hose ancient
days, but also for the light and the cheer which thy genius brings to
all ages and conditions of humanity.

My Uncle Cephas's library was stored with a large variety of pleasing
literature. I did not observe a glut of theological publications, and
I will admit that I felt somewhat aggrieved personally when, in answer
to my inquiry, I was told that there was no "New England Primer" in the
collection. But this feeling was soon dissipated by the absorbing
interest I took in De Foe's masterpiece, a work unparalleled in the
realm of fiction.

I shall not say that "Robinson Crusoe" supplanted the Primer in my
affections; this would not be true. I prefer to say what is the truth;
it was my second love. Here again we behold another advantage which
the lover of books has over the lover of women. If he be a genuine
lover he can and should love any number of books, and this
polybibliophily is not to the disparagement of any one of that number.
But it is held by the expounders of our civil and our moral laws that
he who loveth one woman to the exclusion of all other women speaketh by
that action the best and highest praise both of his own sex and of hers.

I thank God continually that it hath been my lot in life to found an
empire in my heart--no cramped and wizened borough wherein one jealous
mistress hath exercised her petty tyranny, but an expansive and
ever-widening continent divided and subdivided into dominions,
jurisdictions, caliphates, chiefdoms, seneschalships, and prefectures,
wherein tetrarchs, burgraves, maharajahs, palatines, seigniors,
caziques, nabobs, emirs, nizams, and nawabs hold sway, each over his
special and particular realm, and all bound together in harmonious
cooperation by the conciliating spirit of polybibliophily!

Let me not be misunderstood; for I am not a woman-hater. I do not
regret the acquaintances--nay, the friendships--I have formed with
individuals of the other sex. As a philosopher it has behooved me to
study womankind, else I should not have appreciated the worth of these
other better loves. Moreover, I take pleasure in my age in associating
this precious volume or that with one woman or another whose friendship
came into my life at the time when I was reading and loved that book.

The other day I found my nephew William swinging in the hammock on the
porch with his girl friend Celia; I saw that the young people were
reading Ovid. "My children," said I, "count this