alphabet the
periodicals embraced, from their first issues up to 1882.
The second volume runs from 1882 to 1887, and the third
covers the period from 1887 to 1891, while a fourth volume
indexes the periodicals from 1892 to 1896, inclusive.
For 1897, and each year after, an annual index to the publications
of the year is issued.

Besides this, the Review of Reviews publishes monthly an
index to one month’s leading periodicals, and also an annual
index, very full, in a single alphabet. And the
“Cumulative Index,” issued both monthly and quarterly,
by W. H. Brett, the Cleveland, Ohio, librarian, is an admirably
full means of keeping our keys to periodical literature
up to date. There are other indexes to periodicals,[170]
published monthly or quarterly, too numerous to be noticed
here. The annual New York Tribune Index (the
only daily journal, except the London Times, which prints
an index) is highly useful, and may be used for other newspapers
as well, for the most important events or discussions,
enabling one to search the dailies for himself, the
date once being fixed by aid of the index.

Mention should also be made here of the admirably comprehensive
annual “Rowell’s Newspaper Directory,” which
should rather be called the “American Periodical Directory,”
since it has a classified catalogue of all periodicals
published in the United States and Canada.

[171]

CHAPTER 9.

The Art of Reading.

“The true University of these days,” says a great scholar
of our century, Thomas Carlyle, “is a collection of books,
and all education is to teach us how to read.”

If there were any volume, out of the multitude of books
about books that have been written, which could illuminate
the pathway of the unskilled reader, so as to guide him into
all knowledge by the shortest road, what a boon that book
would be!

When we survey the vast and rapidly growing product of
the modern press,—when we see these hosts of poets without
imagination, historians without accuracy, critics without
discernment, and novelists without invention or style,
in short, the whole prolific brood of writers who do not
know how to write,—we are tempted to echo the sentiment
of Wordsworth:—

The most that any one can hope to do for others is to
suggest to them a clue which, however feeble, has helped
to guide his uncertain footsteps through the labyrinthian
maze of folly and wisdom which we call literature.

The knowledge acquired by a Librarian, while it may be
very wide and very varied, runs much risk of being as
superficial as it is diversified. There is a very prevalent,
but very erroneous notion which conceives of a librarian
as a kind of animated encyclopaedia, who, if you tap him
in any direction, from A to Z, will straightway pour forth a
flood of knowledge upon any subject in history, science, or[172]
literature. This popular ideal, however fine in theory, has
to undergo what commercial men call a heavy discount
when reduced to practice. The librarian is a constant
and busy worker in far other fields than exploring the contents
of books. His day is filled with cataloguing, arranging
and classifying them, searching catalogues, selecting
new books, correspondence, directing assistants, keeping
library records, adjusting accounts, etc., in the midst of
which he is constantly at the call of the public for books
and information. What time has he, wearied by the day’s
multifarious and exacting labors, for any thorough study
of books? So, when anyone begins an inquiry with, “You
know everything; can you tell me,”—I say: “Stop a moment;
omniscience is not a human quality; I really know
very few things, and am not quite sure of some of them.”
There are many men, and women, too, in almost every
community, whose range of knowledge is more extended
than that of most librarians.

The idea, then, that because one lives perpetually among
books, he absorbs all the learning that they contain, must
be abandoned as a popular delusion. To know a little
upon many subjects is quite compatible with not knowing
much about any one. “Beware of the man of one book,”
is an ancient proverb, pregnant with meaning. The man
of one book, if it is wisely chosen, and if he knows it all,
can sometimes confound a whole assembly of scholars. An
American poet once declared to me that all leisure time is
lost that is not spent in reading Shakespeare. And we remember
Emerson’s panegyric upon Plato’s writings, borrowing
from the Caliph Omar his famous (but apocryphal)
sentence against all books but the Koran: “Burn all the
libraries, for their value is in this book.” So Sheffield,
duke of Buckingham:

[173]

Of course I am far from designing to say anything
against the widest study, which great libraries exist to
supply and to encourage; and all utterances of a half-truth,
like the maxim I have quoted, are exaggerations.
But the saying points a moral—and that is, the supreme
importance of thoroughness in all that we undertake. The
poetical wiseacre who endowed the world with the maxim,
“A little learning is a dangerous thing,” does not appear
to have reflected upon the logical sequence of the dictum,
namely: that if a little learning upon any subject is dangerous,
then less must be still more dangerous.

The art of reading to the best advantage implies the
command of adequate time to read. The art of having
time to read depends upon knowing how to make the best
use of our days. Days are short, and time is fleeting, but
no one’s day ever holds less than 24 hours. Engrossing
as one’s occupation may be, it need never consume all
the time remaining from sleep, refreshment and social intercourse.
The half hour before breakfast, the fifteen
minutes waiting for dinner, given to the book you wish to
read, will soon finish it, and make room for another. The
busiest men I have known have often been the most intelligent,
and the widest readers. The idle person never
knows how to make use of odd moments; the busy one
always knows how. Yet the vast majority of people go
through life without ever learning the great lesson of the
supreme value of moments.

Let us suppose that you determine to devote two hours
every day to reading. That is equivalent to more than
seven hundred hours a year, or to three months of work[174]ing
time of eight hours a day. What could you not do in
three months, if you had all the time to yourself? You
could almost learn a new language, or master a new science;
yet this two hours a day, which would give you three
months of free time every year, is frittered away, you
scarcely know how, in aimless matters that lead to nothing.

A famous writer of our century, some of whose books
you have read,—Edward Bulwer Lytton,—devoted only
four hours a day to writing; yet he produced more than
sixty volumes of fiction, poetry, drama and criticism, of
singular literary merit. The great naturalist, Darwin, a
chronic sufferer from a depressing malady, counted two
hours a fortunate day’s work for him; yet he accomplished
results in the world of science which render his name immortal.

Be not over particular as to hours, or the time of day,
and you will soon find that all hours are good for the muse.
Have a purpose, and adhere to it with good-humored pertinacity.
Be independent of the advice and opinions of
others; the world of books, like the world of nature, was
made for you; possess it in your own way. If you find no
good in ancient history or in metaphysics, let them alone
and read books of art, or poetry, or biography, or voyages
and travels. The wide domain of knowledge and the
world of books are so related, that all roads cross and converge,
like the paths that carry us over the surface of the
globe on which we live. Many a reader has learned more
of past times from good biographies, than from any formal
history; and it is a fact that many owe to the plays of
Shakespeare and the novels of Walter Scott nearly all the
knowledge which they possess of the history of England
and Scotland.

It is unhappily true that books do not teach the use of
books. The art of extracting what is important or in[175]structive
in any book, from the mass of verbiage that commonly
overlays it, cannot be learned by theory. Invaluable
as the art of reading is, as a means of enlightenment,
its highest uses can only be obtained by a certain method
of reading, which will separate the wheat from the chaff.
Different readers will, of course, possess different capacities
for doing this. Young or undisciplined minds can read
only in one way,—and that way is, to mentally pronounce
every word, and dwell equally upon all the parts of every
sentence. This comes naturally in the first instance, from
the mere method of learning to read, in which every word
is a spoken symbol, and has to be sounded, whether it is essential
to the sense, or not. This habit of reading, which
may be termed the literal method, goes with most persons
through life. Once learned, it is very hard to unlearn.
There are multitudes who cannot read a newspaper, even,
without dwelling upon every word, and coming to a full
stop at the end of every sentence. Now this method of
reading, while it may be indispensable to all readers at
some time, and to some readers at all times, is too slow and
fruitless for the student who aims to absorb the largest
amount of knowledge in the briefest space of time. Life
is too short to be wasted over the rhetoric or the periods
of an author whose knowledge we want as all that concerns
us.

