CHAPTER IV
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, Æsop, 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."