horrid mess for nothing, and the weary path has to be trodden over
again. As a general rule, the man in the habit of murdering
bookbinders, though he performs a distinct service to society, only
wastes his own time and takes no personal advantage.

And even supposing that after many days your books return to you in
leathern surcoats bravely tricked with gold, you have scarce yet
weathered the Cape and sailed into halcyon seas. For these books --
well, you kept them many weeks before binding them, that the
oleaginous printer's-ink might fully dry before the necessary
hammering; you forbore to open the pages, that the autocratic binder
might refold the sheets if he pleased; and now that all is over --
consummatum est -- still you cannot properly enjoy the harvest of a
quiet mind. For these purple emperors are not to be read in bed, nor
during meals, nor on the grass with a pipe on Sundays; and these brief
periods are all the whirling times allow you for solid serious
reading. Still, after all, you have them; you can at least pulverise
your friends with the sight; and what have they to show against them?
Probably some miserable score or so of half-bindings, such as lead you
scornfully to quote the hackneyed couplet concerning the poor Indian
whose untutored mind clothes him before but leaves him bare behind.
Let us thank the gods that such things are: that to some of us they
give not poverty nor riches but a few good books in whole bindings.
Dowered with these and (if it be vouchsafed) a cup of Burgundy that is
sound even if it be not old, we can leave to others the foaming grape
of Eastern France that was vintaged in '74, and with it the whole
range of shilling shockers, -- the Barmecidal feast of the purposeful
novelist -- yea, even the countless series that tell of Eminent Women
and Successful Men.