Doubtless there are classes of literature in which form
or expression predominates, and we cannot read poetry,
for example, or the drama, or even the higher class of fiction,
without lingering upon the finer passages, to get the
full impression of their beauty. In reading works of the
imagination, we read not for ideas alone, but for expression
also, and to enjoy the rhythm and melody of the verse,
if it be poetry, or, if prose, the finished rhetoric, and the
pleasing cadence of the style. It is here that the literary[176]
skill of an accomplished writer, and all that we understand
by rhetoric, becomes important, while in reading for information
only, we may either ignore words and phrases
entirely, or subordinate them to the ideas which they convey.
In reading any book for the knowledge it contains,
I should as soon think of spelling out all the words, as of
reading out all the sentences. Just as, in listening to a
slow speaker, you divine the whole meaning of what he is
about to say, before he has got half through his sentence,
so, in reading, you can gather the full sense of the ideas
which any sentence contains, without stopping to accentuate
the words.

Leaving aside the purely literary works, in which form
or style is a predominant element, let us come to books of
science, history, biography, voyages, travels, etc. In these,
the primal aim is to convey information, and thus the style
of expression is little or nothing—the thought or the fact
is all. Yet most writers envelop the thought or the fact
in so much verbiage, complicate it with so many episodes,
beat it out thin, by so much iteration and reiteration, that
the student must needs learn the art of skipping, in self-defense.
To one in zealous pursuit of knowledge, to read
most books through is paying them too extravagant a compliment.
He has to read between the lines, as it were, to
note down a fact here, or a thought there, or an illustration
elsewhere, and leaves alone all that contributes nothing
to his special purpose. As the quick, practiced eye
glances over the visible signs of thought, page after page
is rapidly absorbed, and a book which would occupy an
ordinary reader many days in reading, is mastered in a few
hours.

The habit of reading which I have outlined, and which
may be termed the intuitive method, or, if you prefer it,
the short-hand method, will more than double the working[177]
power of the reader. It is not difficult to practice, especially
to a busy man, who does with all his might what he
has got to do. But it should be learned early in life, when
the faculties are fresh, the mind full of zeal for knowledge,
and the mental habits are ductile, not fixed. With
it one’s capacity for acquiring knowledge, and consequently
his accomplishment, whether as writer, teacher,
librarian, or private student, will be immeasureably increased.

Doubtless it is true that some native or intuitive gifts
must be conjoined with much mental discipline and perseverance,
in order to reach the highest result, in this
method of reading, as in any other study. “Non omnia
possumus omnes,” Virgil says; and there are intellects who
could no more master such a method, than they could understand
the binomial theorem, or calculate the orbit of
Uranus. If it be true, as has been epigramatically said,
that “a great book is a great evil,” let it be reduced to a
small one by the skilful use of the art of skipping. Then,
“he that runs may read” as he runs—while, without this
refuge, he that reads will often assuredly be tempted to
run.

What I said, just now, in deprecation of set courses of
reading, was designed for private students only, who so
often find a stereotyped sequence of books barren or uninteresting.
It was not intended to discourage the pursuit
of a special course of study in the school, or the society, or
the reading class. This is, in fact, one of the best means
of intellectual progress. Here, there is the opportunity
to discuss the style, the merits, and the characteristics of
the author in hand, and by the attrition of mind with
mind, to inform and entertain the whole circle of readers.
In an association of this kind, embracing one or two acute
minds, the excellent practice of reading aloud finds its best[178]
results. Here, too, the art of expression becomes important,
how to adapt the sound to the sense, by a just emphasis,
intonation, and modulation of the voice. In short, the
value of a book thus read and discussed, in an appreciative
circle, may be more than doubled to each reader.

It is almost literally true that no book, undertaken
merely as task work, ever helped the reader to knowledge
of permanent or material value. How many persons,
struck by Mr. Emerson’s exalted praise of the writings of
Plato, have undertaken to go through the Dialogues.
Alas! for the vain ambition to be or to seem learned! After
trying to understand the Phaedo, or falling asleep over
the Gorgias, the book has been dropped as hastily as it was
taken up. It was not perceived that in order to enjoy or
comprehend a philosopher, one must have a capacity for
ideas. It requires almost as much intelligence to appreciate
an idea as to conceive one. One will bring nothing
home from the most persistent cruise after knowledge, unless
he carries something out. In the realm of learning,
we recognize the full meaning of that Scripture, that to
him that hath, shall be given; and he that hath not,
though never so anxious to read and understand Plato, will
quickly return to the perusal of his daily newspaper.

It were easier, perhaps, in one sense, to tell what not
to read, than to recommend what is best worth reading.
In the publishing world, this is the age of compilation,
not of creation. If we seek for great original works, if
we must go to the wholesale merchants to buy knowledge,
since retail geniuses are worth but little, one must go
back many years for his main selection of books. It would
not be a bad rule for those who can read but little, to read
no book until it has been published at least a year or two.
This fever for the newest books is not a wholesome condition
of the mind. And since a selection must indispensa[179]bly
be made, and that selection must be, for the great mass
of readers, so rigid and so small, why should precious time
be wasted upon the ephemeral productions of the hour?
What business, for example, has one to be reading Rider
Haggard, or Amélie Rives, or Ian Maclaren, who has never
read Homer, or Dante, or even so much as half-a-dozen
plays of Shakespeare?

One hears with dismay that about three-fourths of the
books drawn from our popular libraries are novels. Now,
while such aimless reading, merely to be amused, is doubtless
better than no reading at all, it is unquestionably true
that over-much reading of fiction, especially at an early
age, enervates the mind, weakens the will, makes dreamers
instead of thinkers and workers, and fills the imagination
with morbid and unreal views of life. Yet the vast consumption
of novels is due more to the cheapness and wide
diffusion of such works, and the want of wise direction in
other fields, than to any original tendency on the part of
the young. People will always read the most, that which
is most put before them, if only the style be attractive.
The mischief that is done by improper books is literally
immeasureable. The superabundance of cheap fictions in
the markets creates and supplies an appetite which should
be directed by wise guidance into more improving fields.
A two-fold evil follows upon the reading of every unworthy
book; in the first place, it absorbs the time which
should be bestowed upon a worthy one; and secondly, it
leaves the mind and heart unimproved, instead of conducing
to the benefit of both. As there are few books more
elevating than a really good novel, so there are none more
fruitful of evil than a bad one.

And what of the newspaper? it may be asked. When I
consider for how much really good literature we are beholden
to the daily and weekly press, how indispensable[180]
is its function as purveyor of the news of the world, how
widely it has been improved in recent years, I cannot advise
quarreling with the bridge that brings so many across
the gulf of ignorance. Yet the newspaper, like the book,
is to be read sparingly, and with judgment. It is to be
used, not abused. I call that an abuse which squanders
the precious and unreturning hours over long chronicles
of depravity. The murders, the suicides, the executions,
the divorces, the criminal trials, are each and all so like
one another that it is only a wanton waste of time to read
them. The morbid style in which social disorders of all
kinds are written up in the sensational press, with staring
headlines to attract attention, ought to warn off every
healthy mind from their perusal. Every scandal in society
that can be brought to the surface is eagerly caught
up and paraded, while the millions of people who lead
blameless lives of course go unnoticed and unchronicled.
Such journals thus inculcate the vilest pessimism, instead
of a wholesome and honest belief in the average decency
of human nature. The prolixity of the narrative,
too, is always in monstrous disproportion to its importance.
“Does not the burning of a metropolitan theatre,” says a
great writer, “take above a million times as much telling as
the creation of a world?” Here is where the art of skipping
is to be rigorously applied. Read the newspaper by
headlines only,—skipping all the murders, all the fires, all
the executions, all the crimes, all the news, except the most
important and immediately interesting,—and you will
spend perhaps fifteen or twenty minutes upon what would
otherwise occupy hours. It is no exaggeration to say that
most persons have spent time enough over the newspapers,
to have given them a liberal education.

