The other chairs are horse-hair, than which nothing is more
comfortable if there be a good slit down the seat. The seats are
heavily dented, because all the Wylie family sit down with a dump.
The draught-board is on the edge of a large centre table, which also
displays four books placed at equal distances from each other, one of
them a Bible, and another the family album. If these were the only
books they would not justify Maggie in calling this chamber the
library, her dogged name for it; while David and James call it the
west-room and Alick calls it 'the room,' which is to him the natural
name for any apartment without a bed in it. There is a bookcase of
pitch pine, which contains six hundred books, with glass doors to
prevent your getting at them.
No one does try to get at the books, for the Wylies are not a reading
family. They like you to gasp when you see so much literature
gathered together in one prison-house, but they gasp themselves at
the thought that there are persons, chiefly clergymen, who, having
finished one book, coolly begin another. Nevertheless it was not all
vainglory that made David buy this library: it was rather a mighty
respect for education, as something that he has missed. This same
feeling makes him take in the Contemporary Review and stand up to it
like a man. Alick, who also has a respect for education, tries to
read the Contemporary, but becomes dispirited, and may be heard
muttering over its pages, 'No, no use, no use, no,' and sometimes
even 'Oh hell.
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