some future time, place on the left hand page, our own
reflections about it. Some of the most useful men in the world owe much
of their usefulness to a plan like this, promptly and perseveringly
followed. Quotations from books or papers might also be preserved in
the same manner.[10]

Perhaps it may be thought, at first, that this advice is not in keeping
with the caution formerly given, not to read as we travel about; but if
you reflect, you will find it otherwise. Reading as we travel, and at
meals, and the recording of facts and thoughts which occur, are things
as different as can well be conceived. The latter creates and
encourages a demand for close observation, the former discourages and
even suppresses it.

11. PRESERVATION OF BOOKS AND PAPERS.

Let books be covered as soon as bought. Never use them without clean
hands. They show the dirt with extreme readiness, and it is not easily
removed. I have seen books in which might be traced the careless thumbs
and fingers of the last reader, for half a dozen or a dozen pages in
succession.

I have known a gentleman--quite a literary man, too--who, having been
careful of his books in his earlier years, and having recently found
them occasionally soiled, charged the fault on those who occasionally
visited his library. At last he discovered that the coal dust (for he
kept a coal fire) settled on his hands, and was rubbed off upon his
book leaves by the slight friction of his fingers upon the leaves in
reading.

Never wet your finger or thumb in order to turn over leaves. Many
respectable people are addicted to this habit, but it is a vulgar one.
Besides, it is entirely useless. The same remarks might be applied to
the habit of suffering the corners of the leaves to turn up, in 'dog's
ears.' Keep every leaf smooth, if you can. Never hold a book very near
the fire, nor leave it in the hot sun. It injures its cover materially,
and not a few books are in one or both of these ways entirely ruined.

It is a bad practice to spread out a book with the back upwards. It
loosens the leaves, and also exposes it in other respects. You will
rarely find a place to lay it down which is _entirely_ clean, and the
least dust on the leaves, is readily observed.

The plan of turning down a leaf to enable us to remember the place, I
never liked. It indulges the memory in laziness. For myself, if I take
much interest in a book, I can remember where I left off and turn at
once to the pla