there is about a comrade who can understand what you say, and who can
swap ideas with you "even Steven!" It cannot be done without books.
Considering the vast importance of learning in saving labor and reducing
the actual cost of existence, there has been little growth in the
business of bookmaking compared with what there should have been. The
trade in books in America is large, because the country is large.
Everything is large here. Comparatively, however, it probably sinks
below fishing for mackerel as an industry. As it is now, a shockingly
large portion of the industry such as it is is given over to costly
bindings. It does not seem that the people, even when they first had
books, cared so much for the privilege of reading as they did for a
gaudy covering to the volume, on which they could expend a barbaric
love for ornament. The wise men of those times marveled, just as the
wise men marvel nowadays. "Learning hath gained most by those books,"
says Old Fuller, "by which the printers have lost." Our follies in the
way of "books that are all binding" are almost microscopically small
when put beside those of the olden times, when, one would think the art
of printing, being new, would have been best appreciated, for surely the
grass looks the greenest to us in the spring! Let us do something more
than