Pine Bluff daily graphic., 1894-08-18
LITERARY DERELIcTs.
serapbooks, Their Value and the Change
 in Taste Which They show.

serapbooiSs, Their Value and the Changes
 in Taste Which They show.
 Who so lxeepeth serapboolS keepeth a good thing, and the manner in which it is kept is an indication of the pres ence or absence of certain qualities in the sSeeper,a as order, perseverance. continuity of purpose and fixedness of memory. A serapboolS is, moreover, an index of literary taste and feeling, and a serapbook, or a series of serapboolxs kept for u number of years, shows how that taste may change, broaden and rise with reading and the reception of new ideas and impressions. Could we have all the scrapboolSs of one lifetime extending from youth to age, we should have & literary history of that life Those scrapbooks are most interest," ing and valuable which may be classi- fled as personal; kept by some one in- dividual for personal use and behoof; which record the workings of one brain and. in way the emotions of one heart. These, preserved, become in time histories and autobiographies. Next in interest to these private scrap books are those which are kept for q purpose; to collect and preserve facts in regard to some event i'll history; some historical character, as Washing ton or Napoleon, or better yet, some contemporary parsonage. From these the biographer of the future may col lect his choicest material; for be it known that newspapers from which serapbool1s are generally made are no longer the abstract and brief ehroni- eles' of the time, but are extended and even diffuse chronicles, telling all there is to tell Anyone who has had occasion to write a post-mortem sketch of any modern statesman has found his facts stated tt length, not in books, but i'll newspapers. And yet newspapers are evaneseent and perish able. Out of the one hundred thou sand copies newspaper issued on certain day 1t is quite possible that every copy may have disappeared in few days except the half dozen pre- served on files. It is well, then, that the serapbook keeps the cream, the gem, the one poem, or sketch, or speech, or story that made | certain copy of the newspaper sought after and valuable for clipping purposes.
 It is fact that every reading person must have noticed, that there is not in the world perfect book of quotations. Complete as the work on hand may be, it frequently does not contain the line, the verse, the eloquent extract" one is looking for. Scrapboolzs. old scrap books, are the repositories of these things; these poems by unknown au- thoEs; by the poets who wrote but one poem each, and never got credit for that. These are very often resurrect- ed from antique serapboolSs and sent on their anonymous round through the newspapers, to be again secured in the scrapbooxs and again for q time for gotten.
 The serapboolS, or rather the keeping of it. is an aid to the memory One does not entirely forget that which he takes time to cut out of book or newspaper and fasten to the receptive page, and perhaps tas he shouldl record in an index. He retains portion of it, q scrap of the scrap, as it were, in his mind, so that in any event he knows where to find it. The practice of keeping scrapboolzs, considered by many persons old-fashined, is not the less an excellent fashion; preserving to us in our youth; keep for another time what one day made us smile or weep: a biography, Q history, journal writ ten by thousand other hands and yet our own.-Kansas City Star.