virtue; that he thinks the Roman word "impedimenta" still
better; that, as baggage is to an army, so is riches to virtue; it
cannot be spared or left behind, but, in his quaint expression, "it
hindereth the march; yea, and the care of it sometimes loseth or
disturbeth the victory." Your friend would be gratified with so perfect
a figure of speech, and he would never call you "superficial." That is
real experience. It is not theory. A book has little value to a man
until he has read it at least twice. He has then labeled and
pigeon-holed it, and really needs to possess it.

A MAN OUGHT TO READ

his favorite portions of Shakspeare a thousand times--of the Bible a
million times. Reading is much more like painting than we think. Go into
a palace car. Do you think this polish was put on the wood with one
application of the brush--with two, three, four? No; it would possibly
be cheaper to cover it with silk plush than to go over it as the skilled
workmen have done. Let us buy less ephemeral stuff, to be set adrift
and stove in when we have skimmed over it. Let us season our reading,
polish it, grain it, varnish it, repolish it and revarnish it, until we
are just like it ourselves--clear, concise, intelligent. How enjoyable
it is to meet an intelligent person!

WHAT A CHARM

there is about a comrade who can understand what you say, and who can
swap ideas with you "even Steven!" It cannot be done without books.

Considering the vast importance of learning in saving labor and reducing
the actual cost of existence, there has been little growth in the
business of bookmaking compared with what there should have been. The
trade in books in America is large, because the country is large.
Everything is large here. Comparatively, however, it probably sinks
below fishing for mackerel as an industry. As it is now, a shockingly
large portion of the industry such as it is is given over to costly
bindings. It does not seem that the people, even when they first had
books, cared so much for the privilege of reading as they did for a
gaudy covering to the volume, on which they could expend a barbaric
love for ornament. The wise men of those times marveled, just as the
wise men marvel nowadays. "Learning hath gained most by those books,"
says Old Fuller, "by which the printers have lost." Our follies in the
way of "books that are all binding" are almost microscopically small
when put beside those of the olden times, when, one would th