on high
shelves out of sight, and blows over folios, with large clasps, that
once stood in monastery libraries, and gathers a subtle sweetness from
parchments that were illuminated in ancient scriptoriums that are now
grass-grown, and it is fortified with good old musty calf. The wind
was from the right quarter on the first day I visited Kilbogie Manse,
and as we went up the garden walk the Rabbi's library already bade us
welcome, and assured us of our reward for a ten-miles' walk.

Saunderson was perfectly helpless in all manner of mechanics--he could
not drive a tack through anything except his own fingers, and had given
up shaving at the suggestion of his elders--and yet he boasted, with
truth, that he had got three times as many books into the study as his
predecessor possessed in all his house. For Saunderson had shelved the
walls from the floor to the ceiling, into every corner, and over the
doors and above the windows, as well as below them. The wright had
wished to leave the space clear above the mantelpiece.

"Ye'll be hanging Dr. Chalmers there, or maybe John Knox, and a bit
clock'll be handy for letting ye ken the 'oors on Sabbath."

The Rabbi admitted that he had a Knox, but was full of a scheme for
hanging him over his own history, which he considered both appropriate
and convenient. As regards time, it was the last thing of which that
worthy man desired to be reminded--going to bed when he could no longer
see for weariness, and rising as soon as he awoke, taking his food when
it was brought to him, and being conducted to church by the beadle
after the last straggler was safely seated. He even cast covetous eyes
upon the two windows, which were absurdly large, as he considered, but
compromised matters by removing the shutters and filling up the vacant
space with slender works of devotion. It was one of his conceits that
the rising sun smote first on an A'Kempis, for this he had often
noticed as he worked of a morning.

Book-shelves had long ago failed to accommodate Rabbi's treasures, and
the floor had been bravely utilised. Islands of books, rugged and
perpendicular, rose on every side; long promontories reached out from
the shore, varied by bold headlands; and so broken and varied was that
floor that the Rabbi was pleased to call it the Aegean Sea, where he
had his Lesbos and his Samos. It is absolutely incredible, but it is
all the same a simple fact, that he knew every book and its location,