m upon me, and
how glad they are that my repose has been unbroken. When I take them
from their places, how tenderly do they respond to the caresses of my
hands, and with what exultation do they respond unto my call for
sympathy!

Laughter for my gayer moods, distraction for my cares, solace for my
griefs, gossip for my idler moments, tears for my sorrows, counsel for
my doubts, and assurance against my fears--these things my books give
me with a promptness and a certainty and a cheerfulness which are more
than human; so that I were less than human did I not love these
comforters and bear eternal gratitude to them.

Judge Methuen read me once a little poem which I fancy mightily; it is
entitled "Winfreda," and you will find it in your Percy, if you have
one. The last stanza, as I recall it, runs in this wise:

And when by envy time transported
Shall seek to rob us of our joys,
You'll in our girls again be courted
And I'll go wooing in our boys.

"Now who was the author of those lines?" asked the Judge.

"Undoubtedly Oliver Wendell Holmes," said I. "They have the flavor
peculiar to our Autocrat; none but he could have done up so much
sweetness in such a quaint little bundle."

"You are wrong," said the Judge, "but the mistake is a natural one.
The whole poem is such a one as Holmes might have written, but it saw
the light long before our dear doctor's day: what a pity that its
authorship is not known!"

"Yet why a pity?" quoth I. "Is it not true that words are the only
things that live forever? Are we not mortal, and are not books
immortal? Homer's harp is broken and Horace's lyre is unstrung, and
the voices of the great singers are hushed; but their songs--their
songs are imperishable. O friend! what moots it to them or to us who
gave this epic or that lyric to immortality? The singer belongs to a
year, his song to all time. I know it is the custom now to credit the
author with his work, for this is a utilitarian age, and all things are
by the pound or the piece, and for so much money.

"So when a song is printed it is printed in small type, and the name of
him who wrote it is appended thereunto in big type. If the song be
meritorious it goes to the corners of the earth through the medium of
the art preservative of arts, but the longer and the farther it travels
the bigger does the type of the song become and the smaller becomes the
type wherein the author's name is set.

"Then, finally,