- About Bookbinding -

'Tis in books the chief
Of all perfections to be plain and brief.
SAMUEL BUTLER.
Of all those arts in which the wise excel,
Nature's chief master-piece is writing well.
BUCKINGHAM.
Books should to one of these four ends conduce:
For wisdom, piety, delight, or use.
SIR JOHN DENHAM

MY BOOKS.
Oh, happy he who, weary of the sound
Of throbbing life, can shut his study door,
Like Heinsius, on it all, to find a store
Of peace that otherwise is never found!
Such happiness is mine, when all around
My dear dumb friends in groups of three or four
Command my soul to linger on the shore
Of those fair realms where they reign monarchs crowned.
To-day the strivings of the world are naught,
For I am in a land that glows with God,
And I am in a path by angels trod.
Dost ask what book creates such heavenly thought?
Then know that I with Dante soar afar,
Till earth shrinks slowly to a tiny star.
J. WILLIAMS

THOUGHTS IN A LIBRARY.

Speak low! tread softly through these halls;
Here genius lives enshrined;
Here reign in silent majesty
The monarchs of the mind.

A mighty spirit host they come
From every age and clime;
Above the buried wrecks of years
They breast the tide of time.

Here shall the poets chant for thee
Their sweetest, loftiest lays,
And prophets wait to guide thy steps
In Wisdom's pleasant ways.

Come, with these God-anointed kings
Be thou companion here;
And in the mighty realm of mind
Thou shalt go forth a peer!
ANNE C. LYNCH BOTTA.

VERSES IN A LIBRARY.

Give me that book whose power is such
That I forget the north wind's touch.
Give me that book that brings to me
Forgetfulness of what I be.
Give me that book that takes my life
In seeming far from all its strife.
Give me that book wherein each page
Destroys my sense of creeping age.
JOHN KENDRICK BANGS.

A BOOK BY THE BROOK.

Give me a nook and a book,
And let the proud world spin round;
Let it scramble by hook or by crook
For wealth or a name with a sound.
You are welcome to amble your ways,
Aspirers to place or to glory;
May big bells jangle your praise,
And golden pens blazon your story;
For me, let me dwell in my nook,
Here by the curve of this brook,
That croons to the tune of my book:
Whose melody wafts me forever
On the waves of an unseen river.
WILLIAM FREELAND.

Back