htly wedging them together. Never crowd books
by main force into shelves too short or too small for them. It strains
the backs, and seriously injures the bindings. Every book should slip
easily past its fellows on the shelf. If a volume is too tall to go in
its place, it should be relegated to lower shelves for larger books,
never letting its head be crowded against the shelf above it.

One should never pull books out from the shelf by their head-bands, or by
pulling at the binding, but place the finger firmly on the top of the
book, next to the binding, and press down while drawing out the volume.
From failure to observe this simple precaution, you will find in all
libraries multitudes of torn or broken bindings at the top--a wholly
needless defacement and waste.

Never permit a book to be turned down on its face to keep the place. This
easily besetting habit weakens the book, and frequently soils its leaves
by contact with a dusty table. For the same reason, one volume should not
be placed within the leaves of another to keep the place where a
book-mark of paper, so easily supplied, should always be used. Books
should not be turned down on the fore-edges or fronts on the library
tables, as practiced in most book-stores, in order to better display the
stock. The same habit prevails in many libraries, from careless
inattention. When necessary, in order to better read the titles, they
should never be left long in such position. This treatment weakens the
back infallibly, and if long continued breaks it. Librarians, of all
persons in the world, should learn, and should lead others to learn,
never to treat a book with indignity, and how truly the life of a book
depends upon proper treatment, as well as that of an animated being.

These things, and others of my suggestions, may seem trifles to some; but
to those who consider how much success in life depends upon attention to
what are called trifles--nay, how much both human taste and human
happiness are promoted by care regarding trifles, they will not appear
unimportant. The existence of schools to teach library science, and of
manuals devoted to similar laudable aims, is an auspicious omen of the
new reign of refined taste in those nobler arts of life which connect
themselves with literature, and are to be hailed as authentic evidences
of the onward progress of civilization.

CHAPTER 6.

THE RESTORATION AND RECLAMATION OF BOOKS.

We are now to consider caref