Much is to be forgiven to the man who loves books, and yet is doomed to deal out books that perish in the using, which no human being would ever read a second time nor “be found dead with.” These are the true tests of a good book, especially the last. Shelley died with a little Æschylus on his person, which the cruel waves spared, and when Tennyson fell asleep it was with a Shakespeare, open at “Cymbeline.” One may be excused for reading a good deal that he never would re-read, but not for owning it, nor for owning a good deal which he would feel ashamed to have for his last earthly companion. But now for my tribute to
THE PUBLIC LIBRARIAN.
is books extend on every side,
And up and down the vistas wide
His eye can take them in;
He does not love these books at all,
Their usefulness in big and small
He counts as but a sin.
And all day long he stands to serve
The public with an aching nerve;
He views them with disdain—
The student with his huge round glasses,
The maiden fresh from high school classes,
With apathetic brain;
The sentimental woman lorn,
The farmer recent from his corn,
The boy who thirsts for fun,
The graybeard with a patent-right,
The pedagogue of school at night,
The fiction-gulping one.
They ask for histories, reports,
Accounts of turf and prize-ring sports,
The census of the nation;
Philosophy and science too,
The fresh romances not a few,
Also “Degeneration.”
“They call these books!” he said, and throws
Them down in careless heaps and rows
Before the ticket-holder;
He’d like to cast them at his head,
He wishes they might strike him dead,
And with the reader moulder.
But now as for the shrine of saint
He seeks a spot whence sweet and faint
A leathery smell exudes,
And there behind the gilded wires
For some loved rarity inquires
Which common gaze eludes.
He wishes Omar would return
That vulgar mob of books to burn,
While he, like Virgil’s hero,
Would shoulder off this precious case
To some secluded private place
With temperature at zero.
And there in that Seraglio
Of books not kept for public show,
He’d feast his glowing eyes,
Forgetting that these beauties rare,
Morocco-clad and passing fair,
Are but the Sultan’s prize.
But then a tantalizing sense
Invades expectancy intense,
And with extorted moan,
“Unhappy man!” he sighs, “condemned
To show such treasure and to lend—
I keep, but cannot own!”
XIII.
DOES BOOK COLLECTING PAY.
