ON THE PURCHASE AND CARE OF BOOKS
"Knowing I lov'd my books, he furnish'd me,
From my own library, with volumes that
I prize above my dukedom."--PROSPERO.
THE publishing of books is like the brook in the poem, it goes on
forever. The number and variety found on sale at the end of each year is
truly bewildering. The flesh is becoming wearied with the number and the
spirit perturbed with the variety. The prospective buyer does not know
where or how to begin, and about the only way out of the confusion is to
do as the brothers did in the story, buy them by the yard. For the man
of long purse it is a convenient way to untie the library knot; but
after this has been done the question of where to begin reading is a
harder one than where to begin buying had been. There was much
philosophy in the remark of the quickly made millionaire, who after
having bought many editions de luxe of standard authors, said: "Now give
me something that I can read, a few stories of Old Sleuth and Nick
Carter." Though his taste might be questioned, his remark hit the nail
on the head--a few books that can be read.
That is what the average buyer is after. And these few must be books
that are worth while, must be taken from the multitude, and must be
taken one or two at a time if they are to be properly enjoyed. Each
season brings a few of these in new and attractive editions. By them
must the library be slowly built up. The purchase of many volumes at a
time, even if they are good volumes, is something few readers can stand.
It is like the sudden acquisition of wealth or the sudden coming into
fame: a stumbling block to the greatest of pleasures, the slow but
certain enrichment of life. Many a good student has been spoiled by
being turned loose in a school library that cost him no effort or
inconvenience to acquire. Ease of access and intemperance of use are
things on which he will fall down. And therein is the foolishness of
parents in supplying their children all at once with that great and
varied load that has several times appeared under different names, but
with the general title of libraries for young folk. There is much good
and conveniently arranged material in all of them; but it is this very
thing of coming into the child's possession all at once that makes them
objectionable. Books, like many other luxuries, should not be indulged
in to excess.
Books for the boy should largely be purchased out of his own savings. No
book bought in this way will be left unread. Some persuasion on the
part of teachers and parents will be necessary to bring about this
practice of saving. A month or so before Christmas or the summer
vacation the town boy ought to be told to save the money he is used to
spending on candy and picture shows that he may buy for himself a book.
The country boy can do the same thing by hoeing corn a few more days for
a neighbour or raising a few more chickens on his own account. As they
should, books will also come as gifts, and poor judgment on the part of
the giver is very unfortunate. The giving of a poor book that can hardly
be afforded is kind-hearted as an act; but the boy who feels by courtesy
bound to read it is surely a helpless victim. Yet in his own family he
should be given a book twice each year, on his birthday and at Christmas
time. In fact he needs to be taught always to celebrate the one and hang
up his stocking on the other; for no two practices will be so likely to
keep him from falling into cynicism in mature years--especially if each
anniversary brings with it a helpful book. Highly prized as will be
these good books the boy receives as gifts, they will never mean quite
the same to him as the books bought at a sacrifice to himself. When all
is said and done, about the best indication of practical wisdom in this
age of prodigality is economy of savings. It will surely be followed by
economy of time and energy. The boy who is taught to save money for the
purchase of something of permanent value has a good start in the right
direction. The most reasonable thing to buy with these savings is a few
good books.
What shall the reader buy, and where shall it be bought? To the former
question a partial answer has already been attempted, but to the latter
one the answer is more uncertain. In a general way a book might be
bought as any other article is bought, where the same quality can be
bought cheapest. But that principle is based on the advertising appeal,
an appeal that is strong where extravagance and wastefulness abound. The
making, selling, and buying of books is no exception to this rule of
trade. Books, like other articles, are now bought and sold according to
fashion, and the official pot of fashion must be kept boiling if it
takes the last penny. And like other fashions book fashions change, even
to morals and heroines; so that a body might as well be out of the
reading world as to be out of fashion in it. Just now the fashion seems
to turn out books with morbid morals and mediocre heroines, and yet the
people continue to read them and talk about them. The story is drawn,
printed, bought, read, dramatized, heard, and praised--even from the
pulpit. And before there is time for you to compose yourself in peace, a
new emotion is sprung on which all must dilate alike. This is the hubbub
about the multitude of new books that makes the buying of a few standard
ones something of a problem. The classics, especially for children,
either in old or in new editions, are hidden in the confusion. And
because of the talk the youngsters hear they want to read the book their
parents are reading, as they are curious to read the daily paper, a
thing never designed for any schoolboy to do. For this reason they need
to be urged strongly to buy the book that is old and tried by years of
helpful reading.
