d free from pencil marks when
issued to them, the reader should be required always to rub out his own
marks, as a wholesome object-lesson for the future. The same course
should be pursued with any reader detected in scribbling on the margin of
any book which is being read within the library. Incorrigible cases,
amounting to malicious marking up of books, should be visited by severe
penalties--even to the denial of further library privileges to the
offender.

Not long ago, I bought at an auction sale a copy of the first edition of
Tennyson's "In Memoriam," which was found on receipt to be defaced by
marking dozens of verses in the margin with black lines drawn along them,
absolutely with pen and ink! The owner of that book, who did the
ruthless deed, never reflected that it might fall into hands where his
indelible folly would be sharply denounced.

The librarian or assistant librarian who will instinctively rub out all
pencil marks observed in a library book deserves well of his countrymen.
It is time well spent.

The writing on book-margins is so common a practice, and so destructive
of the comfort and satisfaction which readers of taste should find in
their perusal of books, that no legitimate means of arresting it or
repairing it should be neglected. In a public library in Massachusetts, a
young woman of eighteen who was detected as having marked a library copy
of "Middlemarch" with gushing effusions, was required to read the statute
prescribing fine and imprisonment for such offenses, with very tearful
effect, and undoubtedly with a wholesome and permanent improvement in her
relations to books and libraries.

In some libraries, a warning notice is posted up like this: "Readers
finding a book injured or defaced, are required to report it at once to
the librarian, otherwise they will be held responsible for the damage
done." This rule, while its object is highly commendable, may lead in
practice to injustice to some readers. So long as the reader uses the
book inside of the library walls, he should of course report such defects
as meet his eye in reading, whether missing pages, plates, or maps, or
serious internal soiling, torn leaves, etc. But in the case of drawing
out books for home reading, the rule might embarrass any reader, however
well disposed, if too strictly construed. A reader finding any serious
defect in a library volume used at home, should simply place a mark or
slip in the proper place with the wo