When your books are being “dusted,” don’t impute too much common sense to your assistants; take their ignorance for granted, and tell them at once never to lift any book by one of its covers; that treatment is sure to strain the back, and ten to one the weight will be at the same time miscalculated, and the volume will fall.  Your female “help,” too, dearly loves a good tall pile to work at and, as a rule, her notions of the centre of gravity are not accurate, leading often to a general downfall, and the damage of many a corner.  Again, if not supervised and instructed, she is very apt to rub the dust into, instead of off, the edges.  Each volume should be held tightly, so as to prevent the leaves from gaping, and then wiped from the back to the fore-edge.  A soft brush will be found useful if there is much dust.  The whole exterior should also be rubbed with a soft cloth, and then the covers should be opened and the hinges of the binding examined; for mildew WILL assert itself both inside and outside certain books, and that most pertinaciously.  It has unaccountable likes and dislikes.  Some bindings seem positively to invite damp, and mildew will attack these when no other books on the same shelf show any signs of it.  When discovered, carefully wipe it away, and then let the book remain a few days standing open, in the driest and airiest spot you can select.  Great care should be taken not to let grit, such as blows in at the open window from many a dusty road, be upon your duster, or you will probably find fine scratches, like an outline map of Europe, all over your smooth calf, by which your heart and eye, as well as your book, will be wounded.

“Helps” are very apt to fill the shelves too tightly, so that to extract a book you have to use force, often to the injury of the top-bands.  Beware of this mistake.  It frequently occurs through not noticing that one small book is purposely placed at each end of the shelf, beneath the movable shelf-supports, thus not only saving space, but preventing the injury which a book shelf-high would be sure to receive from uneven pressure.

After all, the best guide in these, as in many other matters, is “common sense,” a quality which in olden times must have been much more “common” than in these days, else the phrase would never have become rooted in our common tongue.

Children, with all their innocence, are often guilty of book-murder.  I must confess to having once taken down “Humphrey’s History of Writing,” which contains many brightly-coloured plates, to amuse a sick daughter.  The object was certainly gained, but the consequences of so bad a precedent were disastrous.  That copy (which, I am glad to say, was easily re-placed), notwithstanding great care on my part, became soiled and torn, and at last was given up to Nursery martyrdom.  Can I regret it? surely not, for, although bibliographically sinful, who can weigh the amount of real pleasure received, and actual pain ignored, by the patient in the contemplation of those beautifully-blended colours?