Worcester daily spy. [volume] (Worcester [Mass.]) 1850-1888, 1859-03-07
THE DUTY oF OWNING BOOKS.

We form judgements of men from little
things about their house, of which the owner,
perhaps, never thinks In earlier years, when
travelling in the West, where taverns were
either scarce or, in some places, unknown, and
every settlers house was a house of center
talnment, 1T was a matter of some impor-
lance and some experience to select wisely
where you would put up. And we always
looked for flowers. If there were no trees for
shade, no patch Of flowers in the yard, we
were suspicious of the place. But, no matter
now rude the cabin, or rough the surroundings
II we saw that the window held a little
trough for flowers, and some vines twined
around the springs let down from the caves,
we were confident that there was some taste
and caretulness in the log cabin. In a new
country, where people have to tug for living,
no one will take the trouble to rear flowers,
unless the love of them is very strong-and
this taste blossoming out of plain and unculti-
waited people is, itself, like clump of hare
bells growing out of the seams of rock We
were seldom misled. A patch of flowers came
to signify kind people, clean beds and good
bread.
But other signs are more significant in other
states of society. Flowers about rich mans
house may signify only that he has a good
gardener, or that he has refined neighbors, and
does what he sees them do.
But men are not accustomed to buy books
unless they want them. If, on visiting the
dwelling of man of slender means, l find the
reason why he has cheap carpets and very
plain furniture, to be that he may purchase
books, he rises at once in my esteem. Books
are not made for furniture, but there is nothing
else that so beautifully furnishes house. The
plainest row of books that cloth or paper ever
covered, is more significant of refinement than
the most acknowledgement etagere or side
board.
Give me a house furnished with books
rather than furniture! Both, if you can, but
books at any rate To spend several days in
friends house, and hunger for something to
read, while you are treading on costly carpets
and sitting upon luxurious chairs and sleeping
upon down, is as if one were brbing your body
for the sake of cheating your mind.
Is it not pitiable to see a man growing rich,
and beginning to augment the comforts of
home, and lavishing money on ostentatious up
holstery, upon the table, upon everything but
what the soul needs?
We know of many and many a rich mans
house where it would not be safe to ask for the
commonest English classics. A few garish
ANIMALS on the table, few pictorial monstrosi-
ties, together with the stock of religious books
of his persuasion, and that is all No range
of poets, no essayists, no selection of histori-
ans, no travels or biographies-no select tic-
tons or legendary lore; but then the walls
have paper on them which cost three dollars
roll, and the floors have carpets that cost four
dollars a yard Books are the windows
through which the soul looks out A house
without books is like room without windows
No man has right to bring up his children
without surrounding them with books, if he
has the means to buy them. 1t is wrong to
his family. He cheats them Children learn
to read by being in the presence of books. The
love of knowledge comes with reading, and
grows upon it. And the love Of knowledge in
young mind is almost warrant against the
inferior excitement of passions and vices.
Letus pity those poor rich men who live bar
renly in great bookless houses Let us con-
graduate the poor that in our day books are SO
cheap that man may every year add hun
bred volumes to his library for the price of
what his tobacco and his beer would cost him.
Among the earliest ambitions to be excited in
clerks, workmen, journeymen, and, indeed,
among all that are struggling up in life from
nothing to something, is that of owning and
constantly adding to library of good books.
A little library, growing larger every year, is
an honorable part of young mans history.
1t is mans duty to have books A library is
not luxury, but one of the necessaries of life
Henry Ward Beecher