shirt sleeves." The answer showed an honorable pride
in labor; but we must remember that it was not General Grant's arms but
his brain that won his victories. Does not our proverb mean simply this:
that the great prizes of life--of which riches is the symbol, not the
sum--cannot be won by main strength and ignorance; that they can be won
only by energy making use of knowledge? But it is not only in the public
successes of life that books have a value for the individual. Public
successes are never the greatest that men win. It is in the expansion
and uplift of the inner self that books render their grandest service.
Emily Dickinson wrote of such a reader:

He ate and drank the precious words,
His spirit grew robust;
He knew no more that he was poor,
Nor that his frame was dust.
He danced along the dingy days,
And this bequest of wings
Was but a book. What liberty
A loosened spirit brings!

A final word on values. The philosophers make two great classes of
values, which may be entitled respectively Property and Possessions.
Under Property come money, houses, lands, carriages, clothing, jewels;
under Possessions come love, friendship, morality, knowledge, culture,
refinement. All are good things. There never were any houses or
carriages or clothes too good for a human being. But these obviously
belong to a different type of values from the other group--to a lower
type. What is the test, the touchstone, by which we can tell to which
class any value belongs? We shall find the test clearly stated in the
Sermon on the Mount. Is the treasure in question one that moth and rust
can corrupt or that thieves can break through and steal? If so, it
belongs to the lower class, to Property. But if it is one that cannot be
taken away, then it is a Possession and belongs to the higher type.
There is another test, which is really a part of this: Can you share it
without loss? If I own a farm, and give to another a half of it or a
year's crop from it, I deprive myself of just so much. But, if I have
knowledge or taste or judgment or affection, I can pour them all out
like water for the benefit of my fellows, and yet never have any the
less. On the contrary, I shall find that I have more; for they grow by
sharing. But we have not yet done with the superiority of Possessions
over Property. "Shrouds have no pockets," says the grim old proverb; and
all Property must be laid down at the edge of the gr