As all readers cannot have the same gifts, so all cannot[181]
enjoy the same books. There are those who can see no
greatness in Shakespeare, but who think Tupper’s Proverbial
Philosophy sublime. Some will eagerly devour
every novel of Miss Braddon’s, or “The Duchess,” or the
woman calling herself “Ouida,” but they cannot appreciate
the masterly fictions of Thackeray. I have known very
good people who could not, for the life of them, find any
humor in Dickens, but who actually enjoyed the strained
wit of Mrs. Partington and Bill Nye. Readers who could
not get through a volume of Gibbon will read with admiration
a so-called History of Napoleon by Abbott. And I
fear that you will find many a young lady of to-day, who is
content to be ignorant of Homer and Shakespeare, but who
is ravished by the charms of “Trilby” or the “Heavenly
Twins.” But taste in literature, as in art, or in anything
else, can be cultivated. Lay down the rule, and adhere
to it, to read none but the best books, and you will soon
lose all relish for the poor ones. You can educate readers
into good judges, in no long time, by feeding them on the
masterpieces of English prose and poetry. Surely, we all
have cause to deprecate the remorseless flood of fictitious
literature in which better books are drowned.

Be not dismayed at the vast multitude of books, nor fear
that, with your small leisure, you will never be able to
master any appreciable share of them. Few and far between
are the great books of the world. The works which
it is necessary to know, may be comprised in a comparatively
small compass. The rest are to be preserved in the
great literary conservatories, some as records of the past,
others as chronicles of the times, and not a few as models
to be avoided. The Congressional Library at Washington
is our great National conservatory of books. As the library
of the government—that is, of the whole people,—it
is inclusive of all the literature which the country pro[182]duces,
while all the other libraries are and must be more
or less exclusive. No National Library can ever be too
large. In order that the completeness of the collection
shall not fail, and to preserve the whole of our literature,
it is put into the Statute of Copyright, as a condition precedent
of the exclusive right to multiply copies of any book,
that it shall be deposited in the Library of Congress. Apprehension
is sometimes expressed that our National Library
will become overloaded with trash, and so fail of its
usefulness. ‘Tis a lost fear. There is no act of Congress
requiring all the books to be read. The public sense is
continually winnowing and sifting the literature of every
period, and to books and their authors, every day is the day
of judgment. Nowhere in the world is the inexorable law
of the survival of the fittest more rigidly applied than in
the world of books. The works which are the most frequently
re-printed in successive ages are the ones which it
is safe to stand by.

Books may be divided into three classes: 1st, acquaintances;
2d, friends; and 3d, intimates.

It is well enough to have an acquaintance with a multitude
of books, as with many people; though in either case
much time should not be given to merely pleasant intercourse,
that leads to no result. With our literary friends,
we can spend more time, for they awaken keen interest,
and are to be read with zest, and consequently with profit.
But for our chosen intimates, our heart-companions, we
reserve our highest regard, and our best hours. Choice
and sacred is the book that makes an era in the life of the
reader; the book which first rouses his higher nature, and
awakens the reason or the imagination. Such a volume
will many a one remember; the book which first excited
his own thought, made him conscious of untried powers,
and opened to his charmed vision a new world.

[183]Such a book has Carlyle’s Sartor Resartus been to many;
or the play of Hamlet, read for the first time; or the Faust
of Goethe; or the Confessions of St. Augustine; or an essay
of Emerson; or John Ruskin; or the Divine Comedy of
Dante; or even an exquisite work of fiction, like John Halifax,
or Henry Esmond. What the book is that works such
miracles is never of so much importance as the epoch in
the mind of the reader which it signalizes. It were vain
to single out any one writer, and say to all readers—”Here
is the book that must indispensably be read;” for the same
book will have totally different effects upon different
minds, or even upon the same mind, at different stages of
development.

When I have been asked to contribute to the once popular
symposia upon “Books which have helped me,”—I have
declined, for such catalogues of intellectual aids are liable
to be very misleading. Thus, if I were to name the book
which did more than most others for my own mind, I
should say that it was the Emile of Rousseau, read at about
the age of seventeen. This work, written with that marvellous
eloquence which characterises all the best productions
of Jean Jacques, first brought me acquainted with
those advanced ideas of education which have penetrated
the whole modern world. Yet the Emile would probably
appear to most of my readers trite and common-place, as
it would now to me, for the reason that we have long
passed the period of development when its ideas were new
to us.

But the formative power of books can never be over-rated:
their subtle mastery to stimulate all the germs of intellectual
and moral life that lie enfolded in the mind. As
the poet sings—

Why should they not be so? They furnish us the means,[184]
and the only means, whereby we may hold communion
with the master-spirits of all ages. They bring us acquainted
with the best thoughts which the human mind
has produced, expressed in the noblest language. Books
create for us the many-sided world, carry us abroad, out
of our narrow provincial horizons, and reveal to us new
scenery, new men, new languages, and new modes of life.
As we read, the mind expands with the horizon, and becomes
broad as the blue heaven above us. With Homer,
we breathe the fresh air of the pristine world, when the
light of poetry gilded every mountain top, and peopled the
earth with heroes and demigods. With Plutarch, we walk
in company with sages, warriors, and statesmen, and kindle
with admiration of their virtues, or are roused to indignation
at their crimes. With Sophocles, we sound the depths
of human passion, and learn the sublime lesson of endurance.
We are charmed with an ode of Horace, perfect in
rhythm, perfect in sentiment, perfect in diction, and perfect
in moral; the condensed essence of volumes in a single
page. We walk with Dante through the nether world,
awed by the tremendous power with which he depicts for
us the secrets of the prison house. With Milton, we
mount heaven-ward, and in the immortal verse of his minor
poems, finer even than the stately march of Paradise Lost,
we hear celestial music, and breathe diviner air. With
that sovereign artist, Shakespeare, full equally of delight
and of majesty, we sweep the horizon of this complex human
life, and become comprehensive scholars and citizens
of the world. The masters of fiction enthrall us with
their fascinating pages, one moment shaking us with uncontrollable
laughter, and the next, dissolving us in tears.
In the presence of all these emanations of genius, the wise
reader may feed on nectar and ambrosia, and forget the
petty cares and vexations of to-day.

[185]There are some books that charm us by their wit or their
sweetness, others that surprise and captivate us by their
strength: books that refresh us when weary: books that
comfort us when afflicted: books that stimulate us by their
robust health: books that exalt and refine our natures, as
it were, to a finer mould: books that rouse us like the sound
of a trumpet: books that illumine the darkest hours, and
fill all our day with delight.

It is books that record the advance and the decline of
nations, the experience of the world, the achievements and
the possibilities of mankind. It is books that reveal to us
ideas and images almost above ourselves, and go far to open
for us the gates of the invisible. “A river of thought,”
says Emerson, “is continually flowing out of the invisible
world into the mind of man:” and we may add that books
contain the most fruitful and permanent of the currents
of that mighty river.

I am not disposed to celebrate the praises of all books,
nor to recommend to readers of any age a habit of indiscriminate
reading: but for the books which are true helpers
and teachers, the thoughts of the best poets, historians,
publicists, philosophers, orators,—if their value is not real,
then there are no realities in the world.

Very true is it, nevertheless, that the many-sided man
cannot be cultivated by books alone. One may learn by
heart whole libraries, and yet be profoundly unacquainted
with the face of nature, or the life of man. The pale student
who gives himself wholly to books pays the penalty by
losing that robust energy of character, that sympathy with
his kind, that keen sense of the charms of earth and sky,
that are essential to complete development. “The world’s
great men,” says Oliver Wendell Holmes, “have not commonly
been great scholars, nor its scholars great men.”
To know what other men have said about things is not al[186]ways
the most important part of knowledge. There is
nothing that can dispense us from the independent use of
our own faculties. Meditation and observation are more
valuable than mere absorption; and knowledge itself is not
wisdom. The true way to use books is to make them our
servants—not our masters. Very helpful, cheering, and
profitable will they become, when they fall naturally into
our daily life and growth—when they tally with the moods
of the mind.

