s requirement,
and the requisite selection must be made with care. Moreover, the ideal
bedside book should be not only small, and light, and agreeable to the
touch, but distinguished by special internal characteristics. Not only
must the print be legible; the matter it furnishes must be in brief
instalments. What is wanted is a series of short somethings which the
mind can readily grasp and as easily retain. Sustained reading is for
the library or the study; the last thing at night and the first thing in
the morning, what you desire is simply a number of brevities, at any one
of which you can glance with the certainty of being interested.

Wherefore, such works as novels must be discouraged in the bedside
library. There is nothing to be gained by perusing a romance, by bits,
in such fragments of time as the intending sleeper is inclined or able
to accord to it. Keep a novel beside you, if you like, to turn to if the
night should prove an obstinately sleepless one, and to that end let the
tale be by 'Miss Braddon or Gaboriau'--one which shall really fix your
imagination fast, and finish, perhaps, by sending you to rest. But for
ordinary uses let the book which you take up be one of 'Jewels, five
words long,' or thereabouts! Let it be a volume of short essays--let it
be, for instance, Bacon's, or the 'Roundabout Papers,' now accessible in
a handy form. Let it be a volume of brief verse, such as Mr. Gilbert's
'Bab Ballads,' or Mr. Lang's 'Ballades in Blue China,' or Calverley's
immortal 'Fly Leaves;' or let it be a collection of more serious
lyrics--say, Mr. Palgrave's 'Golden Treasury,' or the selections from
Lord Tennyson and Mr. Matthew Arnold. Or, if you like, let it be a
treasury of maxims, such as those by Vauvenargues or Chamfort; or a
series of select passages, such as those from the works of Lord
Beaconsfield or Heine: or let it be a casquet of choice anecdotes, of
which happily the supply is large--that incomparable volume of Dean
Ramsay's, for example, or even the triter production by Mark Lemon.
There is a whole world from which to choose.

Only, take care that, whatever the literature is, it is not disturbing.
The mission of the bedside book is to soothe the mind, not irritate it.
When one lies down after a hard day's work, one's desire is not that the
brain should be stimulated, but that it should be refreshed. It needs,
not exercise, but diversion. It wants to be prepared for sleep. And if a
book will effec