y, goes to school to
sages and seers; who by night hears Dante and Milton discourse upon
Paradise; who has for his mentors in office and counting-room some
Franklin or Solomon. Experience, supplemented by books, teaches youth
more in one year than experience alone will teach him in twenty.

Books also preserve for us the spirit of earth's great ones, just as
the cellar of the king holds wines growing more precious with the
lapse of years. From time to time God sends to earth some man with a
supreme gift called genius. Passing through our life and world, he
sees wondrous sights not beholden of our eyes, hears melodies too fine
for our dulled hearing. What other men behold as bits of coal, his
genius transmutes into diamonds. In the darkness he sleeps to see some
"Midsummer Night's Dream;" in the day he wakens to behold the tragedy
or comedy in his friend's career. While he muses, the fires of
inspiration burn within him. When the time comes, the inner forces
burst out in book or song or poem, just as the tulip bulb when April
comes publishes its heart of fire and gold. The book he writes is the
choicest wine in life, "the gold made fine in the fires of his
genius." Seldom come these elect ones, just as the bush burned only
once during Moses' many years in the desert. Many foot hills must be
united to produce one vast mountain. Only one range of Rockies is
needed to support many states. One Mississippi also can drain a
continent.

Thinking of these great ones, Milton said: "The book is the life-blood
of the master spirit." Just as the wisdom spoken into the phonograph
makes marks there to be reproduced at will, so books preserve and
repeat the eloquence of the greatest. Through his "Excursion," when
Wordsworth says, "I go to the fields to-day," the youth may whisper,
"and I go with thee." He may also accompany Layard, going forth to
study the old tablets and the monuments; with Scott he may ride with
Ivanhoe to castle and tournament; with Virgil and Dante he may shiver
at the brink of the inky river or exult over the first glimpse of
Paradise.

Well did Charles Lamb suggest that men should say grace--not only over
the Christmas festival, but also over the table spread with good
books. For man has no truer friends, Earth offers no richer banquet.
When Southey grew old and dim of vision, he was seen to totter into
his library. Moving about from shelf to shelf the aged scholar laid
his hand upon one favorite book and the