It is a mistake also to imagine that keeping the best bound volumes in
a glass doored book-case is a preservative. The damp air will certainly
penetrate, and as the absence of ventilation will assist the formation of
mould, the books will be worse off than if they had been placed in open
shelves. If security be desirable, by all means abolish the glass and
place ornamental brass wire-work in its stead. Like the writers of old
Cookery Books who stamped special receipts with the testimony of personal
experience, I can say "probatum est."
CHAPTER III.
GAS AND HEAT.
WHAT a valuable servant is Gas, and how dreadfully we should cry out
were it to be banished from our homes; and yet no one who loves his
books should allow a single jet in his library, unless, indeed he can
afford a "sun light," which is the form in which it is used in some
public libraries, where the whole of the fumes are carried at once
into the open air.
Unfortunately, I can speak from experience of the dire effect of gas
in a confined space. Some years ago when placing the shelves round
the small room, which, by a euphemism, is called my library, I took
the precaution of making two self-acting ventilators which communicated
directly with the outer air just under the ceiling.
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