There are young gentlemen whose delight it is to tell their married and established and venerable friends how to form libraries. Generally, these young gentlemen wear spectacles rimmed with tortoise shell, and the condensed milk of their alma mater is yet wet upon their lips. They peer at your laden shelves and say: “It is better to have one good book than a dozen bad ones. Of any standard work you should have the definitive edition--not necessarily a rare imprint or something in fine binding, but the most modern and comprehensive edition. It is better to have one good anthology than a shelfful of third-rate poets. Go through your shelves and throw away all the rubbish; buy sets of the classics, a volume at a time, and in this way you will gradually build up a useful and really representative library, something appropriate and coherent.” When a young gentleman talks to you in this wise, the only thing to do is to lead him gently away from the bookshelves and make him sit in a comfortable corner and talk to you about hockey or socialism or some other of his boyish sports. He knows absolutely nothing about libraries. Probably he lives in the shadow of Washington Arch, and his own library--on the bureau--consists of the “Life of General Ulysses S. Grant,” inscribed “To dearest Teddy, from Aunt Mag., Xmas, 1916,” and a copy of the New Republic for last August, containing a letter in which he took exception to an editorial on the relation between pragmatism and Freud’s second theory of the semi-subconscious. To-morrow he will sell General Grant to a second-hand book dealer for fifteen cents, and thereby diminish his library by one half. What right has he to tell you what books you shall keep and what you shall destroy? Now, it would not be so bad if this raving about a library was confined to young persons like him I have mentioned. But the trouble is, there are people of means and reputation for intelligence who are actually putting into practice the evil theories he advances, who are deliberately “building up libraries,” instead of surrounding themselves with books they like. Against this pernicious heresy it is the duty of every honest bibliophile to protest.