es in tired and
possibly upset by smaller people they receive him in a kindly fashion,
and in the firelight their familiar faces make his heart glad. Once I
stood in Emerson's room, and I saw the last words that he wrote, the pad
on which he wrote them, and the pen with which they were written, and the
words are these: "The Book is a sure friend, always ready at your first
leisure, opens to the very page you desire, and shuts at your first
fatigue."

As the bookman grows old and many of his pleasures cease, he thanks God
for one which grows the richer for the years and never fades. He pities
those who have not this retreat from the weariness of life, nor this
quiet place in which to sit when the sun is setting. By the mellow
wisdom of his books and the immortal hope of the greater writers, he is
kept from peevishness and discontent, from bigotry and despair. Certain
books grow dearer to him with the years, so that their pages are worn
brown and thin, and he hopes with a Birmingham book-lover, Dr. Showell
Rogers, whose dream has been fulfilled, that Heaven, having a place for
each true man, may be "a bookman's paradise, where early black-lettered
tomes, rare and stately, first folios of Shakespeare, tall copies of the
right editions of the Elzevirs, and vellumed volumes galore, uncropped,
uncut, and unfoxed in all their verdant pureness, fresh as when they left
the presses of the Aldi, are to be had for the asking." Between this man
at least and his books there will be no separation this side the grave,
but his gratitude to them and his devotion will ever grow and their
ministries to him be ever dearer, especially that Book of books which has
been the surest guide of the human soul. "While I live," says one who
both wrote and loved books and was numbered among our finest critics,
"while I live and think, nothing can deprive me of my value for such
treasures. I can help the appreciation of them while I last and love
them till I die, and perhaps if fortune turns her face once more in
kindness upon me before I go, I may chance, some quiet day, to lay my
overbeating temples on a book, and so have the death I most envy."

***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BOOKS AND BOOKMEN***

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