erature which people seek in _free_ libraries, if they seek it at
all. The books they really adore are those which somebody else has
purchased. Nor are they ever old books. On the contrary, they are "the
very latest." You see it gives a room a certain _cachet_ if it includes
the very recent literary "sensation," the "novel of the season," which
everybody is reading because everybody is talking about it. So they
stick to the books which you yourself have purchased, under the fond
delusion that what you buy is necessarily yours to do what you like with.
Alas! you have forgotten the borrowing fiend. The borrowing fiend is out
for borrowed glory--and few things on earth will ever stop the progress
of those who are out for self-glorification. True, I once knew a
book-lover who was not afraid of telling the would-be borrower that he
_never lent books_. Needless to say, he had very few literary friends.
But his bookshelves were filled with almost everything worth reading that
had been published.

_The Road to Calvary_

She was sitting half dreaming, half listening to the old preacher, when
suddenly one sentence in a sermon, otherwise prosy and conventional,
arrested her attention. For the moment she could not remember it, and
then it came to her. "All roads lead to Calvary." Perhaps he was
going to be worth listening to at last. "To all of us sooner or
later," he was saying, "comes the choosing of the ways: either the road
leading to success, the gratification of desires, the honour and
approval of our fellow men--or the path to Calvary." And yet it seems
to me that the utterance is only a half-truth after all. It is the
half-truth which clergymen like to utter. They always picture worldly
success as happiness, the gratification of desires happiness also, but
gained at the price of one's own "soul." But there they are wrong. It
seems to me that all roads do lead to Calvary--yes, even the road of
the worldly success, the limelit path of gratification. Whichever path
you take, it leads to Calvary--though there is the Calvary which, as it
were, has peace behind its pain, and the Calvary which has merely
loneliness and regret. But life, it seems to me, leads to Calvary
whichever way you follow--the best one can do is merely to bring a
little ray of happiness, ease a little the pain, share the sorrow and
the solitude of those who walk with us along the rough-hewn pathway.
If you live only for yourself you