of the
marriage of the Adriatic. You know that this concerns the history of
Venice and its Doges, and you turn to various books on Venice, and its
history, until you find a description of the strange festival. It may be,
and probably is the case, that the books, like most descriptive works and
narratives of travellers, are without index. This is a disability in the
use of books which you must continually encounter, since multitudes of
volumes, old and new, are sent out without a vestige of an index to their
contents. Some writers have urged that a law should be made refusing
copyright to the author of any book who failed to provide it with an
index; a requirement highly desirable, but also highly impracticable. Yet
you will find in most books, a division of the contents into chapters,
and in the beginning of the volume a table of the contents of each
chapter, giving its leading topics. This is a substitute for an index,
although (not being arranged in alphabetical order) it is far less useful
than that time-saving aid to research. But you have to learn to take
advantage of even poor and inferior helps, when you cannot have the best,
(as a poor guide is better than no guide at all, unless it misguides,)
and so you run your eye quickly through the table of contents to find
what you seek. In the case supposed, of the ceremony at Venice, you will
be aided in the search by having in mind that the catch-words involved
are "Adriatic," and "Doge," and as these begin with capital letters,
which stand out, as it were, from the monotonous "lower case" type (as
printers call all the letters that are not capitals) your search will be
much abridged by omitting to read through all the sentences of your table
of contents, and seizing only the passage or passages where "Doge," or
"Adriatic," may occur.

This remark will apply as well to numerous other searches which you will
have to make in books. The table of contents will commonly take note of
all the more salient topics that are treated in the book, whether of
persons, of places, of notable scenes, historic events, etc., and so
will aid you in finding what you seek. In the last resort only, in the
books whose table of contents fails you, will you have to turn the leaves
page by page, which, while not equivalent to reading the book through, is
a time-consuming business.

Of course no librarian can devote hours of his precious time to searches
in such detail for readers. They are to b