. Here,
however, we are chiefly concerned with information, and stimulation of
thought.

What shall I read for information?

The ample page of knowledge, as Grey tells us, is "rich with the spoils
of time," and these are ours for the price of a theatre ticket. You may
command Socrates and Marcus Aurelius to sit beside you and discourse of
their choicest, hear Lincoln at Gettysburg and Pericles at Athens, storm
the Bastile with Hugo, and wander through Paradise with Dante. You may
explore darkest Africa with Stanley, penetrate the human heart with
Shakespeare, chat with Carlyle about heroes, and delve with the Apostle
Paul into the mysteries of faith. The general knowledge and the
inspiring ideas that men have collected through ages of toil and
experiment are yours for the asking. The Sage of Chelsea was right: "The
true university of these days is a collection of books."

To master a worth-while book is to master much else besides; few of us,
however, make perfect conquest of a volume without first owning it
physically. To read a borrowed book may be a joy, but to assign your own
book a place of its own on your own shelves--be they few or many--to
love the book and feel of its worn cover, to thumb it over slowly, page
by page, to pencil its margins in agreement or in protest, to smile or
thrill with its remembered pungencies--no mere book borrower could ever
sense all that delight.

The reader who possesses books in this double sense finds also that his
books possess him, and the volumes which most firmly grip his life are
likely to be those it has cost him some sacrifice to own. These
lightly-come-by titles, which Mr. Fatpurse selects, perhaps by proxy,
can scarcely play the guide, philosopher and friend in crucial moments
as do the books--long coveted, joyously attained--that are welcomed into
the lives, and not merely the libraries, of us others who are at once
poorer and richer.

So it is scarcely too much to say that of all the many ways in which an
owned--a mastered--book is like to a human friend, the truest ways are
these: A friend is worth making sacrifices for, both to gain and to
keep; and our loves go out most dearly to those into whose inmost lives
we have sincerely entered.

When you have not the advantage of the test of time by which to judge
books, investigate as thoroughly as possible the authority of the books
you read. Much that is printed and passes current is counterfeit. "I
read it in a boo