d the range of his pursuits by a glance round his bookshelves.

Of course, you know there are many fine houses where the library is a
part of the upholstery, so to speak. Books in handsome binding kept
locked under plate-glass in showy dwarf bookcases are as important to
stylish establishments as servants in livery; who sit with folded arms,
are to stylish equipages. I suppose those wonderful statues with the
folded arms do sometimes change their attitude, and I suppose those books
with the gilded backs do sometimes get opened, but it is nobody's
business whether they do or not, and it is not best to ask too many
questions.

This sort of thing is common enough, but there is another case that may
prove deceptive if you undertake to judge from appearances. Once in a
while you will come on a house where you will find a family of readers
and almost no library. Some of the most indefatigable devourers of
literature have very few books. They belong to book clubs, they haunt
the public libraries, they borrow of friends, and somehow or other get
hold of everything they want, scoop out all it holds for them, and have
done with it. When I want a book, it is as a tiger wants a sheep. I
must have it with one spring, and, if I miss it, go away defeated and
hungry. And my experience with public libraries is that the first volume
of the book I inquire for is out, unless I happen to want the second,
when that is out.

--I was pretty well prepared to understand the Master's library and his
account of it. We seated ourselves in two very comfortable chairs, and I
began the conversation.

-I see you have a large and rather miscellaneous collection of books. Did
you get them together by accident or according to some preconceived plan?

--Both, sir, both,--the Master answered. When Providence throws a good
book in my way, I bow to its decree and purchase it as an act of piety,
if it is reasonably or unreasonably cheap. I adopt a certain number of
books every year, out of a love for the foundlings and stray children of
other people's brains that nobody seems to care for. Look here.

He took down a Greek Lexicon finely bound in calf, and spread it open.

Do you see that Hedericus? I had Greek dictionaries enough and to spare,
but I saw that noble quarto lying in the midst of an ignoble crowd of
cheap books, and marked with a price which I felt to be an insult to
scholarship, to the memory of Homer, sir, and the awful shade o