The habits and methods of readers are as various as those
of authors. Thus, there are some readers who gobble a
book, as Boswell tells us Dr. Johnson used to gobble his
dinner—eagerly, and with a furious appetite, suggestive of
dyspepsia, and the non-assimilation of food. Then there
are slow readers, who plod along through a book, sentence
by sentence, putting in a mark conscientiously where they
left off to-day, so as to begin at the self-same spot to-morrow;
fast readers, who gallop through a book, as you would
ride a flying bicycle on a race; drowsy readers, to whom a
book is only a covert apology for a nap, and who pretend
to be reading Macaulay or Herbert Spencer only to dream
between the leaves; sensitive readers, who cannot abide the
least noise or interruption when reading, and to whose
nerves a foot-fall or a conversation is an exquisite torture;
absorbed readers, who are so pre-occupied with their pursuit
that they forget all their surroundings—the time of
day, the presence or the voices of others, the hour for dinner,
and even their own existence; credulous readers, who
believe everything they read because it is printed in a
book, and swallow without winking the most colossal lying;
critical and captious readers, who quarrel with the
blunders or the beliefs of their author, and who cannot refrain
from calling him an idiot or an ass—and perhaps
even writing him down so on his own pages; admiring and[187]
receptive readers, who find fresh beauties in a favorite
author every time they peruse him, and even discover beautiful
swans in the stupidest geese that ever cackled along
the flowery meads of literature; reverent readers, who treat
a book as they would treat a great and good man, considerately
and politely, carefully brushing the dust from a beloved
volume with the sleeve, or tenderly lifting a book
fallen to the floor, as if they thought it suffered, or felt
harm; careless and rough readers, who will turn down
books on their faces to keep the place, tumble them over
in heaps, cram them into shelves never meant for them,
scribble upon the margins, dogs-ear the leaves, or even cut
them with their fingers—all brutal and intolerable practices,
totally unworthy of any one pretending to civilization.

To those who have well learned the art of reading, what
inexhaustible delights does the world of books contain!
With Milton, “to behold the bright countenance of truth,
in the quiet and still air of delightful studies;” to journey
through far countries with Marco Polo; to steer across an
unknown sea with Columbus, or to brave the dangers of
the frozen ocean with Nansen or Dr. Kane; to study the
manners of ancient nations with Herodotus; to live over
again the life of Greece and Rome with Plutarch’s heroes;
to trace the decline of empires with Gibbon and Mommsen;
to pursue the story of the modern world in the pages of
Hume, Macaulay, Thiers and Sismondi, and our own Prescott,
Motley, and Bancroft; to enjoy afresh the eloquence
of Demosthenes, and the polished and splendid diction of
Cicero; to drink in the wisdom of philosophers, and to
walk with Socrates, Plato and the stoics through the
groves of Academia; to be kindled by the saintly utterances
of prophets and apostles, St. Paul’s high reasoning of
immortality, or the seraphic visions of St. John; to study[188]
the laws that govern communities with the great publicists,
or the economy of nations with Adam Smith and
Stuart Mill; with the naturalists, to sound the depths of
the argument as to the origin of species and the genesis of
man; with the astronomers, to leave the narrow bounds of
earth, and explore the illimitable spaces of the universe,
in which our solar system is but a speck; with the mathematicians,
to quit the uncertain realm of speculation and
assumption, and plant our feet firmly on the rock of exact
science:—to come back anon to lighter themes, and to
revel in the grotesque humor of Dickens, the philosophic
page of Bulwer, the chivalric romances of Walter Scott,
the ideal creations of Hawthorne, the finished life-pictures
of George Eliot, the powerful imagination of Victor Hugo,
and the masterly delineations of Thackeray; to hang over
the absorbing biographies of Dr. Franklin, Walter Scott
and Dr. Johnson; to peruse with fresh delight the masterpieces
of Irving and Goldsmith, and the best essays of Hazlitt,
De Quincey, Charles Lamb, and Montaigne; to feel
the inspiration of the great poets of all ages, from Homer
down to Tennyson; to read Shakespeare—a book that is in
itself almost a university:—is not all this satisfaction
enough for human appetite, however craving, solace
enough for trouble, however bitter, occupation enough for
life, however long?

There are pleasures that perish in the using; but the
pleasure which the art of reading carries with it is perennial.
He who can feast on the intellectual spoils of centuries
need fear neither poverty nor hunger. In the society
of those immortals who still rule our spirits from
their urns, we become assured that though heaven and
earth may pass away, no true thought shall ever pass away.

The great orator, on whose lips once hung multitudes,
dies and is forgotten; the great actor passes swiftly off the[189]
stage, and is seen no more; the great singer, whose voice
charmed listening crowds by its melody, is hushed in the
grave; the great preacher survives but a single generation
in the memory of men; all we who now live and act must
be, in a little while, with yesterday’s seven thousand years:—but
the book of the great writer lives on and on, inspiring
age after age of readers, and has in it more of the seeds
of immortality than anything upon earth.

[190]

CHAPTER 10.

Aids to Readers.

There is one venerable Latin proverb which deserves a
wider recognition than it has yet received. It is to the
effect that “the best part of learning is to know where to
find things.” From lack of this knowledge, an unskilled
reader will often spend hours in vainly searching for what
a skilled reader can find in less than five minutes. Now,
librarians are presumed to be skilled readers, although it
would not be quite safe to apply this designation to all of
that profession, since there are those among librarians, or
their assistants, who are mere novices in the art of reading
to advantage. Manifestly, one cannot teach what he does
not know: and so the librarian who has not previously travelled
the same road, will not be able to guide the inquiring
reader who asks him to point out the way. But if the way
has once been found, the librarian, with only a fairly good
memory, kept in constant exercise by his vocation, can find
it again. Still more surely, if he has been through it many
times, will he know it intuitively, the moment any question
is asked about it.

It is true of the great majority of readers resorting to
a library, that they have a most imperfect idea, both of
what they want, and of the proper way to find it. The
world of knowledge, they know, is vast, and they are quite
bewildered by the many paths that lead to some part or
other of it, crossing each other in all directions. And
among the would-be readers may be found every shade of
intelligence, and every degree of ignorance. There is the
timid variety, too modest or diffident to ask for any help at[191]
all, and so feeling about among the catalogues or other
reference-books in a baffled search for information. There
is the sciolist variety, who knows it all, or imagines that
he does, and who asks for proof of impossible facts, with
an assurance born of the profoundest ignorance. Then,
too, there is the half-informed reader, who is in search of
a book he once read, but has clean forgotten, which had a
remarkable description of a tornado in the West, or a
storm and ship-wreck at sea, or a wonderful tropical garden,
or a thrilling escape from prison, or a descent into the
bowels of the earth, or a tremendous snow-storm, or a
swarming flight of migratory birds, or a mausoleum of departed
kings, or a haunted chamber hung with tapestry,
or the fatal caving-in of a coal-mine, or a widely destructive
flood, or a hair-breadth escape from cannibals, or a
race for life, pursued by wolves, or a wondrous sub-marine
grotto, or a terrible forest fire, or any one of a hundred
scenes or descriptions, all of which the librarian is presumed,
not only to have read, but to have retained in his
memory the author, the title, and the very chapter of the
book which contained it.

To give some idea of the extent and variety of information
which a librarian is supposed to possess, I have been
asked, almost at the same time, to refer a reader to the
origin of Candlemas day, to define the Pragmatic Sanction,
to give, out of hand, the aggregate wealth of Great
Britain, compared with that of half-a-dozen other nations,
to define the limits of neutrality or belligerent rights, to
explain what is meant by the Gresham law, to tell what ship
has made the quickest voyage to Europe, when she made
it, and what the time was, to elucidate the meaning of the
Carolina doctrine, to explain the character and objects of
the Knights of the Golden Circle, to tell how large are the
endowments of the British Universities, to give the origin[192]
of the custom of egg-rolling, to tell the meaning of the
cipher dispatches, to explain who was “Extra Billy Smith,”
to tell the aggregate number killed on all sides during the
Napoleonic wars, to certify who wrote the “Vestiges of
Creation,” or, finally, to give the author of one of those
innumerable ancient proverbs, which float about the world
without a father.

