Which is the prettiest, an old thing or a new thing? Oh, a new thing to be sure, you say. A beautiful, new book, fresh from the bookstore, is a great deal prettier than an old, worn out, tattered book, that you have had a great while.

Now there is one great mistake that small boys very often make. They think that books and other things become old and worn out, only because they have had them a long time; but that is not the reason. I have seen a great many books, beautiful books too, full of pictures, and they had been kept a great many years, and yet they were not old and worn out. They looked just as well as when they were first bought. Now I am going to explain to you here how you may keep your things so that they shall not become old and worn out.

Suppose your father should bring you home a beautiful book with a red morocco cover, and full of pictures. It looks new and beautiful. Now look at the cover a moment. Do you suppose the cover is red all through? Suppose any body should cut the corner off of the cover, should you expect that it would be red all through where they cut it? It would not. It is only red outside. The red is very thin, very thin indeed, spread all over the outside of the cover. You might take a knife and scrape it off in a little spot, and see that it is very thin, and that it is some other color underneath. Perhaps somebody will take some old book which is not good for much, and show you what I mean. You must not try it upon any good books.

Now suppose you should lay your red morocco book down upon the floor, and push it along, the floor would rub off a little of the red morocco. And then suppose that the next day you should lay it down on the stone steps, the rough stone would wear off more of the red morocco. And then suppose that you should lay it down open upon the table, or floor; a little dust from the table or floor would stick to the leaves, and spoil their whiteness. And then suppose you should let your book fall from a chair; it would bruise one of the corners, and bend it up a little. So if you go on a great many days rubbing your book upon the floor, and throwing it about, and tumbling the leaves, after a short time the beautiful red color of the cover would be worn off in spots, and the white paper would get soiled, and the corners very much bruised, and the book would begin to look old and tattered and torn. It would become an old, worn out book, not because you had kept it so long, but because you had used it roughly.