k
shall any longer claim more shelf than another, no book shall be taller or
thicker than another. The age of folios and quartos is past, and the Age
of the Universal Octavo has dawned.'

Looking up, I saw that the voice was that of a shabby, but perky, octavo,
which I had forgotten I ever possessed, since the day when some mistaken
charity had prompted me to rescue it from the threepenny box and give it a
good home in a respectable family of books. Certainly, it had so far
filled the humble position of a shelf-liner, and its accidental elevation
into daylight on the top of a prostrate folio had evidently turned its
head. It was now doing its best to disseminate socialistic principles
among the set of scurvy octavos and duodecimos in its neighbourhood.

'Why should we choke with dust in the dark there,' it continued, 'that
these splendid creatures should glitter all day in the sunshine, and get
all the firelight of an evening? We were born to be read as much as they,
born to enjoy our share of the good things of this world as much as my
Lord Folio, as much as any Honourable Quarto, or fashionable Large Paper.
My Brothers, the hour has come: will you strike now or never, exact your
rights as free-born books, or will you go back to be shelf-liners as
before?'

[Loud cries of 'No! no! we won't,' here encouraged the speaker.]

'Strike now, and the book unborn shall bless you. Miss this golden
opportunity, and the cause we serve will be delayed another hundred
editions.'

At this point a great folio that had for some time been leaning
threateningly, like a slab at Stonehenge, above the speaker, suddenly fell
and silenced him; but he had not spoken in vain, and from various sets of
books about the room I heard the voices of excited agitators taking up his
words. Then an idea struck me. I was, as I told you, heartily sick of my
task of arrangement. Here seemed an opportunity.

'Look here,' I said,'you shall have it all to yourselves. I resign, I
abdicate. You shall arrange yourselves as you please, but be quick about
it, and let there be as little bloodshed as possible'

With that there arose such a hubbub as was never before heard in a quiet
book-room, not even during that famous battle of the St. James's Library
in 1697; and conspicuous among the noises was a strange crowing sound as
of young cocks, which I was at a loss to understand, till I bethought me
how Mentzelius, long ago, sitting in the quiet of his library,