Suppose the desired patch found. The hole or broken place in the cover is cleaned and the edge cut sharp to prevent further tearing, and in this is set a piece from the patch, cut exactly to fit. If the amateur has not time to do this careful mosaic patching, he may, with a small, thin blade, raise the edges of the leather about the hole and, applying paste or glue directly to the board, slip in a patch piece which has been roughly cut a little larger than the hole and pared thin around the edges. The edges of the hole should then be moistened with paste and firmly pressed down into place over the patch. A patch made in this way is less agreeable to the eye than when made by the first process, for by this latter method there always remains a sort of raised pad which accents the form of the hole.

Let us consider now the repair of bruises, more or less deep, caused by rough contact with some hard, sharp or rough body.

When the stripped parts are still hanging to the cover, they should be straightened out and pressed back into place after being given a light coat of thick starch paste.

But if the stripped parts corresponding to the bruise are missing, how shall the furrow, which reveals a spongy appearance, be brought up level with the surface of the cover? With a corresponding patch inserted in the fissure? This is an operation, I think, very difficult to carry out, and it is simpler to cut the furrow into a definite hole if one wishes to proceed in this way. Let us try and imagine some kind of putty for such repairs.

I do not wish to write hastily of any method of procedure for the fabrication of bruised leather, but it seems to me that a paste or putty formed of powdered or shredded leather, boiled with a little flour paste, would answer our purpose. With this one could fill up the furrow and then, when the paste has dried, scrape off the excess surface and burnish the dried inlay. This method should answer very well, but there is still another which I have tried, although it is not so delicate. I employed flour paste mixed simply with Spanish white (*). With this, I puttied up my book like a picture in process of being retouched.

I even succeeded, with this paste, in imitating the grain of the morocco. I tinted the patches by applying color mixed with gum. But this sort of repair is only applicable to parts of the cover away from the edges; in the neighborhood of the hinges, this unelastic paste will break loose or, at least, render the book difficult to open.

(*) Whiting (chalk) used as a pigment. M. S. B.
I experimented also with gutta-percha. This brownish substance has the property, at a certain temperature (towards seventy degrees) (*) of melting and adhering to the leather and, on cooling, recovers its natural, semielastic state. But after having been melted at a fire or, if the season is right, by sunlight through a lens, it turns brown and will not harmonize in tint except with very dark calf, and I have found no method of lightening it.

(*) One hundred and fifty-eight degrees Fahrenheit. M. S. B.

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