rism is nevertheless
most perilous. There are a great many constables out for the arrest of such
defrauders. That stolen paragraph that you think will never be recognized
has been committed to memory by that old lady with green goggles in the
front pew. That very same brilliant passage you have just pronounced was
delivered by the clergyman who preached in that pulpit the Sabbath before:
two thieves met in one hen-roost. All we know of Doctor Hayward of Queen
Elizabeth's time is that he purloined from Tacitus. Be dishonest once in
this respect, and when you do really say something original and good the
world will cry out, "Yes, very fine! I always did like Joseph Addison!"

Sermons are successful not according to the head involved in them, but
according to the heart implied, and no one can feel aright while preaching
a literary dishonesty. Let us be content to wear our own coat, though the
nap on it is not quite as well looking, to ride on our own horse, though he
do not gallop as gracefully and will "break up" when others are passing.
There is a work for us all to do, and God gives us just the best tools to
do it. What folly to be hankering after our neighbor's chalk line and
gimlet!

CHAPTER XXXIII.

LITERARY ABSTINENCE.

It is as much an art not to read as to read. With what pains, and thumps,
and whacks at school we first learned the way to put words together!

We did not mind so much being whipped by the schoolmaster for not knowing
how to read our lesson, but to have to go out ourselves and cut the hickory
switch with which the chastisement was to be inflicted seemed to us then,
as it does now, a great injustice.

Notwithstanding all our hard work in learning to read we find it quite as
hard now to learn how not to read. There are innumerable books and
newspapers from which one had better abstain.

There are but very few newspapers which it is safe to read all through,
though we know of one that it is best to peruse from beginning to end, but
modesty forbids us stating which one that is. In this day readers need as
never before to carry a sieve.

It requires some heroism to say you have not read such and such a book.
Your friend gives you a stare which implies your literary inferiority. Do
not, in order to answer the question affirmatively, wade through
indiscriminate slush.

We have to say that three-fourths of the novels of the day are a mental
depletion to those who read them. The man who make