not forgotten. If it is true that the
spirits of the mighty dead are abroad in the night they are turning the
leaves of books.

There are other inspiring things in the world, but there is nothing else
that carries itself among the sons of men like the book. With such
divine plenteousness--seeds of the worlds in it--it goes about flocking
on the souls of men. There is something so broadcast, so universal about
the way of a book with a man: boundless, subtle, ceaseless,
irresistible, following him and loving him, renewing him, delighting in
him and hoping for him--like a god. It is as the way of Nature herself
with a man. One cannot always feel it, but somehow, when I am really
living a real day, I feel as if some Great Book were around me--were
always around me. I feel myself all-enfolded, penetrated, surrounded
with it--the vast, gentle force of it--sky and earth of it. It is as if
I saw it, sometimes, building new boundaries for me, out there--softly,
gently, on the edges of the night--for me and for all human life.

Other inspiring things seem to be less steadfast for us. They cannot
always free themselves and then come and free us. Music cannot be
depended upon. It sings sometimes for and sometimes against us.
Sometimes, also, music is still--absolutely still, all the way down from
the stars to the grass. At best it is for some people and for others
not, and is addicted to places. It is a part of the air--part of the
climate in Germany, but there is but one country in the world made for
listening in--where any one, every one listens, the way one breathes.
The great pictures inspire, on the whole, but few people--most of them
with tickets. Cathedrals cannot be unmoored, have never been seen by the
majority of men at all, except in dreams and photographs. Most mountains
(for all practical purposes) are private property. The sea (a look at
the middle of it) is controlled by two or three syndicates. The sky--the
last stronghold of freedom--is rented out for the most part, where most
men live--in cities; and in New York and London the people who can
afford it pay taxes for air, and grass is a dollar a blade. Being born
is the only really free thing--and dying. Next to these in any just
estimate of the comparatively free raw material that goes to the making
of a human life comes the printed book.

A library, on the whole, is the purest and most perfect form of power
that exists, because it is a lever on the nature of th