Now the true lover is he who loves the soul—who sees beyond clothes and bodily attributes, and cherishes nobility of character, strength of intellect, loftiness of purpose, sweetness of disposition, steadfastness of attachment—those thousand qualities that go to make up personality. All these the book has, like the man or the woman—for is it not the essence of its writer? Your true book-lover would rather have a little old dog’s-eared copy of his favorite author, soiled and torn by use, with binding gone, and printed on bad paper with poorer type and worse ink, than a mediocre production that is a typographic and artistic masterpiece.
And yet we call the collector of fine bindings and rare editions a “book-lover,” to the exclusion of the one who loves truly and devotedly. The true book-lover wants to get at the soul of his book; the false one may never see it. He may even refrain from cutting the leaves of the rare first edition that he has just bought, in doing which he is like the ignorant mother who sews her child up in his clothes for the winter—nay, worse; for you cannot sew up the child’s soul.
Now let there be no misunderstanding. As the true lover would have his mistress beautiful—nay, as she is beautiful to his eyes, whatever she may be to others, and as he would, if he could, clothe her in silks and adorn her with gems, so the true book-lover need not be and is not adverse to having his favorite author sumptuously set forth; he would rather than not see his books properly and strongly printed and bound; his love for the soul need not interfere with proper regard for the body and its raiment. And here is where the love of the book has an advantage over the affection whose object is a person. In spite of the advertisements of the beauty doctors, a homely face can rarely be made beautiful; but the book may be embodied and clothed as we will; it is the same, however printed and bound, to him who loves it for its contents.
Thus it will be seen that when I speak in general of “a love of books” I mean not a love of their typography, their illustration, or their bindings, but of their contents; a love of the universal mind of humanity as enshrined in print; a love of the method of recording ideas in written speech, as contrasted with their presentation in the spoken tongue—a love of ideas and ideals as so recorded. Such a love of books is pre-eminently a characteristic of civilized man. It is not synonymous with a love of knowledge—the savage who never saw a book may have that; it is not even the same as a love of recorded knowledge, for knowledge may be recorded in other ways—in the brain by oral repetition, in sculptured memorials, in mere piles of stone. It is a love of the ideas of men recorded in a particular way, in the particular way that has commended itself to civilized man as best.
The very existence of a library presupposes such a love of books. No one who had not an affection for the printed records of his race would care to possess them, much less to collect and preserve them. It would seem, then, that a love of books should be not only a qualification but an absolute prerequisite for entrance upon librarianship. By inquiring how and why it has come to be regarded as a non-essential or as of secondary importance, we may perhaps learn something.
A young woman comes to me to ask for library work; and when I demand sternly, “Have you training or experience?” she timidly answers, “No; but I’m very fond of books.” I smile; you all smile in like case. Why do we smile? What business have we to underrate such a fundamental qualification and exalt above it mere technicalities? The ability to acquire these technicalities exists in ten persons where the ability to love books as they should be loved is found in one. If the love so avowed is real, even if it is only potential, not actual, our feeling in its presence should be one of reverence, not amusement. It should prove the candidate fit, perhaps not for immediate appointment, but for preliminary training with a view to appointment in the future.
If it is real! Candor compels me to confess that, like some other avowals of love, that of a love for books does not always ring true. “What have you read?” I once asked one of these self-styled book-lovers. She fixed me with her eye and after a moment’s impressive pause she replied “Deep thought!” I mentally marked her as a false lover. Proud parents relate how their progeny in childhood would rather peruse E. S. Ellis than play and pore over Alger than eat—this as irrefragable proof of fitness for a library career. Consideration of cases like these makes us wonder whether the smile is so much out of the way after all. Does the true book-lover publicly announce her affection in the hope of gain? Does she not rather, like Shakespeare’s maid, “never tell her love?” It is to be feared that some of these people are confusing a love of books with a love of reading. They are not the same thing. Some persons enjoy the gentle mental exercise of letting a stream of more or less harmless ideas flow through their brains—continuously in and continuously out again—apprehending them one after another in lazy fashion, and then dismissing them. The result is a degree of mental friction, but no permanent intellectual acquisition. How much of our own reading is of this kind I shudder to contemplate. Far be it from me to condemn it; it has its uses; it is an excellent cure for wakefulness after a busy day; but it no more indicates or stimulates a love for books than shaking hands with a thousand callers makes it possible for the Governor or the President to claim them all as intimate friends.
A real love for books, after all, is betrayed rather than announced; it shows itself in the chance remark, the careless action, just as another kind of love may show itself in a glance or a word.
I believe this to be the reason why a love for books is so little considered among the modern qualifications of librarianship; it appears in acts, not in words; it cannot be ascertained by asking questions. He who protests that he has it must needs be an object of suspicion. And yet I venture to say that if any librarian has made a conspicuous success of his work, apart from the mere mechanics of it, he has achieved that success primarily and notably through love of books. This I assert to be the case down to the assistant of lowest grade.
To be good, work must be ungrudging. And though other things than love for one’s task may make one willing to do it and able to do it well, intelligent interest is always a prime factor in securing the best results.