good citizen and an honest man counterbalanced his de-merits
as a binder.

Other similar instances will occur to the memory of many a reader,
and doubtless the same sin will be committed from time to time
by certain binders, who seem to have an ingrained antipathy to rough
edges and large margins, which of course are, in their view,
made by Nature as food for the shaving tub.

De Rome, a celebrated bookbinder of the eighteenth century,
who was nicknamed by Dibdin "The Great Cropper," was, although in
private life an estimable man, much addicted to the vice of reducing
the margins of all books sent to him to bind. So far did he go,
that he even spared not a fine copy of Froissart's Chronicles,
on vellum, in which was the autograph of the well-known book-lover,
De Thou, but cropped it most cruelly.

Owners, too, have occasionally diseased minds with regard to margins.
A friend writes: "Your amusing anecdotes have brought to my memory
several biblioclasts whom I have known. One roughly cut the margins off
his books with a knife, hacking away very much like a hedger and ditcher.
Large paper volumes were his especial delight, as they gave more paper.
The slips thus obtained were used for index-making! Another, with the bump
of order unnaturally developed, had his folios and quartos all reduced,
in binding, to one size, so that they might look even on his bookshelves."

This latter was, doubtless, cousin to him who deliberately cut
down all his books close to the text, because he had been several
times annoyed by readers who made marginal notes.