The home library . nded the steps. There are book-cases and book-cases, just as there arebooks and books. There is the richly carved cabinet,with its inlaid panels, its elaborate brass, its silken cur-tains, its beveled glass, its chamois-covered shelves, itstough back carefully protected against damp, all unitingto perfect a fit tabernacle for priceless volumes, so old, sorare, so beautifully bound as to be absolutely too preciousfor human creatures daily food. There is the single board 50 THE HOME LIBRARY, held against the side of a shanty by a bit of string and anail or two and supporting a
The home library . nded the steps. There are book-cases and book-cases, just as there arebooks and books. There is the richly carved cabinet,with its inlaid panels, its elaborate brass, its silken cur-tains, its beveled glass, its chamois-covered shelves, itstough back carefully protected against damp, all unitingto perfect a fit tabernacle for priceless volumes, so old, sorare, so beautifully bound as to be absolutely too preciousfor human creatures daily food. There is the single board 50 THE HOME LIBRARY, held against the side of a shanty by a bit of string and anail or two and supporting a worn Emerson, an old copyof Franklin, a cheap Shakespeare and two or three vol-umes of Cooper, Scott, or Longfellow, battered and worn—and yet far more highly prized by their owner than anybibliophiles treasure which he loves selfishly, merely asthe miser loves his gold. And between these two extremesare numberless intermediate varieties. There is the soberrow of books filling the top of the mantel-piece—a bad. Fig. 4. place for books, as the warped backs and cracking coversreveal only too soon. There is the first attempt at a book-case, the box once filled with soap or wine, now planedand stained and divided in two by a transverse partition,which serves as a shelf, and with the bottom and the topgives accommodation for three rows of books (Fig. 4) ; thisprimitive device is not to be despised, for it will affordshelf-room for quite fifty volumes, two thirds of which areinside the box, and are thus always ready to move and easyto handle. In a country with a population as nomadic as ON TEE LIBRARY AND ITS FURNITURE. 51 ours, any book-case, however elementary, which holdsbooks as well in one place as another, and as well whenmoving from one place to another as when settled, andwhich saves all trouble of packing before transport and ofrearrangement afterward, is not without its good points ;and there are many worse ways of providing for books thana combination—by means of a
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookd, booksubjectprivatelibraries, bookyear1883
