ery
little trimmed at its first. If it must be cut at all, charge your binder
to take off the merest shaving from either edge.

Every new book or magazine added to the library, if uncut, should be
carefully cut with a paper-knife before it goes into the hands of any
reader. Spoiled or torn or ragged edges will be the penalty of neglecting
this. You have seen people tear open the leaves of books and magazines
with their fingers--a barbarism which renders him who would be guilty of
it worthy of banishment from the resorts of civilization. In cutting
books, the leaves should always be held firmly down--and the knife
pressed evenly through the uncut leaves to the farthest verge of the
back. Books which are cut in the loose fashion which many use are left
with rough or ragged edges always, and often a slice is gouged out of the
margin by the mis-directed knife. Never trust a book to a novice to be
cut, without showing him how to do it, and how not to do it.

The collation of new books in cloth or _broche_ should be done before
cutting, provided they are issued to readers untrimmed. In collating
books in two or more volumes double watchfulness is needed to guard
against a missing signature, which may have its place filled by the same
pages belonging to another volume--a mixture sometimes made in binderies,
in "gathering" the sheets, and which makes it necessary to see that the
signatures are right as well as the pages. The collator should check off
all plates and maps called for by the table of contents to make sure that
the copy is perfect. Books without pagination are of course to have their
leaves counted, which is done first in detail, one by one, and then
verified by a rapid counting in sections, in the manner used by printers
and binders in counting paper by the quire.

The binding of books may be divided into two styles or methods, namely,
machine-made book-bindings, and hand-made bindings. Binding by machinery
is wholly a modern art, and is applied to all or nearly all new books
coming from the press. As these are, in more than nine cases out of ten,
bound in cloth covers, and these covers, or cases, are cut out and
stamped by machinery, such books are called "case-made." The distinction
between this method of binding and the hand method is that in the former
the case is made separately from the book, which is then put into it.
After the sheets of any book come pressed and dried from the printing
office, the first s