The Court sentenced him to eight years in the
penitentiary, but suspended the sentence in view of the fact that it was
a first offense, by a youth of twenty-one years. He was put under police
surveillance for his good behavior (equivalent to being paroled) but the
sentence becomes active upon any further transgression of the law on his
part.

It may be gathered from these many cases of library depredations, that
they are very common, that perpetual vigilance is the price of safety,
that punishment in nearly all cases is wiser than pardon, and that the
few exceptions made should be mostly confined to offenders who steal
books under desperate necessity or actual want.

CHAPTER 7.

PAMPHLET LITERATURE.

What is a pamphlet? is a question which is by no means capable of being
scientifically answered. Yet, to the librarian dealing continually with a
mass of pamphlets, books, and periodicals, it becomes important to define
somewhere, the boundary line between the pamphlet and the book. The
dictionaries will not aid us, for they all call the pamphlet "a few
sheets of printed paper stitched together, but not bound." Suppose (as
often happens) that you bind your pamphlet, does it then cease to be a
pamphlet, and become a book? Again, most pamphlets now published are not
stitched at all, but stabbed and wired to fasten the leaves together. The
origin of the word "pamphlet," is in great doubt. A plausible derivation
is from two French words, "_paume_," and "_feuillet_," literally a
hand-leaf; and another derives the word from a corruption of
Latin--"_papyrus_," paper, into _pampilus_, or _panfletus_, whence
pamphlet. The word is in Shakespeare:

"Comest thou with deep premeditated lines,
With written pamphlets studiously devised?"

But we also find "pamphlets and bookys," in a work printed by Caxton in
1490, a hundred years before Shakespeare.

Whatever the origin, the common acceptation of the word is plain,
signifying a little book, though where the pamphlet ends, and the book
begins, is uncertain. The rule of the British Museum Library calls every
printed publication of one hundred pages or less, a pamphlet. This is
arbitrary, and so would any other rule be. As that library binds its
pamphlets separately, and counts them in its aggregate of volumes, the
reason for any distinction in the matter is not plain. Some of the
government libraries in Europe are greatly overrated numerically by
reckoning pamphle