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He tried the texture of the curtains, looked at the handsome bindings of the books, and admired the magnificent bronzes on the mantelpiece. "Aha," muttered he, as he tried the springs of a luxurious armchair, "everything is of the best, and when matters are settled, I half think that I should like a resting-place just like this "
One day the expressman brought a package some books he had always loved, in remarkable bindings, and this note: "My best Friend: "To-day I am seventy. I haven't been so young since sorrow was sent to prove me, nor more happy since I nursed your hurt arm when we were children.
The room was well and simply furnished in the style of the house, but the personal belongings and the bindings of some books suggested a mind not out of harmony with the refinement of its surroundings. Merrington, with a swift and comprehensive glance around him, began to upset the neat arrangement and feminine order of the apartment with a thorough and systematic search.
He had pointed this out to Lucia, suggesting that it was not a good thing to let too much dust accumulate on the tops of books, neither was it altogether desirable that a strong south-westerly light should play upon them all day long. Had she ever noticed how the bindings were cracking and fading?
The first shed she opened contained the gardener's utensils, large and small. The second was littered with fragments of broken furniture, empty picture-frames of worm-eaten wood, shattered vases, boxes without covers, and books torn from their bindings.
Here and there a Donatello bronze silhouetted a slim shape, or a Florentine portrait bust smiled with veiled meaning from the quiet shadows. The shelves were rich in books in splendid bindings, gems of ancient workmanship or modern luxury, for the Great Man had the instinct of the masterpiece. The door opened softly, and the secretary entered, a look of uncertainty on his handsome young face.
Some ran up-stairs, others into the rainy street, the nervous young lady fainted, a business-like young matron, who had for years been maturing plans of operation in case of fire, hastily swept into a table-cover a dozen books in special morocco bindings, and hurried through the rain with them to a house several hundred feet away, while the faithful dog Jerry, scenting the trouble afar off, hurried home and did his duty to the best of his ability by barking and snapping furiously at every one, and galloping frantically through the house, leaving his mark upon almost every square yard of the carpet.
Mild, unpretentious men who let everybody run over them Now his grief was his wife, and lived with him Tediousness seems to ooze out through their bindings Tired smile of those who have not long to live Trees are like men; there are some that have no luck Voice of the heart which alone has power to reach the heart When he sings, it is because he has something to sing about By FRANCOIS COPPEE
On unpacking a box of books, which had been our solace during the voyage, we found them almost glued together by the secretion of these creatures. The box had been standing on the ground floor of the hotel. The white ants had eaten through and through the books, and picked all the surface off the bindings; they were disgusting to look at and to smell.
The room probably owed the name of "study" to a set of Farmer's Magazines which, in all the dignity of expensive bindings, divided the shelf with a rather damaged edition of "The Turf Register," a "Farrier's Manual," a brace of antiquated medical works, and a stack of newspapers.
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