As for myself, I urge upon all lovers of books to provide themselves with bookplates.  Whenever I see a book that bears its owner’s plate I feel myself obligated to treat that book with special consideration.  It carries with it a certificate of its master’s love; the bookplate gives the volume a certain status it would not otherwise have.  Time and again I have fished musty books out of bins in front of bookstalls, bought them and borne them home with me simply because they had upon their covers the bookplates of their former owners.  I have a case filled with these aristocratic estrays, and I insist that they shall be as carefully dusted and kept as my other books, and I have provided in my will for their perpetual maintenance after my decease.

If I were a rich man I should found a hospital for homeless aristocratic books, an institution similar in all essential particulars to the institution which is now operated at our national capital under the bequest of the late Mr. Cochrane.  I should name it the Home for Genteel Volumes in Decayed Circumstances.

I was a young man when I adopted the bookplate which I am still using, and which will be found in all my books.  I drew the design myself and had it executed by a son of Anderson, the first of American engravers.  It is by no means elaborate:  a book rests upon a heart, and underneath appear the lines: 

     My Book and Heart
     Must never part.

Ah, little Puritan maid, with thy dear eyes of honest blue and thy fair hair in proper plaits adown thy back, little thought we that springtime long ago back among the New England hills that the tiny book we read together should follow me through all my life!  What a part has that Primer played!  And now all these other beloved companions bear witness to the love I bear that Primer and its teachings, for each wears the emblem I plucked from its homely pages.

That was in the springtime, Captivity Waite; anon came summer, with all its exuberant glory, and presently the cheery autumn stole upon me.  And now it is the winter-time, and under the snows lies buried many a sweet, fair thing I cherished once.  I am aweary and will rest a little while; lie thou there, my pen, for a dream—­a pleasant dream—­calleth me away.  I shall see those distant hills again, and the homestead under the elms; the old associations and the old influences shall be round about me, and a child shall lead me and we shall go together through green pastures and by still waters.  And, O my pen, it will be the springtime again!

XIII

ON THE ODORS WHICH MY BOOKS EXHALE

Have you ever come out of the thick, smoky atmosphere of the town into the fragrant, gracious atmosphere of a library?  If you have, you know how grateful the change is, and you will agree with me when I say that nothing else is so quieting to the nerves, so conducive to physical health, and so quick to restore a lively flow of the spirits.