been there. Then the glass doors were locked, the key to the glass
doors lost, and sofas and chairs and tables put against them. Thus the
millionaire has his library furnished with handsome bindings and these
I may add are quite adequate for all the use which he wishes to make of
them.

This is a rather extreme case of the use of books as ornaments, but it
illustrates in a bizarre way what is a not uncommon use. There is this
to be said for that illiterate millionaire: well-bound books are
excellent ornaments. No decoration with wall paper or fresco can make a
parlor as attractive as it can be made with low bookshelves filled with
works of standard authors and leaving room above for statuary, or
pictures, or the inexpensive decoration of flowers picked from one's
own garden. I am inclined to think that the most attractive parlor I
have ever visited is that of a bookish friend whose walls are thus
furnished with what not only delights the eye, but silently invites the
mind to an inspiring companionship.

More important practically than their use as ornaments is the use of
books as tools. Every professional man needs his special tools--the
lawyer his law books, the doctor his medical books, the minister his
theological treatises and his Biblical helps. I can always tell when I
go into a clergyman's study by looking at his books whether he is
living in the Twentieth Century or in the Eighteenth. Tools do not make
the man, but they make his work and so show what the man is.

Every home ought to have some books that are tools and the children
should be taught how to use them. There should be at least an atlas, a
dictionary, and an encyclopadia. If in the evening when the family talk
about the war in the Balkans the father gets out the atlas and the