The Sunday Eight O'Clock/Respect for Books
RAN across grandmother's geograph this morning, The Village Elementary Geography, standing primly beside Bob's First Year Latin Lessons. Bob is my nephew. Grandmother's book is yellowed with age, but, save for a few thumb prints, the pages are clean and without dog ears. It is still covered with the bright calico which her grandmother sewed on for her to keep the book from being soiled or injured when the little girl carried it to school.
Grandmother's name and the date are on the fly leaf written in a cramped childish hand, for grandmother was only eight when she got the book, and the date is near the beginning of the last century. They had respect for books in those days.
Robert's book presents a somewhat different appearance. It was bought only a few months ago, but the cover is torn and battered and hangs by a thread. Inside, pages are mutilated or missing, and pen sketches and hieroglyphics are scrawled across the text making it almost unreadable. As I turn through I find dignified Cicero wearing a sombrero and smoking a pipe, and Caesar with a beard done in India ink. The book has suffered every insult and indignity possible to be thought of by a child of fourteen. Robert knows more than grandmother did at his age, but neither he nor the children with whom he associates have much love or respect for books.
As for me, I should as soon see a dear friend abused as a book I have worked with and come to know and to understand. I do not mind the ordinary wear of use and age any more than I am annoyed by wrinkles in the faces of my friends who are growing old, but intentional indignities hurt me.
Is it because books are so plentiful or so cheap that we care so little for them? Is it because they cost us now no sacrifice, no struggle, no tender thought or anxious anticipation that we think of them so lightly and toss them about so carelessly? I have heard grandmother tell how happy she was and how proud when her father first put the little geography into her hands. Neither children nor college students often feel so today.
We give courses in the appreciation of poetry and music and art; we have made rapid advancement in teaching children since grandmother's time. Why do we not still teach them to love and respect their books?
August