he Lord, holy books deserve to be most decorously
handled by the clergy, upon which injury is inflicted as often as they
presume to touch them with a dirty hand. Wherefore, we hold it expedient
to exhort students upon various negligencies which can always be
avoided, but which are wonderfully injurious to books.

"In the first place, then, let there be a mature decorum in opening and
closing of volumes, that they may neither be unclasped with precipitous
haste, nor thrown aside after inspection without being duly closed; for
it is necessary that a book should be much more carefully preserved than
a shoe. But school folks are in general perversely educated, and, if not
restrained by the rule of their superiors, are puffed up with infinite
absurdities; they act with petulance, swell with presumption, judge of
everything with certainty, and are unexperienced in anything.

"You will perhaps see a stiff-necked youth, lounging sluggishly in his
study, while the frost pinches him in winter time, oppressed with cold,
his watery nose drops, nor does he take the trouble to wipe it with his
handkerchief till it has moistened the book beneath it with its vile
dew. For such a one I would substitute a cobbler's apron in the place of
his book. He has a nail like a giant's, perfumed with stinking filth,
with which he points out the place of any pleasant subject. He
distributes innumerable straws in various places, with the ends in
sight, that he may recall by the mark what his memory cannot retain.
These straws, which the stomach of the book never digests, and which
nobody takes out, at first distend the book from its accustomed closure,
and, being carelessly left to oblivion, at last become putrid. He is not
ashamed to eat fruit and cheese over an open book, and to transfer his
empty cup from side to side upon it; and because he has not his alms-bag
at hand, he leaves the rest of the fragments in his books. He never
ceases to chatter with eternal garrulity to his companions; and while he
adduces a multitude of reasons void of physical meaning, he waters the
book, spread out upon his lap, with the sputtering of his saliva. What
is worse, he next reclines with his elbows on the book, and by a short
study invites a long nap; and by way of repairing the wrinkles, he
twists back the margins of the leaves, to the no small detriment of the
volume. He goes out in the rain, and now flowers make their appearance
upon our soil. Then the scholar