All three of these last, even in
perfection, could not make any book beautiful, or sightly, whose pages had
been left narrow-margined and crowded. This is no arbitrary decree of
custom, no chance preference of an accredited authority. It would be
dangerous to set limit to the power of fashion in any thing; and yet it
seems almost safe to say that not even fashion itself can ever make a
narrow-margined page look other than shabby and mean. This inalienable
right of the broad margin to our esteem is significant. It lies deep. The
broad margin means something which is not measured by inches, has nothing
to do with fashions of shape. It means room for notes, queries, added by
any man's hand who reads. Meaning this, it means also much more than
this,--far more than the mere letter of "right of way." It is a fine
courtesy of recognition that no one page shall ever say the whole of its
own message; be exhaustive, or ultimate, even of its own topic; determine
or enforce its own opinion, to the shutting out of others. No matter if
the book live and grow old, without so much as an interrogation point or a
line of enthusiastic admiration drawn in it by human hand, still the
gracious import and suggestion of its broad white spaces are the same.
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