at the paste will
stick. A cut in a vellum page is best mended with fine silk with a
lacing stitch (see fig. 18).

[Illustration: FIG. 18.]

Mending is most easily done on a sheet of plate-glass, of which the
edges and corners have been rubbed down.

CHAPTER V

End Papers--Leather Joints--Pressing

END PAPERS

If an old book that has had much wear is examined, it will generally
be found that the leaves at the beginning and the end have suffered
more than the rest of the book. On this ground, and also to enable
people who must write notes in books to do so with the least injury to
the book, it is advisable to put a good number of blank papers at each
end. As these papers are part of the binding, and have an important
protective function to perform, they should be of good quality. At all
times difficulty has been found in preventing the first and last
section of the book, whether end papers or not, from dragging away
when the cover is opened, and various devices have been tried to
overcome this defect. In the fifteenth century strips of vellum
(usually cut from manuscripts) were pasted on to the back of the book
and on the inside of the boards, or in some cases were merely folded
round the first and last section and pasted on to the covers. The
modern, and far less efficient, practice is to "overcast" the first
and last sections. This is objectionable, because it prevents the
leaves from opening right to the back, and it fails in the object
aimed at, by merely transferring the strain to the back of the
overcast section.

In order to make provision for any strain there may be in opening the
cover, it is better to adopt some such arrangement as shown in fig.
19. In this end paper the zigzag opens slightly in response to any
strain.

The way to make this end paper is to take a folded sheet of paper a
little larger than the book. Then with dividers mark two points an
eighth of an inch from the back for the fold, and paste your
paste-down paper, B B, up to these points (see fig. 19, II). When the
paste is dry, fold back the sheet (A1) over the paste-down paper, and
A2 the reverse way, leaving the form seen in fig. 19, III. A folded
sheet of paper similar to A is inserted at C (fig. 19, V, H), and the
sewing passes through this. When the book is pasted down the leaf A1
is torn off, and B1 pasted down on the board. If marbled pap