THE CHRIST CHILD.
[From Christmas Wide Awake.]
ART IN BOOK ILLUSTRATION.
BY CHARLES E. HURD.
Books, books, books! Their number, variety, gorgeousness of bindings, and wealth of illustration confuse the visitor who at this season wanders through the bookstores of a great city, whether aimlessly, or with the design of purchase. Books stare at him from the long rows of shelves; books are piled in reckless profusion upon the counters; they protrude from under the tables, as if vainly seeking to hide themselves there from insatiable buyers; they bulge through the broken paper of packages in corners; they crowd themselves into the windows, where the boldest and most gorgeous display themselves as if calling to the passers-by to come in and purchase.
One cannot help wondering, sometimes, where all these books come from. Who are their makers? What reason is there for their existence? Under what circumstances were they thrust upon the world? For, really, eight out of ten count as nothing in the literary race for fame or money. Either the publisher or the author—nowadays, as a rule, the latter—must suffer. The book—representative of the hopes, the wearisome labors, and, sometimes, of the brains of the author—leaps into being with the air of "Who will not buy me?" which soon changes into that of "Who will buy me?" and goes out finally to stand at the doors of the second-hand bookstores on a dirty shelf, to get its covers blistered in the sun, its binding dampened by the rain, all the while shamefully conscious of the legend displayed above,—"Anything on this shelf for 25 cents."
FOREST OF ARDENNES.
[From Childe Harold.]
There are, however, books that achieve success, and that publishers thrive upon. Books that are "a joy forever," companions, counsellors, and friends, the value of whose printed pages is aided and added to by the hand of the draughtsman, and in which text and illustration harmoniously blend to make the perfect book.
It speaks well for the growing taste of the American public that these books, whose cost of manufacture often reaches many thousands of dollars, always meet with popular favor, and so exacting has the public taste become that no publisher of reputation dares leave a stone unturned in the carrying-out of any literary project in which illustration bears part.