THE ARRANGEMENT OF BOOKS. There was a time when I loved to see my books arranged with a view to uniformity of height and harmony of color without respect to subjects. That time I regard as my vealy period That was the time when we admired “Somnambula,” and when the housewife used to have all the pictures hung on the same level, and to buy vases in pairs exactly alike and put them on either side of the parlor clock, which was generally surmounted by a prancing Saracen or a weaving Penelope. Granting that a collection is not extensive enough to demand a strict arrangement by subjects, I like to see a little artistic confusion—high and low together here and there, like a democratic community; now and then some giants laid down on their sides to rest; the shelves not uniformly filled out as if the owner never expected to buy any more, and alongside a dainty Angler a book in red or blue cloth with a white label—just as childred in velvet and furs sit next a newsboy, or a little girl in calico with a pigtail at Sunday School, or as beggars and princes kneel side by side on the cathedral pavement. It is good to have these “swell” books rub up against the commoners, which though not so elegant are frequently a great deal brighter. At a country funeral I once heard the undertaker say to the bearers, “size yourselves off.” There is no necessity or artistic gain in such a ceremony in a library, and a departure from stiff uniformity is quite agreeable Then I do not care to have the book cases all of the same height, nor even of the same kind of wood, nor to have them all “dwarfs,” with bric-a-brac on the top. I would rather have more books on top In short, it is pleasant to have the collection remind one in a way of Topsy—not that it was “born,” but “growed” and is expected to grow more There is a modern notion of considering a library as a room rather than as a collection of books, and of making the front drawing-room the library, which is heretical in the eyes of a true Book-Worm. This is probably an invention of the women of the house to prevent any additions to the books without their knowledge, and to discourage book-buying. We have surrendered too much to our wives in this; they demand book cases as furniture and to serve as shelves, without any regard to the interior contents or whether there are any, except for the color of the bindings and the regularity of the rows. All of us have thus seen “libraries” without books worthy the name, and book-cases sometimes with exquisite silk curtains, carefully and closely drawn, arousing the suspicion that there were no books behind them My ideal library is a room given up to books, all by itself, at the top or in the rear of the house, where “company” cannot break through and say to me, “I know you are a great man to buy books—have you seen that beautiful limited holiday edition of Ben Hur, with illustrations?”
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