The great number and variety of such inquiries as are
propounded by readers should not appal one. Nor should
one too readily take refuge from a troublesome reader by
the plea, however convenient, that the library contains
nothing on that subject. While this may unquestionably
be true, especially as regards a small public library, it
should never be put forward as a certainty, until one has
looked. Most inquiring readers are very patient, and
being fully sensible how much they owe to the free enjoyment
of the library treasures, and to the aid of the superintendent
of them, they are willing to wait for information.
However busy you may be at the moment, the reader
can be asked to wait, or to call at a less busy time, when
you will be prepared with a more satisfactory answer than
can be given on the spur of the moment. What cannot
be done to-day, may often be done to-morrow. Remember
always, that readers are entitled to the best and most careful
service, for a librarian is not only the keeper, but the
interpreter of the intellectual stores of the library. It
is a good and a safe rule to let no opportunity of aiding a
reader escape. One should be particularly careful to
volunteer help to those who are too new or too timid to
ask: and it is they who will be most grateful for any assistance.
The librarian has only to put himself in their
place—(the golden rule for a librarian, as for all the world
besides), and to consider how often, in his own searches in
libraries, in the continual, never-ending quest of knowl[193]edge,
he would have been thankful for a hint from some
one who knew, or had been over the ground of his search
before; and then he will feel the full value to the novice,
of such knowledge as he can impart.

He is not to forget that his superior opportunities for
learning all about things, with a whole library at command,
and within elbow-reach every hour of the day,
should impose upon him a higher standard of attainment
than most readers are supposed to have reached. In the
intervals of library work, I am accustomed to consider the
looking up of subjects or authorities as one of my very
best recreations. It is as interesting as a game of whist,
and much more profitable. It is more welcome than routine
labor, for it rests or diverts the mind, by its very
variety, while, to note the different views or expressions of
writers on the same subject, affords almost endless entertainment.
In tracing down a quotation also, or the half-remembered
line of some verse in poetry, you encounter a
host of parallel poetic images or expressions, which contribute
to aid the memory, or to feed the imagination. Or,
in pursuing a sought-for fact in history, through many
volumes, you learn collaterally much that may never have
met your eye before. Full, as all libraries are, of what
we call trash, there is almost no book which will not give
us something,—even though it be only the negative virtue
of a model to be avoided. One may not, indeed, always
find what he seeks, because it may not exist at all,
or it may not be found in the limited range of his small
library, but he is almost sure to find something which
gives food for thought, or for memory to note. And this
is one of the foremost attractions, let me add, of the librarian’s
calling; it is more full of intellectual variety, of wide-open
avenues to knowledge, than any other vocation whatever.
His daily quests in pursuit of information to lay be[194]fore
others, bring him acquainted with passages that are
full of endless suggestion for himself. He may not be able
to pursue any of these avenues at the moment; but he
should make a mental or a written note of them, for future
benefit. His daily business being learning, why should he
not in time, become learned? There are, of course, among
the infinitude of questions, that come before the librarian,
some that are really insoluble problems. One of these is
to be found among the topics of inquiry I just now suggested;
namely: what is the aggregate wealth of Great
Britain, or that of other nations? This is a question frequently
asked by inquiring Congressmen, who imagine that
an answer may readily be had from one of those gifted
librarians who is invested with that apocryphal attribute,
commonly called omniscience. But the inquirer is suddenly
confronted by the fact (and a very stubborn fact it
is) that not a single foreign nation has ever taken any
census of wealth whatever. In Great Britain (about which
country inquiry as to the national resources more largely
centres) the government wisely lets alone the attempt to
tabulate the value of private wealth, knowing that such an
object is utterly impracticable.

But, while the British census makes no attempt at estimating
the property of the people, the independent estimates
of statistical writers vary hopelessly and irreconcilably.
Mr. J. R. McCulloch, one of the foremost accredited
writers on economic science, lays it down as a
dictum, that “sixty years is the shortest time in which the
capital of an old and densely-peopled country can be expected
to be doubled.” Yet Joseph Lowe assumes the
wealth of the United Kingdom to have doubled in eighteen
years, from 1823 to 1841; while George R. Porter,
in his widely-accredited book on the “Progress of the Nation,”
and Leoni Levi, a publicist of high reputation, make[195]
out, (by combining their estimates) that the private wealth
of England increased fifty per cent. in seventeen years, at
which rate it would double in about twenty-nine years, instead
of sixty, as laid down by Mr. McCulloch. Mr. Levi
calculates the aggregate private wealth of Great Britain in
1858, at $29,178,000,000, being a fraction less than the
guesses of the census enumerators at the national wealth of
the United States, twelve years later, in 1870. Can one
guess be said to be any nearer the fact than the other?
May we not be pardoned for treating all estimates as utterly
fallacious that are not based upon known facts and figures?
Why do we hear so much of the “approximate correctness”
of so many statistical tables, when, in point of
fact, the primary data are incapable of proof, and the averages
and conclusions built upon them are all assumed?
“Statisticians,” says one of the fraternity, “are generally
held to be eminently practical people; on the contrary,
they are more given to theorizing than any other class of
writers; and are generally less expert in it.”

In the presence of such gross discrepancies as these, by
statisticians of the highest repute, and among such a
practical people as the English, what value can be attached
to the mere estimates of wealth which have been attempted
in the census of the United States? The careful Superintendent
of the Census of 1870 and 1880, the late Francis
A. Walker, writes concerning it:

“At the best, these figures represent but the opinion of
one man, or of a body of men, in the collection of material,
and in the calculation of the several elements of the public
wealth.” And in the last Census Report for 1890, the
results of the so-called “census of wealth,” are cautiously
submitted, “as showing in a general way a continuous increase
in the wealth of the nation, the exact proportions
of which cannot be measured.”

[196]Now, what are we to conclude regarding the attempt to
elevate to a rank in statistical science, mere estimates of
private wealth, for a large portion of which, by the statements
of those who make them, no actual statistical data
exist? And when this is confessedly the case in our own
country, the only one attempting the impossible task of
tabulating the wealth of the people, what shall we say of
the demand that is made upon our credulity of accepting
the guesses of Mr. Giffen, or Mr. Mulhall, as to British
wealth? Are we not justified in applying the old Latin
maxim—”De non apparentibus, et de non existentibus,
eadem est ratio,” and replying to those who demand of us
to know how much any nation is worth, that it is sometimes
an important part of knowledge to know that nothing
can be known?

Among the literally innumerable inquiries liable to be
made of a librarian, here is one which may give him more
than a moment’s pause, unless he is uncommonly well
versed in American political history—namely, “What was
the Ostend Manifesto?” To a mind not previously instructed
these two words “Ostend Manifesto”, convey
absolutely no meaning. You turn to the standard encyclopaedias,
Appleton’s, Johnson’s Universal, and the Britannica,
and you find an account of Ostend, a little Belgian
city, its locality, commerce, and population, but absolutely
nothing about an Ostend manifesto. But in J. N.
Larned’s “History for Ready Reference”, a useful book
in five volumes, arranged in alphabetical order, you get
a clue. It refers you from Ostend, under letter O, to
Cuba, where you learn that this formidable Ostend manifesto
was nothing more nor less than a paper drawn up and
signed by Messrs. Buchanan, Mason, and Slidell, Ministers
of the United States to Great Britain, France, and
Spain, respectively, when at the watering-place of Ostend,[197]
in 1854, importing that the island of Cuba ought to, and
under certain circumstances, must belong to the United
States. Looking a little farther, as the manifesto is not
published in Larned, you find the text of the document itself
in Cluskey’s “Political Text-Book”, of 1860, and in
some of the American newspapers of 1854. This is a case
of pursuing a once notorious, but more recently obscure
topic, through many works of reference until found.

