Page:The Art of Bookbinding, Zaehnsdorf, 1890.djvu/74

44 trimmers' savageries, and let them know what feelings their reckless cruelty awakens in many breasts? One of the largest houses in London has just sent me home fifty copies of an essay, intended as a present for a friend. They have been trimmed, and been ruined. Would that I could have the trimming of their trimmer's hair and ears; also his nose! I don't think his best friend would know him when I had done with him.

"But, Sir, we live in a philanthropic age, and are bound to forgive our enemies and try to reform the worst criminals. I therefore propose a practical measure to win these book trimmers from their enormities; namely, that fifty at least of your readers, who care for book margins, should subscribe a guinea each for a challenge cup, to be competed for yearly, and held by that firm which, on producing copies of all books and pamphlets trimmed by it during the year, shall be adjudged to have disfigured them least. I ask you, Sir, if you will receive subscriptions for this challenge cup? If you will, I shall be glad to send you mine. "M. A. "P.S.—Any one who will cut out this letter, and get it pasted up in any binder's or printer's trimming room, will confer a favour on the writer."

A very good trimming machine has been invented by Messrs. Richmond and Co., of Kirby Street, Hatton Garden. The bed rises and falls, with the books upon it, instead of the knife descending upon the work, as in the cutting machines; and the gauges are so arranged, that the foredge of one pile of books, and the tails of another, can be cut at one operation, and it is guaranteed by the makers that the knife will leave a clean and perfectly trimmed edge.