ecree and purchase it as an act of piety,
if it is reasonably or unreasonably cheap. I adopt a certain number of
books every year, out of a love for the foundlings and stray children of
other people's brains that nobody seems to care for. Look here.

He took down a Greek Lexicon finely bound in calf, and spread it open.

Do you see that Hedericus? I had Greek dictionaries enough and to spare,
but I saw that noble quarto lying in the midst of an ignoble crowd of
cheap books, and marked with a price which I felt to be an insult
to scholarship, to the memory of Homer, sir, and the awful shade of
AEschylus. I paid the mean price asked for it, and I wanted to double
it, but I suppose it would have been a foolish sacrifice of coin to
sentiment: I love that book for its looks and behavior. None of your
"half-calf" economies in that volume, sir! And see how it lies open
anywhere! There is n't a book in my library that has such a generous way
of laying its treasures before you. From Alpha to Omega, calm, assured
rest at any page that your choice or accident may light on. No lifting
of a rebellious leaf like an upstart servant that does not know his
place and can never be taught manners, but tranquil, well-bred repose.
A book may be a perfect gentleman in its aspect and demeanor, and this
book would be good company for personages like Roger Ascham and his
pupils the Lady Elizabeth and the Lady Jane Grey.

The Master was evidently riding a hobby, and what I wanted to know was
the plan on which he had formed his library. So I brought him back to
the point by asking him the question in so many words.

Yes,--he said,--I have a kind of notion of the way in which a library
ought to be put together--no, I don't mean that, I mean ought to grow.
I don't pretend to say that mine is a model, but it serves my turn well
enough, and it represents me pretty accurately. A scholar must shape
his own shell, secrete it one might almost say, for secretion is only
separation, you know, of certain elements derived from the materials
of the world about us. And a scholar's study, with the books lining
its walls, is his shell. It is n't a mollusk's shell, either; it 's a
caddice-worm's shell. You know about the caddice-worm?

--More or less; less rather than more,--was my humble reply.

Well, sir, the caddice-worm is the larva of a fly, and he makes a case
for himself out of all sorts of bits of everything that happen to suit
his particular fancy, d