ks of the same authors. Of
course, I've read many more perhaps as great as these, that I can't
think of at the moment."

The young girl listened, in a vain effort to follow her agile ancestor
in and out of the labyrinths of his favorite fiction, most of which she
did not recognize by the names he gave and some of which she believed to
be very shocking, in a vague association of it with deeply moralized,
denunciatory criticisms which she had read of the books or the authors.
Upon the whole, she was rather pained by the confession which his
reading formed for her grandfather, and she felt more than ever the
necessity of undertaking his education, or at least his reform, in
respect to it. She was glad now that she had decided to give him books
for a Christmas present, for there was no time like Christmas for good
resolutions, and if her grandfather was ever going to turn over a new
leaf, this was the very hour to help him do it.

She smiled very sweetly upon him, so as not to alarm him too much, and
said she had never been so much interested as in knowing what books he
really liked. But as he had read all those he named--

"Oh, dozens of times!" he broke in.

--Then perhaps he would leave it to her to choose an entirely new list
for him, so that he could have something freshly entertaining; she did
not like to say more edifying for fear of hurting his feelings, and
taking his silence for consent she went up and kissed him on his bald
head and ran away to take the matter under immediate advisement. Her
notion then was to look over several lists of the world's best hundred
books which she had been keeping by her, but when she came to compare
them, she found that they contained most of the books he had mentioned,
besides many others. It would never do to give him any one of these
libraries of the best hundred books for this reason, and for the reason
that a hundred books would cost more of her grandfather's money than she
felt justified in spending on him at a season when she had to make so
many other presents.

Just when she was at her wit's end, a sudden inspiration seized her. She
pinned on her hat, and put on her new winter jacket, and went out and
bought the last number of _The Bookworm_. At the end of this periodical
she had often got suggestions for her own reading, and she was sure that
she should find there the means of helping her poor grandfather to a
better taste in literature than he seemed to have. So she t