International studio (23.1904)

Notes on the Crafts

will tell you your character”; and that analogous
one: “A man’s books are the index to his char-
acter.” In other words, a man’s human opinions
and his literary opinions have subjectively and
objectively much the same bearing upon his make-
up. So you can no more count upon your friend
liking your favourite books, than upon his accept-

formation in them; for their literary form; for their
artistic form. A few there are who love a book
simply as the embodiment of a thought, of a mind;
and fewer still are they that, loving the thought,
the mind, look for its perfect embodiment at the
hands of the artist-craftsman, as a music lover
looks to some musician for the perfect rendering


LEATHER BINDING BY STIKEHAN & CO., NEW YORK

ing his human companions at your hands. Hence
the difficulty of choosing books as presents for
others. One thing you can do, namely, identify
the class of book your friend draws upon for his
reading.
There are many kinds of soi disants Bibliophiles
—their name is legion. There are those who love
books for the entertainment in them; for the in-

of his conception of the composer’s spirit poem.
But these last are bibliophiles par excellence—•
their lotus-land is sparsely inhabited, for narrow
the way and strait is the gate that leads thither.
To the true bibliophile, as we indicated in the
review of the Merrymount Press Tacitus in the
September number of The International
Studio, the materialization of the author’s con-

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