In many searches for names of persons, it becomes
highly important to know before-hand where to look, and
equally important where not to look, for certain biographies.
Thus, if you seek for the name of any living character,
it is necessary to know that it would be useless to
look in the Encyclopædia Britannica, because the rule of
compilation of that work purposely confined its sketches
of notable persons to those who were already deceased
when its volumes appeared. So you save the time of hunting
in at least one conspicuous work of reference, before
you begin, by simply knowing its plan.

In like manner, you should know that it is useless to
search for two classes of names in the “Dictionary of National
Biography,” the most copious biographical dictionary
of British personages ever published, begun in 1885,
under Leslie Stephen, and reaching its sixty-first volume,
and letter W in 1899, under the editorship of Sidney Lee.
These two classes of names are first, all persons not British,
that is, not either English, Scottish or Irish; and secondly,
names of British persons now living. This is because
this great work, like the Britannica, purposely confines
itself to the names of notables deceased; and, unlike
the Britannica, it further limits its biographies to persons
connected by birth or long residence with the British
kingdom. Knowing this fact before-hand, will save any
time wasted in searching the Dictionary of National Biog[198]raphy
for any persons now living, or for any American or
European names.

Another caveat may properly be interposed as regards
searches for information in that most widely advertised
and circulated of all works of reference,—the Encyclopaedia
Britannica. The plan of that work was to furnish
the reading public with the very best treatises upon leading
topics in science, history, and literature, by eminent
scholars and specialists in various fields. Pursuant to this
general scheme, each great subject has a most elaborate,
and sometimes almost exhaustive article—as, for example,
chemistry, geology, etc., while the minor divisions of each
topic do not appear in the alphabet at all, or appear only
by cross-reference to the generic name under which they
are treated. It results, that while you find, for example,
a most extensive article upon “Anatomy”, filling a large
part of a volume of the Britannica, you look in vain in
the alphabet for such subjects as “blood, brain, cartilage,
sinew, tissue,” etc., which are described only in the article
“Anatomy.” This method has to be well comprehended in
order for any reader to make use of this great Cyclopaedia
understandingly. Even by the aid of the English index
to the work, issued by its foreign publishers, the reader
who is in hasty quest of information in the Britannica,
will most frequently be baffled by not finding any minor
subject in the index. The English nation, judged by most
of the productions of its literary and scientific men in that
field, has small genius for indexing. It was reserved to
an American to prepare and print a thorough index, at
once alphabetical and analytical, to this great English
thesaurus of information—an index ten times more copious,
and therefore more useful to the student, than the
meagre one issued in England. This index fills 3,900
closely printed columns, forming the whole of volume 25[199]
of the Philadelphia edition of the work. By its aid, every
name and every topic, treated anywhere in this vast repository
of human knowledge can be traced out and appropriated;
while without it, the Encyclopaedia Britannica,
with all its great merits, must remain very much in
the nature of a sealed book to the reader who stands in
need of immediate use and reference. We have to take
it for what it is—a collection of masterly treatises, rather
than a handy dictionary of knowledge.

The usefulness and success of any library will depend
very largely upon the sympathy, so to speak, between the
readers and the librarian. When this is well established,
the rest is very easy. The librarian should not seclude
himself so as to be practically inaccessible to readers, nor
trust wholly to assistants to answer their inquiries. This
may be necessary in some large libraries, where great and
diversified interests connected with the building up of the
collection, the catalogue system, and the library management
and administration are all concerned. In the British
Museum Library, no one ever sees the Principal Librarian;
even the next officer, who is called the keeper of the
printed books, is not usually visible in the reading-room at
all.

A librarian who is really desirous of doing the greatest
good to the greatest number of people, will be not only
willing, but anxious to answer inquiries, even though they
may appear to him trivial and unimportant. Still, he
should also economise time by cultivating the habit of
putting his answers into the fewest and plainest words.

How far the librarian should place himself in direct
communication with readers, must depend largely upon
the extent of the library, the labor required in managing
its various departments, the amount and value of assistance
at his command, and upon various other circum[200]stances,
depending upon the different conditions with different
librarians. But it may be laid down as a safe general
rule, that the librarian should hold himself perpetually
as a public servant, ready and anxious to answer in
some way, all inquiries that may come to him. Thus,
and thus only, can he make himself, and the collection of
books under his charge, useful in the highest degree to
the public. He will not indeed, in any extensive library,
find it convenient, or even possible, to answer all inquiries
in person; but he should always be ready to enable his
assistants to answer them, by his superior knowledge as to
the best sources of information, whenever they fail to trace
out what is wanted. In any small library, he should be
always accessible, at or near the place where people are
accustomed to have their wants for books or information
supplied: and the public resorting to the library will thus
come not only to rely upon him for aid in their intellectual
researches, but to appreciate and respect him for the wide
extent of his knowledge, and to consider him, in time, an
indispensable guide, if not leader, in the community. His
reputation, in fact, will depend upon the extent to which
he has been able to help others, as well as upon the number
of people whom he has thus aided.

In a very high sense, the true librarian is an educator;
his school is as large as the town in which his library is
situated. Very few people in that town know what he is
always presumed to know,—namely—to what books to go
to get answers to the questions they want answered. In
supplying continually the means of answering these countless
questions, the library becomes actually a popular university,
in which the librarian is the professor, the tuition
is free, and the course is optional, both as to study and as
to time.

Most persons who come to make any investigation in a[201]
public library require a good deal of assistance. For example,
a reader is in need of the latest information as to
the amount of steel and iron made in this country, and
what State produces these important manufactures. He
has not the faintest idea where to look for the information,
except that it may be in the census, but the census is nine
years old, and he wants recent facts. It is vain to turn
him over to the cyclopaedias, for there is not one whose
information upon such statistics comes anywhere near up
to date. You have to put before him a pamphlet annual,
published by the American Iron and Steel Association,
which contains exactly what he wants; and no other source
of information does contain it.

Another inquirer seeks to know how to treat some disease.
In such cases, of course, the librarian should not
go farther than to put before the reader a work on domestic
medicine, for it is not his function to deal in recommendations
of this, that, or the other method of treatment,
any more than it is to give legal opinions, if asked—although
he may have studied law. So, if the reader
wants to know about the religious tenets of the Presbyterians,
or the Mormons, or the Buddhists, or the doctrines
of the Catholic Church, and asks the librarian’s opinion
about any controverted question of belief, he is to be
answered only by the statement that the library is there
to supply information, not opinions, and then pointed to
the religious cyclopaedias, which give full summaries of all
the sects.

He may frequently be asked for information on a subject
which he knows nothing about; and I have heard a
librarian declare, that he often found himself able to give
fuller and better information on a subject of which he was
previously ignorant, than upon one he had long been
familiar with. The reason was that in the one case he had
freshly looked up all the authorities, and put them before[202]
the reader, while in the other, giving the references from
a memory, more or less imperfect, he had overlooked some
of the most important means of information.

The constant exercise of the habit of supplying helps
to readers is a splendid intellectual school for the librarian
himself. Through it, his memory is quickened and consequently
improved, (as every faculty is by use) his habits
of mental classification and analysis are formed or
strengthened, and his mind is kept on the alert to utilize
the whole arsenal of the knowledge he has already acquired,
or to acquire new knowledge.

