Quote by Walt Mason

“Oh, stately books, in handsome cases, all standing in their proper places, selected, with an artist's feeling, to match the furniture and ceiling! Pope's, Milton's, Scott's and Shakespeare's grinding, done up in costly leather binding, and all so dismal and forbidding, that you would cry, "Aw, quit your kidding," if some one said, "Sit down and read 'em, to browse around you have full freedom." They stand in rows, all unmolested, unread, unfingered, undigested, save when a housemaid comes to clean them, and from the dust and cobwebs wean them. The plute exhibits them to callers, and says, "They cost ten thousand dollars; I hired a man who knows good writers — that Shakespeare dub and kindred blighters — and said to him, 'Now, off you caper, and buy me books to match this paper; the libra'y's here, so go and trim it with Standard Works, and crowd the limit.'" In my cheap shack the books are scattered around the floor, all stained and battered; they have no deckle-edged ambitions — they're mostly fifty cent editions; but every hour and day I need them, and all the neighbors come and read them.”