d them to be, the old friends who are never found with new faces, who
are the same to us in our wealth and in our poverty, in our glory and in
our obscurity. No one gets into the inmost heart of a beautiful poem, a
great history, a book of delicate humor, or a volume of exquisite essays,
by reading it once or twice. He must have its precious thoughts and
illustrations stored in the treasure-house of memory, and brood over them
in the hours of leisure.

"A book may be a perpetual companion. Friends come and go, but the book
may beguile all experiences and enchant all hours."

"The first time," says Goldsmith, "that I read an excellent book, it is
to me just as if I had gained a new friend; when I read over a book I
have perused before, it resembles the meeting with an old one."

"No matter how poor I am," says William Ellery Channing, "no matter
though the prosperous of my own time will not enter my obscure dwelling;
if the sacred writers will enter and take up their abode under my
roof--if Milton will cross my threshold to sing to me of Paradise; and
Shakespeare to open to me the worlds of imagination and the workings of
the human heart,--I shall not pine for want of intellectual
companionship, though excluded from what is called the best society in
the place where I live."

"Books," says Milton, "do preserve as in a violl, the purest efficacie
and extraction of that living intellect that bred them. A good Booke is
the pretious life-blood of a master spirit, imbalm'd and treasur'd up on
purpose to a Life beyond Life."

"A book is good company," said Henry Ward Beecher. "It comes to your
longing with full instruction, but pursues you never. It is not offended
at your absent-mindedness, nor jealous if you turn to other pleasures, of
leaf, or dress, or mineral, or even of books. It silently serves the
soul without recompense, not even for the hire of love. And yet more
noble, it seems to pass from itself, and to enter the memory, and to
hover in a silvery transformation there, until the outward book is but a
body and its soul and spirit are flown to you, and possess your memory
like a spirit."

CHAPTER LXIII

DISCRIMINATION IN READING

A few books well read, and an intelligent choice of those few,--these
are the fundamentals for self-education by reading.

If only a few well chosen, it is better to avail yourself of choices
others have already made--old books, the standard works tested by many
gene