he same,
I would not be without books for anything in this world. They are a
means of getting away, of forgetting, of losing oneself, the past, the
present, and the future, in the story, in the lives, and in the
thoughts of other men and women, in the thrill and excitement of
extraneous people and things. One of the delights of winter--and in
this country winter is of such interminable length and dreariness that
we hug any delight which belongs to it alone as fervently as we hug
love to our bosoms when we have reached the winter of our lives!--is to
snuggle down into a comfy easy-chair before a big fire and, book in
hand, travel hither and thither as the author wills--hate, love,
despair, or mock as the author inveigles or moves us. I don't think
that most of us pay half enough respectful attention to books seeing
how greatly we depend upon them for some of the quietest pleasures of
our lives. But that is the way of human nature, isn't it? We rarely
value anything until we lose it; we sigh most ardently for the thing
which is beyond our reach, we count our happiest days those across the
record of which we now must scrawl, "Too late!" That is why I always
feel so infinitely sorry for the blind. The blind can so rarely get
away from themselves, and, when they do, only with that effort which in
you and me would demand some bigger result than merely to lose
remembrance of our minor worries. When we are in trouble, when we are
in pain, when our heart weeps silently and alone, its sorrow
unsuspected by even our nearest and dearest, we, I say, can ofttimes
deaden the sad ache of the everyday by going out into the world,
seeking change of scene, change of environment, something to divert,
for the nonce, the unhappy tenor of our lives. But the blind, alas!
can do none of these things. Wherever they go, to whatever change of
scene they flee for variety, the same haunting darkness follows them
unendingly.

_The Blind Man's Problem_

It is so difficult for them to get away from themselves, to seek that
change and novelty which, in our hours of dread and suspense, are our
most urgent need. All the time, day in, day out, their perpetual
darkness thrusts them back upon themselves. They cannot get away from
it. Nothing--or perhaps, so very, very few things--can take them out
of themselves, allow them to lose their own unhappiness in living their
lives for something, someone outside themselves. Their own needs,
th