ir instincts with them. In a man's answer to the
question, How can I make a convenience of the law of heredity and
environment?--education before being born and education after being
born--will be found to lie always the secret glory or the secret shame
of his life.

II

The First Selection

If the souls of the unborn could go about reconnoitering the earth a
little before they settled on it, selecting the parents they would have,
the places where it pleased them to be born, nine out of ten of them
(judging from the way they conduct themselves in the flesh) would spend
nearly all their time in looking for the best house and street to be
born in, the best things to be born to. Such a little matter as
selecting the right parents would be left, probably, to the last moment,
or they would expect it to be thrown in.

We are all of us more or less aware, especially as we advance in life,
that overlooking the importance of parents is a mistake. There have been
times in the lives of some of us when having parents at all seemed a
mistake. We can remember hours when we were sure we had the wrong ones.
After our first disappointment,--that is, when we have learned how
unmanageable parents are,--we have our time--most of us--of making
comparisons, of trying other people's parents on. This cannot be said to
work very well, taken as a whole, and it is generally admitted that
people who are most serious about it, who take unto themselves fathers-
and mothers-in-law seldom do any better than at first. The conclusion of
the whole matter would seem to be: Since a man cannot select his parents
and his parents cannot select him, he must select himself. That is what
books are for.

III

Conveniences

It is the first importance of a true book that a man can select his
neighbours with it,--can overcome space, riches, poverty, and time with
it,--and the grave, and break bread with the dead. A book is a portable
miracle. It makes a man's native place all over for him, for a dollar
and a quarter; and many a man in this somewhat hard and despairing world
has been furnished with a new heaven and a new earth for twenty-five
cents. Out of a public library he has felt reached down to him the grasp
of heroes. Hurrying home in the night, perhaps, with his tiny life hid
under stars, but with a Book under his arm, he has felt a Greeting
against his breast and held it tight. "Who art thou, my lad?" it said;
"who art thou?" And the saying was