Page:The library a magazine of bibliography and library literature, Volume 6.djvu/87

 The Library. 75 An instructive reading is obtained from the way lists are sometimes made out. The dictated list generally secures the intervention of Mrs. Malaprop, and " Auld Licht Idylls " become " All Night Idylls ; " " Told in the Verandah " is changed to " A Toad in a Verandah ; " " The Kernel and the Husk " is rendered " The Colonel and the Husk ; " " Sarace- nesca," by Marion Crawford, shows all the variations which the female name Sarah will .combine with, and the Rev. Hugh Stowell Brown's life is asked for as " Who stole Brown's life." The copied list shows some strange features, especially if coupled with illegible writing, but a very simple mistake converts " lo in Egypt" into "Jo in Egypt" and provokes the irreverent thought that our respected President has written a poem on the Old Testament Viceroy of Pharaoh, and in an unwonted spirit of American humour has called him Jo a liberty that even Sir Edwin Arnold, whose poetic licence took that patriarch through some strange adventures, did not venture upon. These kind of lists amuse but do no harm. More mischievous are those lists which ask for books that the reader knows nothing of, but has been attracted by some catchy titles seen in newspaper advertisements, and it is these lists that are responsible for that mass of literature that exists only for the circulating librarian and the remainder man by no means to the advantage of the former, who is far better without it ; while the latter well, he is the man at the other end of the see-saw, and when the circulating librarian's weight is taken off the one end, let him look out for himself. It is often said of certain kinds of literature that it is good only for the circulating libraries. That may mean, and in fact generally does, that it can only be got rid of to them. But as regards its being good for them I venture to speak with some authority, that no book is really good for them that is not good altogether good for a man to buy if he can afford it, to hire it if he cannot. The circulating library may endure with stoical silence the losses that many an ephemeral book brings them, but find good in it they cannot. Those institutions are looked to to help in the realisation of some funny ideals. There is the author's ideal, which is that the libraries shall take as many copies of a work as any sort of a demand can be stirred up for, to compel their clients to read them, and what is more, to like them. If the works are sue-