Another very important benefit derived by the librarian
from his constantly recurring attention to the calls of
readers for aid, is the suggestion thereby furnished of the
deficiencies in the collection in his charge. This will be
a continual reminder to him, of what he most needs,
namely, how to equip the library with the best and most
recent sources of information in every field of inquiry.
Whether the library be a large or a small one, its deficiencies
in some directions are sure to be very considerable:
and these gaps are more conspicuously revealed in trying
to supply readers with the means of making what may be
termed an exhaustive research upon a given subject, than
in any other way. You find, for example, in looking up
your authorities in what has come to be called Egyptology,
that while you have Wilkinson’s Ancient Egypt, and Lane’s
Modern Egyptians, both of which are very valuable works,
you have not the more modern books of Brugsch-Bey, or
of A. H. Sayce, or of Maspero. You may also find out, by
mingling freely with a good part of the readers, what subjects
are most frequently looked into or inquired about,
and you can thus secure valuable information as to the
directions in which the library most needs strengthening.
Thus, in a community largely made up of people connected[203]
with manufacturing interests, the inquiries are liable to be
much concerned with the mechanic arts; and you would
therefore naturally seek to acquire a liberal selection of
the best and latest works in technical science, or the useful
arts. If you have, on the other hand, very few inquiries,
indeed, for theological works, you take it as some
evidence that that department of the collection needs little
enlargement, and you may devote your funds in other directions.
Then too, the great value of popularising the
library by the hearty interest shown by the librarian in
the wants of the people can hardly be over-rated. This
interest, being a perennial one, and continued through a
series of years, the number of citizens and their families
assisted will be constantly on the increase, and the public
opinion of the town will come in time, to regard the library
as a great popular necessity. Hence, if it is an institution
supported in whole or in part by town or municipal funds,
its claims to liberal consideration will be immeasurably
strengthened. If an enlargement of room for the books,
or even a new library building comes to be needed, its
chances for securing the funds requisite will be excellent.
If a more liberal supply of new books, or an extended range
of older ones of great value is reported by the librarian
as wanted to increase the usefulness of the library, the
authorities will more cheerfully consider the claim. And
if it is proposed that additional and competent assistance
shall be given to the librarian, or that he should be more
liberally compensated for his highly useful and important
labors, that, too, may be accomplished—especially if it has
come to be recognized that by his wide knowledge, and
skilful management, and helpful devotion to the service of
the reading public, he has rendered himself indispensable.

In the supply of information desired by readers, it is better
to leave them to their own search, once you have put[204]
before them the proper authorities, than to spend your
time in turning for them to the volume and page. This,
for two reasons—first, it leaves your own time free to help
other readers, or to attend to the ever-waiting library
work; and, secondly, it induces habits of research and
self-help on the part of the reader. It is enough for the
librarian to act as an intelligent guide-post, to point the
way; to travel the road is the business of the reader himself.
Therefore, let the visitor in quest of a quotation,
look it out in the index of the volumes you put before him.
If he fails to find it, it will then be time for you to intervene,
and lend the aid of your more practiced eye, and
superior knowledge of how to search; or else, let the
reader look for it in some more copious anthology, which
you may put before him. There are multitudes of inquiries
for the authors of poems, which are in no sense
“familiar quotations,” nor even select quotations, but
which are merely common-place sentiments expressed in
language quite unpoetic,—and not the work of any notable
writer at all. They are either the production of some
utterly obscure author of a volume of verse, quite unknown
to fame, or, still more probably, the half-remembered
verses of some anonymous contributor to the poet’s corner
of the newspaper or magazine. In such cases, where you
see no poetic beauty or imaginative power in the lines, it
is well to inform the inquirer at once that you do not
think them the production of any noted writer, and thus
end the fruitless search for memorizing what is not at all
memorable. What may strike uncultivated readers as
beautiful, may be set down as trash, by a mind that has
been fed upon the masterpieces of poetry. Not that the
librarian is to assume the air of an oracle or a censor,
(something to be in all circumstances avoided) or to pronounce
positive judgment upon what is submitted: he[205]
should inform any admiring reader of a passage not
referred to in any of the anthologies, and not possessing
apparent poetic merit, that he believes the author is unknown
to fame. That should be sufficient for any reasonably
disposed reader, who, after search duly completed,
will go away answered, if not satisfied.

I gave some instances of the singular variety of questions
asked of a librarian. Let me add one, reported by
Mr. Robert Harrison, of the London Library, as asked of
him by William M. Thackeray. The distinguished author
of Esmond and The Virginians wanted a book that would
tell of General Wolfe, the hero of Quebec. “I don’t want to
know about his battles”, said the novelist. “I can get
all that from the histories. I want something that will
tell me the color of the breeches he wore.” After due
search, the librarian was obliged to confess that there was
no such book.

A librarian is likely to be constantly in a position to aid
the uninformed reader how to use the books of reference
which every public library contains. The young person
who is new to the habit of investigation, or the adult who
has never learned the method of finding things, needs to
be shown how to use even so simple a thing as an index.
Do not be impatient with his ignorance, although you may
find him fumbling over the pages in the body of the book
in vain, to find what you, with your acquired knowledge
of indexes and their use, can find in half a minute or less.
Practice alone can make one perfect in the art of search
and speedy finding. The tyro who tries your patience this
year, will very likely become an expert reader the next.
Wide as is the domain of ignorance, there are few among
those intelligent enough to resort to a library at all, who
cannot learn. You will find some who come to the library
so unskilled, that they will turn over the leaves even of[206]
an index, in a blind, hap-hazard way, evidently at a loss
how to use it. These must be instructed first, that the index
is arranged just like a dictionary, in the alphabetical
order of the names or subjects treated, and secondly, that
after finding the word they seek in it, they must turn to
the page indicated by the figure attached to that word.
This is the very primer of learning in the use of a library,
but the library in any town, used as it is by many boys
and girls of all ages, has to be a primary school for beginners,
as well as a university for advanced students.
Despise not the day of small things, however you may find
it more agreeable to be occupied with great ones.

On the other hand, you will find at the other extreme
of intelligence, among your clientage of readers, those who
are completely familiar with books and their uses. There
are some readers frequenting public libraries, who not only
do not need assistance themselves, but who are fully competent
to instruct the librarian. In meeting the calls of
such skilled readers, who always know what they require,
it is never good policy to obtrude advice or suggestion,
but simply to supply what they call for. You will readily
recognize and discriminate such experts from the mass of
readers, if you have good discernment. Sometimes they
are quite as sensitive as they are intelligent, and it may
annoy them to have offered them books they do not want,
in the absence of what they require. An officious, or
super-serviceable librarian or assistant, may sometimes
prejudice such a reader by proffering help which he does
not want, instead of waiting for his own call or occasion.

Let us look at a few examples of the numerous calls at
a popular library. For example, a reader asks to see a
book, giving an account of the marriage of the Adriatic.
You know that this concerns the history of Venice and its
Doges, and you turn to various books on Venice, and its[207]
history, until you find a description of the strange festival.
It may be, and probably is the case, that the books, like
most descriptive works and narratives of travellers, are
without index. This is a disability in the use of books
which you must continually encounter, since multitudes
of volumes, old and new, are sent out without a vestige of
an index to their contents. Some writers have urged that
a law should be made refusing copyright to the author of
any book who failed to provide it with an index; a requirement
highly desirable, but also highly impracticable.
Yet you will find in most books, a division of the contents
into chapters, and in the beginning of the volume a table
of the contents of each chapter, giving its leading topics.
This is a substitute for an index, although (not being arranged
in alphabetical order) it is far less useful than that
time-saving aid to research. But you have to learn to
take advantage of even poor and inferior helps, when you
cannot have the best, (as a poor guide is better than no
guide at all, unless it misguides,) and so you run your eye
quickly through the table of contents to find what you
seek. In the case supposed, of the ceremony at Venice,
you will be aided in the search by having in mind that
the catch-words involved are “Adriatic,” and “Doge,” and
as these begin with capital letters, which stand out, as it
were, from the monotonous “lower case” type (as printers
call all the letters that are not capitals) your search will
be much abridged by omitting to read through all the
sentences of your table of contents, and seizing only the
passage or passages where “Doge,” or “Adriatic,” may
occur.

This remark will apply as well to numerous other
searches which you will have to make in books. The table
of contents will commonly take note of all the more salient
topics that are treated in the book, whether of persons, of[208]
places, of notable scenes, historic events, etc., and so will
aid you in finding what you seek. In the last resort only,
in the books whose table of contents fails you, will you
have to turn the leaves page by page, which, while not
equivalent to reading the book through, is a time-consuming
business.

