Cincinnati daily press. [volume] (Cincinnati [Ohio]) 1860-1862, 1860-06-13
SOmethine About Books-The Honor and
Duty oil fPossessInG Them.

We form judgments of men, says Henry
Ward Beecher, 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 set
tiers house was house of entertainment
it was a matter of some Importance and some
experience to select wisely where you would
nut up. And we always looked for fow-
ers. 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 surround
ings, if we saw that the window con-
tanned little trough for flowers, and that
some vines twined about strings let down
from the cave, we were confident that there
was some taste and carefulness in the log
cabin. In new country, where people have
to tug for living, no one will take the
trouble 10 rear flowers, unless the love for
them is pretty strong--and this taste bios
soming out of plain and uncultivated people
is itself, like clump of harebells 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 iher signs are more significant in
other states of society. Flowers ABOUT O
rich mans house may signify only that he
has got good gardiner, 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 lind
the reason why he has cheap carpets, and
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 moth
ing 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 elaborately- etagere o1
side-board.
Give me a house furnished with book:
rather than furnitureI Both if you can, bu
books at any rate. To spend several days in
a friends house, and hunger for something
to read, while you are treading on costly car
nets, and setting on luxurious chairs, and
sleeping upon down, is as if one were brib'
ing your body, for the sake OF cheating your
mind.
Is it not pitable to see man growing rich
and beginning to augment the comforts o.
home, and lavshing money on ostentatiou'
upholstery, upon the table, upon every thing
but what the soul needsl
We know of many and many rich man.
house where it would not be safe to ask fo
the commonest English classics. A few
garish annuals on the table, a few pictoria
nontrosities together with the stock OF re
ligious books of his "persuasin,' and that
all. No range of poets, no essayists, no sc
lections of historians, no travels or blogra
phies--no select ictions or curious legendar
lore, but then, the walls have paper on whic
cost three dollars roll, and the floors hay
carpets that cost four dollars yardl Book
are the windows thro' which the soul look
out. A house without books is like O roor
without windows. No man has a right I
bring up his children without surroundin
them with books, if he has the means to bn
them. 1t is wrong to his family. b
cheats theml Children learn to read by b.
ing in the presence of books. The love
knowedge comes with reading, and grow
upon it. And the love of knowledge, in
young mind, is almost a warrant againi
the inferior excitement Of passion and vice
Let US pity those poor rich men who liv
barrenly in great bookless houses Let !
congratulate the poor that, in our day, bool
are SO cheap that man may every year add
hundred volumes to his library for the pri'
of what his tobacco and his beer would CO
him. Among the earliest ambitions to
excite din clerks, workmen, journeymen, an
indeed, among all that are struggling up
life from nothing TO something, is that
owning, and constantly adding to, libral
of good books. A little library GROWN
larger every year is an honorable part of
young mans history. 1t is mans duty
have books A library is not a luxury, b
one of the necessaries Of life.