BORROWED BOOKS

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 274, 9 February 1928, Page 6

BORROWED BOOKS

DO'S AND DONT’S Friendships are both made and lost over books lent and borrowed. Warm interest may be awakened in mutual pleasure over a particular volume, or the non-return and Joss of a favourite book may cause a permanent rift. When you are in the habit of lending books from your select little library to friends: Have a personal book-plate, which, stuck on the inside cover or on a flyleaf, labels each volume yours without question, a reminder to all those careless people who might forget. One may have home-made book-plates, just sheets of paper. with quotations, monogram, etc., in neat lettering. Less Valued Volumes Reserve one shelf for lending books, into which can be crowded the bookstall editions and paper-covered novels you have read and done with. Then, when occasion arises and a friend asks for the loan of reading matter, a selection of these can be made in preference to those you value more, since their possible non-return will not be a matter for great concern. If you lend many books keep a notebook on the bookshelf in which may be entered the names of books and borrowers, and the dates of lending and returning. Thereby you may remember where they all are. When you borrow books from friends: Keep them apart from your own, between a pair of book-ends, perhaps, on bedside table or bureau, so that they remain In sight and mind. Put paper or linen covers on those with handsome and easily soilable bindings while they are in your keeping. Use a Book-marker Have a proper book-marker for the book in course of being read. Don’t turn down the corners of the pages, or slip any bulky thing which comes handy, like scissors, nail file, or another book, into the place you want to keep, and so spoil the shape and strain the binding. Don’t read the volume too close to the fire, bend back the covers until the back cracks, or permit the children to examine the pictures it contains with grubby fingers. Don’t read it at meal times propped up against the teapot, use it as a stand for cups and glasses, garnish its edges with butter and jam, or shut cigarette ash and cake crumbs between the leaves. Don’t lend to other people books which have been lent to you. You are responsible for them and have no right to pass them on without the owner’s express permission. AMUSING DINNER PARTIES THE “PAUL -JONES” SYSTEM APPLIED BY A SOUTH AFRICAN HOSTESS At some rather amusing dinner parties which used to be held in Johannsburg a few years ago the hostess used to move on her men guests in the way that players move at card parties. The hors d’oeuvres were eaten with no hint of what was to follow, but when the plates had been removed the men were asked to move down one place, taking their drinks with them. One advantage of this was that if a girl found herself sitting next to a

particularly dull young man at the beginning of dinner she kneA' she had only to rack her brains for a few minutes before the situation would be relieved. On the other hand, if she had been taken in to dinner by someone specially nice or interesting, it was disappointing to see him fading farther and farther into the distance, although sometimes if the party was small or the dinner long and elaborate the men came round to their starting point again. MENU CHOSEN BY COLOUR Another variety was the betterknown plan of choosing a particular colour as the keynote for tne dinner party, the table decorations and the dishes being as far as possible in one hue. Pink or yellow was usually selected as being the easiest to carry out. If pink was to be the colour of the evening, the soup would be tomato, the fish salmon, the entree lamb cutlets with pink frills, the sweet rhubarb or raspberry fool, and the ices strawberry.