orsion.'
Edward O. Shakespeare, who wrote the book, is not a debated personality.
His authorship of the book is unquestioned, and I assure you it is a
comfort to handle a text which you know left its author's mind exactly
as it now confronts you in the page.

"Next to the Shakespeare you find my Dickens volumes, two in number.
Albert Dickens published, in 1904, his 'Tests of Forest Trees.' It has
been praised in authoritative quarters as an excellent work of its kind.
An older book is 'Dickens's Continental A B C,' a railway guide which I
am fond of thinking of as the probable instrument of a vast amount of
human happiness. Imagine the happy meetings and reunions which this
chubby little book has made possible--husbands and wives, fathers and
children, lovers, who from the most distant corners of the earth have
sought and found each other by means of the Dickens railway time-tables.
To how many beds of illness has it brought a comforter, to how many
habitations of despair--but I must not preach. I call your attention to
the next volume, Byron. From the title, 'A Handbook of Lake Minnetonka,'
you will perceive that it is in the same class as my Dickens."

Cooper drew his handkerchief to flip the dust from a thin octavo in
sheepskin. "This Emerson," he said, "is the earliest in date of my
Americana. William Emerson's 'A Sermon on the Decease of the Rev. Peter
Thacher' appeared in 1802, at a time when people still thought it worth
while to utilise the death of a good man by putting him into a book for
the edification of the living. The adjoining two volumes are by Spencer.
Charles E. Spencer's 'Rue, Thyme, and Myrtle' is a sheaf of dainty
poetry which was very popular in Philadelphia during the second decade
after the Civil War. Do we still write poetry as single-heartedly as
people did? It may be. Perhaps we might find out by comparing this other
volume by Edwin Spencer, 'Cakes and Ale,' published in 1897, with the
Philadelphia Spencer of forty years ago.

"I must hurry you through the rest of my books," said Cooper. "Thomas
James Thackeray's 'The Soldier's Manual of Rifle-Firing' appeared in
1858, and undoubtedly had its day of usefulness. Thomas Kipling was
professor of divinity at Cambridge University toward the end of the
eighteenth century. In 1793 he edited the volume I now hold in my hand,
'Codex Bezae,' one of the most precious of our extant MSS. of the New
Testament. I like to think of that fine old Cambridge p