need the right sort of food as well as bodies in order to be
healthy. I have some neighbours that my heart just aches for; all
their reading is yellow-covered books, such as 'The Pirate's Bride,'
and 'The Fatal Secret.' Such food is worse than cracker-water, and
arrowroot, for they are starving souls instead of bodies, and the
Word can't find any place to take root, much less to grow, when the
mind is filled up with such trash."

"Joseph Cook thinks," said Mrs. Lewis, "that even Bunyan, Jeremy
Taylor, Pascal, and Thomas a'Kempis himself, work mischief, if these
books shut out the Bible from daily and almost hourly use.'

"Is it possible," said Mrs. Etheridge, "that anybody can make out
what Joseph Cook thinks? I know everybody is running wild over him,
so I just took one of his lectures the other day after dinner, and
sat down by the fire. But dear me! I couldn't make anything out of
it. Now, I can take one of Mrs. Henry Wood's lovely books and read
from dinner to tea, without being tired or sleepy."

Mrs. Lewis smiled as she answered:

"I admit that, like Paul, Joseph Cook writes some things hard to be
understood, and it often takes considerable thought to get at his
meaning, but when you have studied it out it is something worth
having. He speaks to Boston people mostly, you know, and perhaps they
would not understand very plain English. Here is a sentence from him,
though, that is clear enough: 'Do you know a book that you are
willing to put under your head for a pillow when you lie dying? Very
well, that is the book you want to study while you are living.'"

"But, Mrs. Lewis," continued Mrs. Etheridge, "you know some
physicians think we ought to eat the sort of food that relishes most.
Why does that not apply to our minds as well? Now I am naturally
melancholy, and need something to raise my spirits. Don't you think
that the Bible is almost too sober, dreary reading for such
persons--at least until they begin to grow old?"

Mrs. Lewis turned a loving, pitying look on the pretty young wife,
and whispered a prayer for her as she answered:

"Jeremiah and David did not find it a gloomy book, for they both said
this: 'Thy word was unto me the joy and rejoicing of my heart.'
My dear, I want to put my testimony with theirs, that in a long
lifetime--part of it spent in every variety of worldly pleasure--that
there is nothing, nothing that has or can give me the joy that the
words of my dear Lord do. I claim no credi