A neighbour of mine some few years ago suffered severely from a propensity, apparently irresistible, in one of his daughters to tear his library books.  She was six years old, and would go quietly to a shelf and take down a book or two, and having torn a dozen leaves or so down the middle, would replace the volumes, fragments and all, in their places, the damage being undiscovered until the books were wanted for use.  Reprimand, expostulation and even punishment were of no avail; but a single “whipping” effected a cure.

Boys, however, are by far more destructive than girls, and have, naturally, no reverence for age, whether in man or books.  Who does not fear a schoolboy with his first pocket-knife?  As Wordsworth did not say:—­

          “You may trace him oft
 By scars which his activity has left
 Upon our shelves and volumes. * * *
 He who with pocket-knife will cut the edge
 Of luckless panel or of prominent book,
 Detaching with a stroke a label here, a back-band there.”
                         Excursion III, 83.

Pleased, too, are they, if, with mouths full of candy, and sticky fingers, they can pull in and out the books on your bottom shelves, little knowing the damage and pain they will cause.  One would fain cry out, calling on the Shade of Horace to pardon the false quantity—­

 “Magna movet stomacho fastidia, si puer unctis
 Tractavit volumen manibus.” Sat.  IV.

What boys CAN do may be gathered from the following true story, sent me by a correspondent who was the immediate sufferer:—­

One summer day he met in town an acquaintance who for many years had been abroad; and finding his appetite for old books as keen as ever, invited him home to have a mental feed upon “fifteeners” and other bibliographical dainties, preliminary to the coarser pleasures enjoyed at the dinner-table.  The “home” was an old mansion in the outskirts of London, whose very architecture was suggestive of black-letter and sheep-skin.  The weather, alas! was rainy, and, as they approached the house, loud peals of laughter reached their ears.  The children were keeping a birthday with a few young friends.  The damp forbad all outdoor play, and, having been left too much to their own devices, they had invaded the library.  It was just after the Battle of Balaclava, and the heroism of the combatants on that hard-fought field was in everybody’s mouth.  So the mischievous young imps divided themselves into two opposing camps—­ Britons and Russians.  The Russian division was just inside the door, behind ramparts formed of old folios and quartos taken from the bottom shelves and piled to the height of about four feet.  It was a wall of old fathers, fifteenth century chronicles, county histories, Chaucer, Lydgate, and such like.  Some few yards off were the Britishers, provided with heaps of small books as missiles, with which they kept up a skirmishing cannonade against