sustained by the other library authorities, a really effectual remedy is to deny the further use of the library to any offender clearly proven to have subjected library books to damage while in his hands. Some librarians go so far as to post the names of such offenders in the library hall, stating that they are denied the privileges of the library by the authorities, for mutilating books.

In any case, great care must be taken to have the clearest proof, before proceeding to fasten the offense upon a particular individual. This involves, where the injury is not committed in the presence of any library officer, so as to be observed, but has been done while the book was drawn out, an examination of each volume before giving it out. If this rule were to be observed as to all, it would entail an expense that few libraries could afford. In a large circulating library in a city, it might require the entire time of two assistants to collate the books before re-issuing them. The circumstances of each library must determine how to deal with this matter. Probably the majority will limit the close examination of books before giving them out, to cases where there is reason to suspect wilful continued soiling, scribbling, or dog's-earing. A few such cases once detected and dealt with will have a most salutary restraining influence upon others, especially if re-enforced by frequent and judicious paragraphs in the local press, setting forth the offense and the remedy.

But all in vain will be the endeavor to abate these defacements and consequent waste of the library books, unless it is enforced by a positive law, with penal provisions, to punish offenders who mutilate or deface books that are public property. A good model of such a statute is the following, slightly abridged as to verbiage, from an act of Congress, of which we procured the enactment in the year 1878:

"Any person who steals, defaces, injures, mutilates, tears, or destroys any book, pamphlet, work of art, or manuscript, belonging to any public library, or to the United States, in the District of Columbia, shall be fined ten dollars to one hundred dollars, and punished by imprisonment from one to twelve months, for every such offense."

This act will be found in the United States Statutes at Large, Vol. 20, p. 171. It would be well if the term “periodical" were added to the list of objects to be protected, to avoid all risk of a failure to punish the mutilation of newspapers and magazines, by pleading technical points, of which lawyers are prone to avail themselves in aiding offenders to escape conviction.

It will be observed, that the word "deface," employed in this statute, actually covers the marking of margins by any reader, all such marking constituting a defacement within the meaning of the law.

While the great multitude of readers who frequent our public libraries are honest and trustworthy, there are always some who are conspicuously the reverse. It is rarely safe in a large public library to admit readers to the shelves, without the company or the surveillance of an attendant. And it is not alone the uncultivated reader who cannot be trusted; the experience of librarians is almost uniform to the effect that literary men, and special scholars, as well as the collectors of rare books, are among those who watch the opportunity to purloin what they wish to save themselves the cost of buying. Sometimes, you may find your most valuable work on coins mutilated by the abstraction of a plate, carried off by some student of numismatics. Sometimes, you may discover a fine picture or portrait abstracted from a book by some lover of art or collector of portraits. Again, you may be horrified by finding a whole sermon torn out of a volume of theology by a

theological student or even a clergyman. All these things have happened, and are liable to happen again. No library is safe that is not closely watched and guarded. In the Astor library a literary man actually tore out sixty pages of the Revue de Paris, and added to the theft the fraud of plagiarism, by translating from the stolen leaves an article which he sold to Appleton's Journal as an original production!

In this case, the culprit, though detected, could not be punished, the law of New York requiring the posting in the library of the statute prohibiting mutilation or other injury to the books, and this posting had not been done. The law has since been amended, to make the penalties absolute and unconditional.

In the Astor Library, over six hundred volumes were discovered to have been mutilated, including art works, Patent office reports, magazines, newspapers, and even encyclopaedias. The books stolen from that library had been many, until several exposures and punishment of thieves inspired a wholesome dread of a similar fate.

At a meeting of the American Library Association, one member inquired whether there was any effectual way to prevent the abstraction of books. He was answered by another librarian (from Cincinnati) who replied that he knew of only one effectual method, and that was to keep a man standing over each book with a club. Of course this was a humorous paradox, not to be taken literally, but it points a moral.

Seriously, however, the evil may be greatly curtailed, (though we may be hopeless of absolute prevention) by adopting the precautions already referred to. In the Library of the British Museum, a great library of reference, from which no book is permitted to be taken under any circumstances, the evil of mutilation was much reduced by

prosecuting and posting the offenders publicly. After a few years, the obnoxious practice had so far ceased, that the placards, having an unpleasant aspect, were taken down. But on renewal of such depredations and defacements of books by readers, the placards were renewed, and some of the mutilated books, suitably labelled, were posted in the great reading room before the eyes of all. The authorities of the British Museum are convinced of the salutary effects of such warnings, though books are sometimes stolen or mutilated under the liberal management which leaves several thousand volumes open for reference, without tickets.

The late Dr. Wm. F. Poole, the Chicago librarian, recorded his experience in dealing with some clergymen, who, said he, seem to have as regards books, an imperfect appreciation of the laws of meum and tuum. He had found ministers more remiss in returning books than any other class of men. He would by no means reflect on a noble and sacred profession by charging the derelictions of a few upon the many. But he had had unpleasant experiences with men of that profession, who had absolutely purloined books from the Public Library, removed the bookplates and library stamp, and covered the volumes with paper carefully pasted down inside of the covers.

A librarian in Massachusetts testified that it was common experience that clergymen and professional men gave the most trouble. Second-hand book-dealers in Boston had found a judge of the court purloining rare pamphlets, and ministers making away with pamphlet sermons under their coats. Without insisting here upon any such extenuations of such practices as the prevalence of kleptomania, it has been made abundantly manifest that theft and mutilation of books are sufficiently common to demonstrate the weakness of human nature, and the necessity of every safe

guard which public libraries can provide against such abuses of their treasures.

A Boston librarian stated that the thieves or mutilators of books included school-boys, clerks, students, teachers, soldiers, physicians, lawyers, clergymen, etc. In only one case was the crime committed through want or suffering. Yet, though the offenders had been proven guilty in every instance, only two cases were known in which the penalty of the law had been enforced. Does not this bespeak laxity of public morals in Boston in regard to such abuses of library property?

The Union Theological Seminary at New York recorded its experience with ministers and theological students, to the effect that its library had lost more than a thousand volumes, taken and not returned. This of course included what were charged out, but could not be recovered.

A librarian in Auburn, N. Y., returning from vacation, found that the American Architect, an important illustrated weekly, had been mutilated in seven different volumes, and that 130 pages in all had been stolen. Fortunately, she was able to trace the reader who had been using the work, and succeeded in recovering the abstracted plates. The offender was prosecuted to conviction, and had to pay a fine of fifty dollars.

It often happens that books which disappear mysteriously from a public library re-appear quite as mysteriously. Those taking them, finding that the rules do not allow certain books to leave the library, make a law unto themselves, carry off the book wanted, keep it until read, and then return it surreptitiously, by replacing it on some shelf or table, when no one is looking. This is where no intention of stealing the book exists, and the borrower wilfully makes his own convenience override the library regulations, in the belief that he will not be found out. The