en thousand can buy
them, and I have to keep 'em myself.

You know that, when you get an idea in your head, how everything you
read contains allusions to the same thing. Knowledge is mucilaginous.
Well, next day after I was looking up that pleasant word "scamp," I was
reading in the Amusing Works of Erasmus, when I ran across the word
again, but spelled in Dutch, thus, "schamp." Now Erasmus was a
successful author, and he was also the best authority on paper, inks,
bindings, and general bookmaking in Italy, Holland or Germany. Being a
lover of learning, and listening to the lure of words, he never wallowed
in wealth. But in his hunt for ideas he had a lot of fun. Kipling says,
"There is no hunt equal to a man hunt." But Kip is wrong--to chase a
thought is twice the sport. Erasmus chased ideas, and very naturally
the preachers chased Erasmus--out of England, through France, down to
Italy and then he found refuge at Basel with Froben, the great Printer
and Publisher.

Up in Frankfort was a writer-printer, who, not being able to answer the
arguments of Erasmus, called him bad names. But this gentle pen-pusher
in Frankfort, who passed his vocabulary at Froben's proofreader, Erasmus
in time calls a "schamp," because he used cheap paper, cheap ink and
close margins. Soon after, the word was carried to England and spelled
"scamp"--a man who cheats in quality, weight, size and count. But the
first use merely meant a printer who scamps his margins and so cheats on
paper. I am sorry to see that Erasmus imitated his enemies and at
times was ambidextrous in the use of the literary stinkpot. His
vocabulary was equal to that of Muldoon. Erasmus refers to one of
his critics as a "scenophylax-stikken," and another he calls a "schnide
enchologion-schistosomus." And perhaps they may have been--I really do
not know.

But as an authority on books Erasmus can still be read. He it was who
fixed the classic page margin--twice as wide at the top as on the
inside; twice as wide at the outside as the top; twice as wide at the
bottom as at the side. And any printer who varies from this displays his
ignorance of proportion. Erasmus says, "To use poor paper marks the
decline of taste, both in printer and in patron." After the death of
Erasmus, Froben's firm failed because they got to making things cheap.
"Compete in quality, not in price," was the working motto of Erasmus.

All of the great bookmaking centers languished when they began to scamp