7/7/2023 0 Comments Etidorhpa by John Uri Lloyd![]() We take such a work from the shelf carefully, and replace it gently. A modern book, no matter how talented the author, carries with it a familiar personality which may often be treated with neglect or even contempt, but a volume a century old demands some reverence a vellum-bound or hog-skin print, or antique yellow parchment, two, three, five hundred years old, regardless of its contents, impresses one with an indescribable feeling akin to awe and veneration,-as does the wheat from an Egyptian tomb, even though it be only wheat. Libraries, in one sense, represent cemeteries, and the rows of silent volumes, with their dim titles, suggest burial tablets, many of which, alas! mark only cenotaphs-empty tombs. No man is allured by either a grave-inscription or a preface, unless it be accompanied by that ineffable charm which age casts over mortal productions. The preface, like an epitaph, seems vainly to "implore the passing tribute" of a moment's interest. ![]() Books are as tombstones made by the living for the living, but destined soon only to remind us of the dead. ![]()
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