care whether he
may be getting few pages for his money. The presence of this single,
agreeable element of lightness at once gives a distinction to the book
that appears to supplant all other requirements. The purchaser does not
realize that the same lightness of volume associated with half the
thickness would not seem to him remarkable, though the book would take
up only half the room on his shelves. He feels that a modern miracle in
defiance of gravitation has been wrought in his favor, and he is willing
to pay for the privilege of enjoying it.

Curiously and somewhat unexpectedly the results of neither extreme,
thick paper nor thin, are wholly satisfactory in the library. The
parvenu, who is looking only to the filling up of his shelves with
volumes of impressive size, may find satisfaction in contemplating wide
backs. But the scholar and the public librarian will grudge the space
which this "excellent bulk" occupies. One single element in their favor
he will be quick to recognize, the better space which they afford for
distinct lettering. In a private library that is collected for use and
not for show the thin-paper books are almost an unmixed blessing. They
cost little for what they contain. Their reduction in thickness is often
associated with a reduction in height and width, so that they represent
an economy of space all round. A first-rate example of this is furnished
by the Oxford India Paper Dickens, in seventeen volumes, printed in
large type, yet, as bound, occupying a cubical space of only 13 by 7 by
4-1/2 inches and weighing only nine pounds. A more startling instance is
that of the novels of Thomas Love Peacock, which are issued in a pretty
library edition of ten volumes. But they are also issued in a _single_
volume, no higher nor wider, and only _three-fourths of an inch thick_.
But it is at this point that the public librarian rises to protest. It
is all very well, he says, for the private owner to have his literature
in this concentrated form, but for himself, how is he to satisfy the
eight readers who call for "Headlong Hall," "Nightmare Abbey," and the
rest of Peacock's novels all at once? To be sure he can buy and
catalogue eight single-volume sets of the author's works instead of one
set in ten volumes, and when he has done this each reader will be sure
to find the particular novel that he is looking for so long as a set
remains; but the cost will naturally be greater. On the other hand, he
welcome