tant)
it is injured in its binding, which is strained and weakened just in
proportion to the length of time in which it is subjected to such risks.
The plain remedy is to take care that every volume is supported upright
upon the shelf, in some way. When the shelf is full, the books will
support one another. But when volumes are withdrawn, or when a shelf is
only partly filled with books, the unsupported volumes tumble by force of
gravitation, and those next them sag and lean, or fall like a row of
bricks, pushing one another over. No shelf of books can safely be left in
this condition. Some one of the numerous book-supports that have been
contrived should be always ready, to hold up the volumes which are liable
to lean and fall.

We come now to the active human enemies of books, and these are unhappily
found among some of the readers who frequent our libraries. These abuses
are manifold and far-reaching. Most of them are committed through
ignorance, and can be corrected by the courteous but firm interposition
of the librarian, instructing the delinquent how to treat a book in hand.
Others are wilful and unpardonable offences against property rights and
public morals, even if not made penal offences by law. One of these is
book mutilation, very widely practiced, but rarely detected until the
mischief is done, and the culprit gone. I have found whole pages torn out
of translations, in the volumes of Bohn's Classical Library, doubtless by
students wanting the translated text as a "crib" in their study of the
original tongue. Some readers will watch their opportunity, and mutilate
a book by cutting out plates or a map, to please their fancy, or perhaps
to make up a defective copy of the same work. Those consulting bound
files of newspapers will ruthlessly despoil them by cutting out articles
or correspondence, or advertisements, and carrying off the stolen
extracts, to save themselves the trouble of copying. Others, bolder
still, if not more unscrupulous, will deliberately carry off a library
book under a coat, or in a pocket, perhaps signing a false name to a
reader's ticket to hide the theft, or escape detection. Against these
scandalous practices, there is no absolute safeguard in any library. Even
where a police watch is kept, thefts are perpetrated, and in most
libraries where no watchman is employed, the librarian and his assistants
are commonly far too busy to exercise close scrutiny of all readers. As
one safeguard,