The advertising appeal that persuades a buyer of books to invest in what
he does not want and cannot use is active in two ways, through
travelling agents and at the book counters of department stores. Of all
the hindrances to the building up of a small library out of savings for
that purpose, the proverbial book agent is the greatest. This master of
the art of persuasive perseverance, with his oilcloth bag hidden under
the frock of his coat, has filched many a hard-earned dollar from the
farmer. If he had had either the artifice or the charity to get the
money and not deliver the book, the effect of his pernicious activity
would not be so marked. Yet what he sells as a book takes its place on
the centre-table with others of its kind to waste the time of winter
evenings and wet days for a generation. That interesting and rather
convenient character, the pedler with his pack, has passed away; but the
agent and his book continue to flourish. Can no one propose a short way
with book agents?
In the city the confusion is wrought by the woman agent and the girl
clerk. Next to resisting civilly the entreaties of the agent in black is
for a man, after having threaded that modern labyrinth, the department
store, and having halted at the book counter to take his bearings, to be
pounced upon by the clerk in black before he has had time to thumb a
single volume, and asked if he has been waited on. He watches the
cosmopolitan stream of buyers tossing about the cosmopolitan collection
of book bargains on the main aisle counter, and then retreats in
confusion to seek some old-fashioned book store where he can loaf in
ease and think of what he wants to buy. Though scarcely willing to admit
the claim of many buyers and readers of books that it is not good
book-buying etiquette to purchase a book at a department store, he feels
at least that it is not a quiet, convenient, and wise way. And the pity
of it all is, that out of this shuffle and clatter the child is made the
victim of the poor book that is bought because it can be bought cheap.
The fairly well arranged book store is the one place where a book for a
boy may be bought in proper form. Though the second-hand book store is
an interesting place for the man who has not the germ fear, it is no
place to get a boy's book. And the old-fashioned book shop that must
have been a joy to the man of reading tastes has passed, as has the old
apothecary shop. From their modern offspring, the book store and the
drug store, we must get our books and our physic. It is on the shelves
of these book stores that buyers like to explore and make discoveries of
editions. If the particular edition be known, a good way to buy is to
order books directly by mail from the publisher. In fact, this is what
often has to be done in small towns and in country districts where
well-stocked shelves are not within reach. Yet few buyers can adjust
themselves to the practice of buying anything that they have not seen.
They like to feel the response of the book to the touch, see the type
and the illustrations and the binding. This is all good where the store
carries a complete stock; but if every good book wanted has to be
ordered for the buyer, he might as well do it himself directly from the
publisher. From these publishers good descriptive catalogues may be had
for the asking, and by means of them the book not found at the store may
be ordered.
At the usual book store, whether purely secular or connected with the
publishing house of a denominational church, books for men are bought
with greater ease than books for children. A well-selected list of
titles for boys is seldom found. The ubiquitous juveniles are lined up
as usual, but good reprints of children's classics are absent. The
uninformed buyer is at the mercy of the more uninformed clerk. Out of
the indecision of the one and the advice of the other something wholly
unfit for the boy is bought. The poor book received as a gift is beyond
the boy's control and a delicate matter to handle; but the buying of a
poor book with good money is a serious blunder. About the only safe way
is to know what you want before you go into the store, dig it out from
the shelves yourself, and have the clerk do nothing but wrap it up and
give you your change. If you are not settled on what you want, get into
the habit of reading the book numbers of some journal like _The Nation_,
or consult with the well-informed heads of the children's departments of
public libraries.
The particular edition of a book to be bought is largely a question of
taste and of the money at the command of the buyer. Many a boy sees
little in fine, well-illustrated editions. What he wants is the story
without regard to its dress. He may become wedded to the poorly made,
unattractive book that has opened up new lands to him, just as many a
child has formed a greater attachment for a small rag doll than for an
expensive one of wax. Again, circumstances may necessitate the buying of
a twenty-five or fifty-cent edition of a book instead of a two or three
dollar one. Yet this is true: if the book is bought at a sacrifice and
is to serve for a lifetime (and no old book that has served its owner
well ought ever to be replaced by a new one), the best edition available
should be bought, even if it is expensive. Of course, this largely
depends on the book. Mother Goose, some treasury of poetry, AEsop,
stories from Shakespeare, a favourite collection of fairy tales, and
all such books often used need to be in the best of editions; but the
ones less often read may be in cheaper form.
