[BOOKS]: Pt. 5

   "We have it upon the authority of William Blades
that books breathe; however, the testimony of ex-
perts is not needed upon this point, for if anybody
be skeptical, all he has to do to convince himslef is
to open a door of a bookcase at any time and his
olfactories will be greeted by an outrush of odors
that will prove to him beyond all doubt that books
do actually consume air and exhale perfumes."
--Eugene Field

"...Better than men and women, friend,
That are dust, though dear in our joy and pain,
  Are the books their cunning hands have penned,
For they depart, but the books remain,
  Through those they speak to us what was best
In the loving heart and the whole mind,
  All their royal souls possessed
Belongs forever to all mankind!
  When others fail him, the wise man looks
To the sure companionship of books."
--Richard Henry Stoddard

"As for myself, I verily believe that, if by
fire or by water my library should be destroyed
this night, I should start in again tomorrow
upon the collection of another library. Or if I
did not do this, I should lay myself down to die,
for how could I live without the companion-
ships to which I have ever been accustomed,
and which have grown as dear to me as life
itself."
--The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac,
Eugene Field

"Himself an indefatigable collector of books,
the possessor of a library as valuable as it was
interesting, a library containing volumes obtained
only at the cost of great personal sacrifice, he
was in the most active sympathy with the disease
called bibliomania, and knew, as few compar-
atively poor men have known, the half-pathetic,
half-humorous side of that incurable mental in-
firmity."
--Roswell Martin Field
(on his brother Eugene Field)