Of course no librarian can devote hours of his precious
time to searches in such detail for readers. They are to
be supplied with the books likely to contain what they are
in search of, and left to seek it in their own way, with
such hints and cautions as to saving time by taking the
shortest road, as the experience of the librarian enables
him to supply. The suggestions here given are not needed
by scholarly readers, but are the fruits of long experience
in searching books for what they contain.

Again, let us take the case of a call by a reader who happens
to be a decorative painter, for patterns which may
furnish him hints in finishing an interior of a house. Of
course he wants color—that is, not theory only, but illustration,
or practical examples. So you put before him
Owen Jones’s Grammar of Ornament, or Racinet’s L’Ornement
polychrome, both illustrated with many beautiful designs
in color, which he is delighted to find.

Another reader is anxious to see a picture of “St. George
and the Dragon.” If you have the “Museum of Painting
and Sculpture,” in 17 volumes, or Champlin’s “Cyclopaedia
of Painters and Painting,” a dictionary of art in four volumes,
you find it in either work, in the alphabet, under
“St. George,” and his want is satisfied.

A youngster wants to know how to build a boat, and
you find him Folkard on Boats, or Frazar’s Sail-boats,
which describe and figure various styles of water-craft.

Perhaps an inquisitive reader wants to find out all about
the families of the various languages, and what is known[209]
of their origin, and you supply him with W. D. Whitney’s
“Life and Growth of Language,” or Max Müller’s “Science
of Language,” either of which furnishes full information.

Another inquirer seeks for information about the aggregate
debts of nations. You give him the great quarto
volume of the last Census on Wealth and Indebtedness, or
for still later information the Statesman’s Year Book for
1899, or the Almanach de Gotha for the current year, both
of which contain the comparative debts of nations at the
latest dates.

The inquirer who seeks to know the rates of wages paid
for all kinds of labor in a series of several years, can be
supplied with the elaborate Report on Labor and Wages
for fifty-two years, published by the U. S. Government in
1893, in four volumes.

Another reader wishes, we will suppose, to hunt up the
drawings of all patents that have been issued on type-writers,
and type-writing inventions. You put before
him the many indexes to the Patent Specifications and
Patent Office Gazette; he makes out from these his list of
volumes wanted, which are at once supplied, and he falls
to work on his long, but to him interesting job.

A reader who has seen in the library or elsewhere a book
he would much like to own, but cannot find a copy in town,
wants to know what it will cost: you turn to your American
or foreign catalogue, covering the year of publication,
and give him not only the price, but the publisher’s name
from whom he can order it, and he goes on his way rejoicing.

An artist engaged upon a painting in which he wishes
to introduce a deer, or a group of rabbits, or an American
eagle, or a peacock, asks for an accurate picture of the
bird or animal wanted. You put before him J. S. Kings[210]ley’s
Riverside Natural History, in six volumes, and his desire
is satisfied.

In dealing with books of reference, there will often be
found very important discrepancies of statement, different
works giving different dates, for example, for the same
event in history or biography.

Next to a bible and a dictionary of language, there is no
book, perhaps, more common than a biographical dictionary.
Our interest in our fellow-men is perennial; and we
seek to know not only their characteristics, and the distinguishing
events of their lives, but also the time of their
birth into the world and their exit from it. This is a
species of statistics upon which one naturally expects certainty,
since no person eminent enough to be recorded at
all is likely to have the epoch of his death, at least, unremarked.
Yet the seeker after exact information in the
biographical dictionaries will find, if he extends his quest
among various authorities, that he is afloat on a sea of uncertainties.
Not only can he not find out the date of decease
of some famous navigators, like Sir John Franklin
and La Perouse, who sailed into unexplored regions of the
globe, and were never heard of more, but the men who
died at home, in the midst of friends and families, are frequently
recorded as deceased at dates so discrepant that no
ingenuity can reconcile them.

In Haydn’s Dictionary of Dates, Sir Henry Havelock was
said to have died November 25th, 1857, while Maunder’s
Treasury of Biography gives November 21st, the London
Almanac, November 27th, and the Life of Havelock, by
his brother-in-law, November 24th. Here are four distinct
dates of death given, by authorities apparently equally
accredited, to a celebrated general, who died within
forty years of our own time. Of the death of the notorious
Robespierre, guillotined in 1794, we find in Chalmers’[211]
Biographical Dictionary that he died July 10th, in Rees’s
Cyclopaedia, July 28th, and in Alison’s History of Europe,
July 29th. Doubtless it is some comfort to reflect, in
view of his many crimes, that the bloody tyrant of the
Jacobins is really dead, irrespective of the date, about
which biographers may dispute. Of the English mechanician
Joseph Bramah, inventor of the Bramah lock, we
learn from the English Cyclopaedia, that he died in 1814,
and from Rose’s Biographical Dictionary, that he died in
1815.

Now, although a large share of the errors and discrepancies
that abound in biographical dictionaries and other
books of reference may be accounted for by misprints,
others by reckoning old style instead of new, and many
more by carelessness of writers and transcribers, it is plain
that all the variations cannot be thus accounted for.
Nothing is more common in printing offices than to find a
figure 6 inverted serving as a 9, a 5 for a 3, or a 3 for an
8, while 8, 9, and O, are frequently interchanged. In such
cases, a keen-eyed proof-reader may not always be present
to prevent the falsification of history; and it is a fact, not
sufficiently recognized, that to the untiring vigilance, intelligence,
and hard, conscientious labors of proof-readers,
the world owes a deeper debt of gratitude than it does to
many a famous maker of books. It is easy enough to make
books, Heaven knows, but to make them correct, “Hic
labor, hoc opus est.”

A high authority in encyclopaedical lore tells us that
the best accredited authorities are at odds with regard to
the birth or death of individuals in the enormous ratio of
from twenty to twenty-five per cent. of the whole number
in the biographical dictionaries. The Portuguese poet
Camoens is said by some authorities to have been born in
1517, and by others in 1525; a discrepancy of eight years.[212]
Chateaubriand is declared by the English Cyclopaedia to
have been born September 4th, 1768; September 14th,
1768, by the Nouvelle Biographie générale of Dr. Hoefer;
and September 4th, 1769, by the Conversations-Lexicon.
Of course it is clear that all these authorities cannot be
right; but which of the three is so, is matter of extreme
doubt, leaving the student of facts perplexed and uncertain
at the very point where certainty is not only most
important, but most confidently expected.

Of another kind are the errors that sometimes creep
into works of reference of high credit, by accepting too
confidently statements publicly made. In one edition of
the Dictionary of Congress a certain honorable member
from Pennsylvania, in uncommonly robust health, was
astonished to find himself recorded as having died of the
National Hotel disease, contracted at Washington in 1856.
In this case, the editor of the work was a victim of too
much confidence in the newspapers. In the Congressional
Directory, where brief biographies of Congressmen are
given, one distinguished member was printed as having
been elected to Congress at a time which, taken in connection
with his birth-date in the same paragraph, made him
precisely one year old when he took his seat in Congress.

Even in reporting the contents of public and private
libraries, exaggeration holds sway. The library of George
the Fourth, inherited by that graceless ignoramus from a
book-collecting father, and presented to the British nation
with ostentatious liberality only after he had failed to sell
it to Russia, was said in the publications of those times to
contain about 120,000 volumes. But an actual enumeration
when the books were lodged in the King’s library at
the British Museum, where they have ever since remained,
showed that there were only 65,250 volumes, being but
little more than half the reported number. Many libra[213]ries,
public and private, are equally over-estimated. It is
so much easier to guess than to count, and the stern test
of arithmetic is too seldom applied, notwithstanding the
fact that 100,000 volumes can easily be counted in a day
by a single person, and so on in the same proportion.
Here, as in the statistics of population, the same proverb
holds good, that the unknown is always the magnificent,
and on the surface of the globe we inhabit, the unexplored
country is always the most marvellous, since the world began.