In selecting an edition the first thing to look to is the type and
paper. Even a standard edition may be printed from worn plates giving an
indistinct impression. A clear-cut, large type on unglazed paper is
certainly the best. The detailed colour illustration on a special sized
plate-paper does not appeal to the average child any more than do the
simpler black and white drawings done in a few lines and put on the
ordinary reading page. But the best illustrations that are being done
to-day are very often done in colour, and at first glance they catch the
fancy of the child--then, too, they are the fashion. Whatever kind they
may be, illustrations are almost necessary to a child's book. The next
consideration is the binding. What may have been gained in
attractiveness of page has surely been lost in mechanical execution on
binding. Books, even high-priced books, are now cased instead of bound.
The machine-made back is hung to the book in an insecure way. There is
no hand shaping or building of the back to the book. A child's book
costing three dollars will in a short time become loose, hollow-backed,
and the plate illustrations will fall out. Hand-craft at a reasonable
price has gone by the way here as it has in many other fields of
workmanship. What the publisher has failed to do in the binding of the
book, the boy must be urged to make up in the handling of it.
This brings up the question of the care of books. Vandalism may do its
work among books as well as anywhere else. A good book deserves the best
of care and needs to be secure from the hand that would soil or deface
it. It is a friend to be kept in comfortable quarters, and its rights
are to be respected. It is never to be used as a flower press nor as a
window stick; neither is it to have its back carelessly broken nor its
leaves turned down. It was made to be read and to be enjoyed, and this
without regard to the fact that it came as a gift or was bought with
hard-earned money. The boy should early be taught how to take care of it
as he would any other product of art.
The best-made book may be broken by opening it carelessly the first
time. Glue is flexible under slow pressure, but will break under sudden
strain. If the book is taken in the middle and the halves suddenly
jerked open, it will be broken beyond repair; but if the back of the
book is placed on a table and the leaves turned down slowly from both
covers to the centre, the glue will give and the book will not be
damaged. By going over the whole book carefully in this way once or
twice, it will be ready for use. At no time, however, while reading,
should the covers or leaves be turned farther back than they would be in
lying flat open on a table. The next thing for the boy to learn is how
to take care of the leaves of the book. The leaves should be carefully
turned with the dry tips of the fingers from the top of the page and
pressed down gently but firmly. And under no circumstances should the
corner of a leaf be turned down to mark the place where the reader left
off--an interested memory and a book mark are designed for that purpose.
To keep his books, every boy should have a book shelf or two of his own
that he can easily reach. Any kind of home-made shelf will do; and in it
the books are to be set on end, never on the front of the book, each in
its particular place so that it might be found in the dark. He ought to
learn all of his books by touch. After each reading the book is to be
carefully put in its stall and left there until the owner chooses to
take it out again.
When a book has been bought or received as a gift, the boy should,
according to the old style, write therein his name, the date it came
into his possession, and the warning that it is his book. Book plates
are really unnecessary to a small library, unless the owner can well
afford them. But it is necessary that the owner's name be written in
each one. Now, should the boy lend his book? It is a question whether
the refusal to lend it is a selfish act or not. Like umbrellas, books
are often looked on as stray blessings to be taken in by any one who
chances to come across them or who needs them. The well-conceived
chaining idea has long since disappeared, but the purloining habit still
lingers. It and its handmaiden, borrowing, have wrought much confusion
and inconvenience in private libraries. Few people ever think to return
a book, or at least to return it in good condition. If the truth were
always told, the couplet of the satirist would fit the possessor of many
a repleted library:
"Next, o'er his books his eyes began to roll, In pleasant memory of all
he stole."
Selfish or not selfish, the wise thing for the boy to do is to refuse to
lend his books. It is too much like lending a meal or a friend; but they
can all be shared in the presence of the owner. If the boy's chum has a
hungry mind and clean hands, he may be asked to drop in and read the
book where it belongs, but not to carry it off elsewhere. Or better
still: the owner of the book who knows its riches may fall into the
habit of reading his favourite portions aloud to his boy friends who
have gathered in for that purpose. No single thing will awaken such a
love for good literature as the gathering of choice bits of it through
the ear. That is the good lesson that has come from the tent of the
Arab. And it is a lesson that readers must learn to-day. By no means let
the book of the boy fail to entertain his chums, but let it entertain
them at his own home.
Does any one who has laboured hard to build a house move out of it as
soon as it is completed? Does any one who has cultivated a friendship
give it up as soon as it is secure? Should any one who has learned to
thoroughly enjoy a good book throw it aside as soon as this is done?
Like the house or the friend, that book should continue to be a comfort
to him who has learned to appreciate it. In short, the boy must make
friends with a few books and then keep them without capitulation. If he
does, he may some day feel the truth of these verses:
"Books, we know,
Are a substantial world, both pure and good;
Round these with tendrils strong as flesh and blood,
Our pastimes and our happiness will grow."