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Page 36
As for myself, I urge upon all lovers of books to provide
themselves with bookplates. Whenever I see a book that bears its
owner's plate I feel myself obligated to treat that book with
special consideration. It carries with it a certificate of its
master's love; the bookplate gives the volume a certain status it
would not otherwise have. Time and again I have fished musty
books out of bins in front of bookstalls, bought them and borne
them home with me simply because they had upon their covers the
bookplates of their former owners. I have a case filled with
these aristocratic estrays, and I insist that they shall be as
carefully dusted and kept as my other books, and I have provided
in my will for their perpetual maintenance after my decease.
If I were a rich man I should found a hospital for homeless
aristocratic books, an institution similar in all essential
particulars to the institution which is now operated at our
national capital under the bequest of the late Mr. Cochrane. I
should name it the Home for Genteel Volumes in Decayed
Circumstances.
I was a young man when I adopted the bookplate which I am still
using, and which will be found in all my books. I drew the
design myself and had it executed by a son of Anderson, the first
of American engravers. It is by no means elaborate: a book rests
upon a heart, and underneath appear the lines:
My Book and Heart
Must never part.
Ah, little Puritan maid, with thy dear eyes of honest blue and
thy fair hair in proper plaits adown thy back, little thought we
that springtime long ago back among the New England hills that
the tiny book we read together should follow me through all my
life! What a part has that Primer played! And now all these
other beloved companions bear witness to the love I bear that
Primer and its teachings, for each wears the emblem I plucked
from its homely pages.
That was in the springtime, Captivity Waite; anon came summer,
with all its exuberant glory, and presently the cheery autumn
stole upon me. And now it is the winter-time, and under the
snows lies buried many a sweet, fair thing I cherished once. I
am aweary and will rest a little while; lie thou there, my pen,
for a dream--a pleasant dream--calleth me away. I shall see
those distant hills again, and the homestead under the elms; the
old associations and the old influences shall be round about me,
and a child shall lead me and we shall go together through green
pastures and by still waters. And, O my pen, it will be the
springtime again!
XIII
ON THE ODORS WHICH MY BOOKS EXHALE
Have you ever come out of the thick, smoky atmosphere of the town
into the fragrant, gracious atmosphere of a library? If you
have, you know how grateful the change is, and you will agree
with me when I say that nothing else is so quieting to the
nerves, so conducive to physical health, and so quick to restore
a lively flow of the spirits.
Lafcadio Hearn once wrote a treatise upon perfumes, an ingenious
and scholarly performance; he limited the edition to fifty copies
and published it privately--so the book is rarely met with.
Curiously enough, however, this author had nothing to say in the
book about the smells of books, which I regard as a most
unpardonable error, unless, properly estimating the subject to be
worthy of a separate treatise, he has postponed its
consideration and treatment to a time when he can devote the
requisite study and care to it.
We have it upon the authority of William Blades that books
breathe; however, the testimony of experts is not needed upon
this point, for if anybody be sceptical, all he has to do to
convince himself is to open a door of a bookcase at any time and
his olfactories will be greeted by an outrush of odors that will
prove to him beyond all doubt that books do actually consume air
and exhale perfumes.
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