Green-Mountain freeman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1844-1884, 1859-03-10
The Duty of Owning Books.

We form judgments of men from little
things about their house, Of which the own
err, perhaps, never thinks In earlier years,
when travelling in the West, where tayerns
were either scarce. or, in some places, un-
known and every settlers house was house
of Entertainment" it was matter of some
importance 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 how rude the cabin, or rough the
surroundings, if we saw that the window
held little trough for flowers, and that some
vines twincd about strings let down from the
caves, we were confident that there was
some taste and carefulncss in that log cabin.
In new country, where people have to tug
for living, no one will take the trouble to
rear flowers, unless the love of them is
pretty strong-and this taste blooming out of
plain and uncultivated people is, itself, like
clump of hare-bels growing out OF the
seams of arrock. We we're seldom misled.
A patch of flowers came to signify kind poo
pie, clean beds and good bread.
| But, other signs arc more significant in
ether states Of society. Flowers about a
rich mans house may signify only that he
has good gardener, or that he has refined
neighbors, and does what he sees them do.
But men are not accustomed to buy books
lunle they want them. If on visiting the
dwelling of man of slender means, | find
the reason why he has cheap carpets and very
Iplain furniture, to be that he may purchase
books. he rises at once in my esteem. Books
SIRE not made for furnituuexbut there is ndl
thing else that 10 beautifully furnishes B
honse. The plainost row of books that cloth
or paper ever covered is more significant Of
refinement THAI the most acknowledgement
etagere or Switchboard.
Give me q home furnished with books
rather than furniture! Both, if you can
but books at any rate TO spend seyera
days in friends house, and hunger for some
thing to read, while you are treading on cost
| " carpets, and sitting upon luxurious chairs
and sleeping upon down, is as il one wer'
lbribing your body for the sake of cheating
your mind
| Il it not pitiablc to see Il man growing
rich, and beginning to augment the comforts
Of home, and lavishing money on os;entatiou'
upholstery, upo,l the table, upon everything
but what the soul needs
We know of many and many rich man:
house where it would not be safe to ask fol
the commonest English classics. A few gar
ish ANIMALS on the table, a few pretoria
monstrosties, together with the stock of reli
gious books of his persuasion" and that il
all No range of poets, no essaysts, no Sc
lection Of historians, no travelsor biographies
no select ictions OR curious legendary lore
but then, the walls have paper on which cos
three dollars a roll, and the floors have car
pets that cost four dollars yard! Book
are the windows through which the soul look
out. A house without books is like a room
without windows. No man has right t.
bring up his childrsn without surrounding
them with books, if he has the means to buy
them. 1t is wrong to his family. HI
cheats them Children learn to read by be
Ing in the presence of books, The love o
knowledge comes with reading, and grow
upon it. And the love of knowledge, in
young mind, is almost warrant against tn
inferior excitement OF passions and vices.
Let us pity those poor rich men who liv
barrenly in great bookless houses! Let u
congratulate the poor that, in our day, book
are SO cheap that man may every year adj
a hundred volumes to his library for the prc
of what his tobacco and his beer would COS
him. Among the earliest ambitious to b
excited in Jerks, workmen, journeymeu, anc
indeed, among all that are struggling up il
life from nothing to something, is that {
owning, and constantly adding to, a librar
of good books, A little library CROWN
larger every year is an honorable part of
young mans history. 1t is mans duty t
have books. A library is not a luxury, bu
one of the necessaries of life.