ply "lies about," and gets dusty in his
rooms. A very bad borrower is he who makes pencil marks on books.
Perhaps he is a little more excusable than the borrower who does not read
at all.

A clean margin is worth all the marginalia of Poe, though he, to do him
justice, seems chiefly to have written on volumes that were his own
property. De Quincey, according to Mr. Hill Burton, appears to have
lacked the faculty of mind which recognizes the duty of returning books.
Mr. Hill Burton draws a picture of "Papaverius" living in a sort of cave
or den, the walls of which were books, while books lay around in tubs.
Who was to find a loved and lost tome in this vast accumulation? But De
Quincey at least made good use of what he borrowed. The common borrower
does nothing of the kind. Even Professor Mommsen, when he had borrowed
manuscripts of great value in his possession, allowed his house to get
itself set on fire. Europe lamented with him, but deepest was the wail
of a certain college at Cambridge which had lent its treasures. Even
Paul Louis Courier blotted horribly a Laurentian MS. of "Daphnis and
Chloe." When Chenier lent his annotated "Malherbe," the borrower spilt a
bottle of ink over it. Thinking of these things, of these terrible,
irreparable calamities, the wonder is, not that men still lend, but that
any one has the courage to borrow. It is more dreadful far to spoil or
lose a friend's book than to have our own lost or spoiled. Stoicism
easily submits to the latter sorrow, but there is no remedy for a
conscience sensible of its own unlucky guilt.

CLUB BORES.

The London Club has been sitting in a judicial way on one of its members.
This member of the Club seems to have been what Thackeray's waiter called
"a harbitrary gent." The servants of the club had to complain that he
did not make "their lives so sweet to them that they (the servants)
greatly cared to live," if we may parody Arthur's address to his erring
queen. The Club has not made a vacancy in its ranks by requesting the
arbitrary member to withdraw. But his conduct was deemed, on the report
of the Committee, worthy of being considered by the Club. And that is
always something. In an age when clubs are really almost universal, most
men have had occasion to wish that their society would sit occasionally
on some of the members. The member who bullies the servants is a not
uncommon specimen of the club-bore. He may be called the bore tru