own
making, a world which we can make as beautiful, as sublime, as we wish.
The imagination is a wonderful substitute for wealth, luxuries, and for
material things. No matter how poor we may be, or how unfortunate, we
may be bedridden even, we can by its aid travel round the world, visit
its greatest cities, and create the most beautiful things for ourselves.

Sir John Herschel tells an amusing anecdote illustrating the pleasure
derived from a book, not assuredly of the first order. In a certain
village the blacksmith had got hold of Richardson's novel "Pamela, or
Virtue Rewarded," and used to sit on his anvil in the long summer
evenings and read it aloud to a large and attentive audience. It is by
no means a short book, but they fairly listened to it all. "At length,
when the happy turn of fortune arrived, which brings the hero and
heroine together, and sets them living long and happily according to
the most approved rules, the congregation were so delighted as to raise
a great shout, and, procuring the church keys, actually set the parish
bells ringing."

"It all comes back to us now," said the brilliant editor of the
"Interior" not long ago, "that winter evening in the old home. The
curtains are down, the fire is sending out a cheerful warmth and the
shaded lamps diffusing a well-tempered radiance. The lad of fifteen is
bent over a borrowed volume of sea tales. For hours he reads on,
oblivious of all surroundings, until parental attention is drawn toward
him by the unusual silence. The boy is seen to be trembling from head
to foot with suppressed excitement. A fatherly hand is laid upon the
volume, closing it firmly, and the edict is spoken, 'No more novels for
five years.' And the lad goes off to bed, half glad, half grieved,
wondering whether he has found fetters or achieved freedom.

"In truth he had received both; for that indiscriminating command
forbade to him during a formative period of his life works which would
have kindled his imagination, enriched his fancy, and heightened his
power of expression; but if it closed to him the Garden of Hesperides,
it also saved him from a possible descent to the Inferno; it made
heroes of history, not demigods of mythology, his companions, and
reserved to maturer years those excursions in the literature of the
imagination which may lead a young man up to heaven or as easily drag
him down to hell.

"The boy who is permitted to saturate his mind with stories o