THE MERCANTILE LIBRARY ASSOCIATION.
| Perusal of the last Annual Report of the Mercantile Library Association--the forty ninth annual, by the way,--convinces PUNCHINELLO that matters are all serene in that favorite resort of his. The only "burst" about it appears, according to the report, to arise from a plethora of books, which are bursting each other off from the shelves for want of room. There is something funny in this statement when we read, elsewhere, that 250 copies of "Little Women" have been added to the shelves. Little women are notoriously pugnacious, and, as a matter of 250 copies of the "Old-fashioned Girl" have also found lodgings on the library shelves, no wonder that there was a "muss" on the premises. So far as the Reading-room is concerned, PUNCHINELLO is glad to know that the reserve with which magazines were kept behind the desk for a year or two past, has given place to a new and better arrangement. One can take up his magazine, now, from a table appropriated to periodicals, just as if he were in his own house--only more so, as there are not many private mansions that can boast of a supply of 174 magazines, which is just the number taken in at the Reading-room. The only objection to this arrangement, according to PUNCHINELLO'S way of thinking, is that it debars a fellow from the opportunity of addressing himself to one of the fascinating ladies in charge of the room, and having a private lark with her under the pretext of obtaining a magazine. |
The Report states that the magazine thief, and the cutter and maimer of newspapers, are characters not as yet altogether unknown to the pleasant acre or two of room appropriated to the readers of such literature. Not unfrequently has PUNCHINELLO, when tumbling about copies of magazines exposed for sale on street tables, detected copies bearing the mark of the Association. Hence it appears that certain mean miscreants keep themselves in tobacco and other cheap luxuries by filching single magazines from the room, and disposing of them in bulk, when they have accumulated as many of them as will fetch fifteen or twenty cents at reduced prices. Meaner, if possible, than said miscreant, is the one who cuts from a paper such paragraph as may be most valuable to him for some inscrutable purpose--a paragraph containing important news, perhaps, from the knowledge of which the next reader is consequently debarred. A roll upon the first layer of a patent pitch pavement, and a subsequent plunge into the show-case of a feather-dealer, would be merely a sportive hint to these reading-room malefactors that their room would be nicer than their company.
PUNCHINELLO is glad that the Directory of the Association have paused on the question of opening the Reading-room on Sundays. The matter with most city people is that their eyes have too much paper and printer's ink forced upon them during the six days of the week. Give the eyes a holiday on Sunday, by all means. Let them rest themselves upon the blue skies and the green meadows; upon the birds, and flowers, and butterflies, in Central Park, and upon everything else that is lovely, including the muslins and sweet things in ribbons of the period.
In conclusion, PUNCHINELLO delights in whiling away an hour or two in the Reading-room of the Mercantile Library Association. There he feels perfectly at home; and if he has a word or two of information to obtain from the dark-eyed young lady in charge of the room, he is always certain to find himself prettily Posted.
AN INTERESTING RELIC.
A gentleman of this city is in possession of a very curious and elaborate watch-guard made of the Hairs of ANNEKE JANS.