New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1872-06-01

care by iudicious moistening and by delicate
manipulation TO restore TO the light these
dreary columns, these orations so utterly VOID
of human interest five minutes after they
were uttered, il hapy they were ever uttered
at all
Those who have pursued the noble recrea-
ton of haunting book stalls, the pleasantest
ir which an idle man can engage, understand
well enough what comes OF the everlasting
printing in Washington. Outside the Nassau
st. shop, exposed in trays or upon shelves to
the peltings of the pitiless blast and to the
simoons of the dusty streets are the long rows
of books which have seen better days; which
have once been read by interested eyes but
which have now fallen into almost hopeless
disreputability, and marked with beggarly
price, are compelled to display to the scorDful
gaze of buyers their looped and Widowed
raggedness There, shabbier even than the
shabby genteel book Of poems in Its abrased
suit of Turkey morocco, shabber than the
forlon company of fifty copies of Tennysons
" Holy Grailn at only ten cents apiece, are the
volumes which may be included under the
general title, so well known in the POst-Oifice,
of "Pub. Doc.n These are the books which,
to use Swifts line, "never were nor will be
"half readn-probably. not even by their au-
thors, nor by anybody except the men OF
proof. There they stand, decent once, but
dsmally shabby now, with all the dignity
taken out of them, the fine gold of their
dorsal lettering become dim, full of real and not
metaphorical dirt, which crunches and grinds
as you open and close them. And what an
astonishing collocation and inexplicable neigh
boringl Here we have Blair's Graye-Ihe
"Message of the President, with Accompany
cling Documents-Tbe MOnikins. by James
"Fenimore Cooper Patent Office Re-
"port-The New Testament, a dreadfully
"broken down duodecimO-The United States
Census-Rowletts Interest Tabes-Mrs.
"Stowe's book about Lady ByrOn-Report OF
" the Agricultural Bureau" &C., &C. OF the
private books it may be truly affirmed that
the buyer may come who, in moment of in
sanity or of inebriety, may purchase them but
who ever bought a secondhand Public Docu-
ment for the purpose of reading it'll Thou
sands of such, huge as to their aggregate
cubic measurement, will never be bought at
all save to be sent back to the primitive pulp
of the paper-mil. These are the works which
have only limited, official, red-tape sort of
interest, and any gentleman's library can do
perfectly well without them. They serve
sufficiently to fill up gaps in your
collection when your books are few
and your money resources small; but
a gentleman feels that their presence
in his little library is a swinde and an impo-
sitiOn, and that the companiOnship affects his
spirits, as if they were incubi. They spread q
sort of contagious dizziness through the room.
Strangers who visit you scan their backs curl
ously, and them for the sake of pOliteness,
pretend not to have noticed them. You har-
Dor them, because they are better than
vacuum; but pretty soon they will be dis
posed of to the Ann-st. resurrection-men, and
will go to their predestinate maceatiOn, IN
company with old junk and venerable ledgers.
1t is a question, such being their ultimate
disposition, whether it was worth while to have
them printed by Congress authority and at
the expense of the United States Treasury -
or rather it is no question at all. Our Gov
eminent, since its institution, has been carry
ing on the manufacture of these books which
are not books at an expense of many millions
of dollars and if the paper-mils had not
saved us from such fate, all the inhabitants
of the land would long ago have been buried
under the accumulated mass. While we thank
Heaven for our preservation, perhaps Heaven
would be as well pleased if we ceased to tempt
such a fate in the future.