Page:The Sunday Eight O'Clock (1916).pdf/198

 few months ago, but the cover is torn and battered and hangs by a thread. Inside, pages are mutilated or missing, and pen sketches and hieroglyphics are scrawled across the text making it almost unreadable. As I turn through I find dignified Cicero wearing a sombrero and smoking a pipe, and Caesar with a beard done in India ink. The book has suffered every insult and indignity possible to be thought of by a child of fourteen. Robert knows more than grandmother did at his age, but neither he nor the children with whom he associates have much love or respect for books.

As for me, I should as soon see a dear friend abused as a book I have worked with and come to know and to understand. I do not mind the ordinary wear of use and age any more than I am annoyed by wrinkles in the faces of my friends who are growing old, but intentional indignities hurt me.

Is it because books are so plentiful or so cheap that we care so little for them? Is it