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"You have superb volumes," cried Durtal, who looked at magnificent folios in splendid bindings with armorial bearings. "Wait; here are the works of Saint Bernard in a fine edition," and the monk presented to Durtal enormous volumes, printed in heavy letters on crackling paper.
From failure to observe this simple precaution, you will find in all libraries multitudes of torn or broken bindings at the top a wholly needless defacement and waste. Never permit a book to be turned down on its face to keep the place. This easily besetting habit weakens the book, and frequently soils its leaves by contact with a dusty table.
Numerous different devices are in the market for this purpose, from the solid brick to the light sheet-iron support; but it is important to protect the end of every row from strain on the bindings, and the cost of book supports is indefinitely less than that of the re-binding entailed by neglecting to use them.
To own one or two examples from his library is to take high rank in the army of bookmen. The amateur of bindings need learn little more when he comprehends the stages of Grolier's literary passion, its fervent and florid beginnings, the majesty of its progress, and its austere simplicities in old age.
Many of the casements stood open, and there was the scent of flowers in the silent old rooms, where all was neat and prim, albeit a little faded and gray. Ida loved to explore the library, where the books were for the most part quaint and old, original editions of seventeenth and eighteenth century books, in sober, substantial bindings.
The checkered bindings of the books, in which the creamy tints of vellum predominated, lined the whole surface of the wall with a delicate sobriety of color; over the mantelpiece, the picture of the founder of the house a Holbein portrait, glorious in red robes and fur and golden necklace seemed to gather up and give voice to all the dignity and impressiveness of the room beneath him; while on the window side the book-lined wall was, as it were, replaced by the wooded face of a hill, clothed in dark lines of trimmed yews, which rose abruptly, about a hundred yards from the house and overshadowed the whole library wing.
And on a rustic book-case in their living room, where the big fireplace was, and where the southern sun beat warmest in, stood their chief treasure a set of encyclopedias. Stern had made leather bindings for these, with the deft help of Beatrice. The original bindings had vanished before the attacks of time and insects centuries before. But the leaves were still intact.
It was a long, low room, panelled in teak half-way up the walls, and the shelves held a multitude of fine bindings. There were good rugs on the parquet door, but no ornaments anywhere, save three. On the carved mantelpiece stood two of the old soapstone birds which they used to find at Zimbabwe, and between, on an ebony stand, a half moon of alabaster, curiously carved with zodiacal figures.
The books were all in old-style leather, sheepskin and parchment bindings, some of them tied with leathern thongs, and a few having heavy homemade metal clasps. They were all in Latin or Spanish, and were well known books of divinity. The first page of the record of marriages was written and signed by Junipero Serra.
It was full to overflowing with printed books in fine bindings, short tales in Bragdon's familiar hand in copy-books, manuscripts almost without number, three Russia-leather record-books containing, the title-page told me, that which I most dreaded to find, The Poems of Thomas Bragdon, and dedicated to "His Dearest Friend" myself.
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