Part 32 (2/2)

”Half the books in this library are not worth reading,” said a sour-visaged, hypercritical, novel-satiated woman.--”Read the other half, then,” advised a bystander.

THE WOES OF A LIBRARIAN.

Let us give a brief rehearsal Of the learning universal, Which men expect to find In Librarians to their mind.

He must undergo probation, Before he gets a situation; Must begin at the creation, When the world was in formation, And come down to its cremation, In the final consummation Of the old world's final spasm: He must study protoplasm, And bridge over every chasm In the origin of species, Ere the monkey wore the breeches, Or the Simian tribe began To ascend from ape to man.

He must master the cosmology, And know all about psychology, And the wonders of biology, And be deep in ornithology, And develop ideology, With the aid of craniology.

He must learn to teach zoology, And be skilled in etymology, And the science of philology, And calculate chronology, While he digs into geology, And treats of entomology, And hunts up old mythology, And dips into theology, And grows wise in sociology, And expert in anthropology.

He must also know geography, And the best works on photography, And the science of stenography, And be well up on cosmography, And the secrets of cryptography.

Must interpret blind chirography, Know by heart all mens' biography, And the black art of typography, And every book in bibliography.

These things are all essential And highly consequential.

If he's haunted by ambition For a library position, And esteems it a high mission, To aspire to erudition; He will find some politician Of an envious disposition, Getting up a coalition To secure his non-admission, And send him to perdition, Before he's reached fruition.

If he gets the situation, And is full of proud elation And of fond antic.i.p.ation, And has in contemplation To enlighten half the nation, He may write a dissertation For the public information On the laws of observation, And the art of conversation.

He must know each famed oration, And poetical quotation, And master derivation, And the science of translation, And complex pagination, And perfect punctuation, And binomial equation, And accurate computation, And boundless permutation, And infinite gradation, And the craft of divination, And Scripture revelation, And the secret of salvation.

He must know the population Of every separate nation, The amount of immigration, And be wise in arbitration, And the art of navigation, And colonial annexation, And problems Australasian.

He must take his daily ration Of catalogue vexation, And endless botheration With ceaseless complication Of decimal notation, Or Cutter combination.

To complete his education, He must know the valuation Of all the publications Of many generations, With their endless variations, And true interpretations.

When he's spent a life in learning, If his lamp continues burning, When he's mastered all philosophy, And the science of theosophy, Grown as learned as Mezzofanti, As poetical as Dante, As wise as Magliabecchi, As profound as Mr. Lecky-- Has absorbed more kinds of knowledge Than are found in any college; He may take his full degree Of Ph. or LL. D.

And prepare to pa.s.s the portal That leads to life immortal.

FOOTNOTES:

[3] Mostly from the Library Journal, New York.

CHAPTER 26.

RARE BOOKS.

There is perhaps no field of inquiry concerning literature in which so large an amount of actual mis-information or of ignorance exists as that of the rarity of many books. The makers of second-hand catalogues are responsible for much of this, in describing the books which they wish to sell as ”rare,” ”very scarce,” etc., but more of it proceeds from absolute ignorance of the book-markets of the world. I have had mult.i.tudes of volumes offered for sale whose commercial value was hardly as many cents as was demanded in dollars by their ill-informed owners, who fancied the commonest book valuable because they ”had never seen another copy.” No one's ideas of the money value of any book are worth anything, unless he has had long experimental knowledge of the market for books both in America and in Europe.

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