h, breadth, and thickness.

But instead of laying down rules for reading, and furnishing lists
of the books which should be read in order, I will undertake the much
humbler task of giving a little quasi-medical advice to persons, young
or old, suffering from book-hunger, book-surfeit, book-nervousness,
book-indigestion, book-nausea, and all other maladies which, directly or
indirectly, may be traced to books, and to which I could give Greek or
Latin names if I thought it worth while.

I have a picture hanging in my library, a lithograph, of which many
of my readers may have seen copies. It represents a gray-haired old
book-lover at the top of a long flight of steps. He finds himself in
clover, so to speak, among rare old editions, books he has longed
to look upon and never seen before, rarities, precious old volumes,
incunabula, cradle-books, printed while the art was in its infancy,--its
glorious infancy, for it was born a giant. The old bookworm is so
intoxicated with the sight and handling of the priceless treasures that
he cannot bear to put one of the volumes back after he has taken it from
the shelf. So there he stands,--one book open in his hands, a volume
under each arm, and one or more between his legs,--loaded with as many
as he can possibly hold at the same time.

Now, that is just the way in which the extreme form of book-hunger shows
itself in the reader whose appetite has become over-developed. He
wants to read so many books that he over-crams himself with the crude
materials of knowledge, which become knowledge only when the mental
digestion has time to assimilate them. I never can go into that famous
"Corner Bookstore" and look over the new books in the row before me, as
I enter the door, without seeing half a dozen which I want to read,
or at least to know something about. I cannot empty my purse of its
contents, and crowd my bookshelves with all those volumes. The titles
of many of them interest me. I look into one or two, perhaps. I have
sometimes picked up a line or a sentence, in these momentary glances
between the uncut leaves of a new book, which I have never forgotten. As
a trivial but bona fide example, one day I opened a book on duelling. I
remember only these words: "Conservons-la, cette noble institution." I
had never before seen duelling called a noble institution, and I wish
I had taken the name of the book. Book-tasting is not necessarily
profitless, but it is very stimulating, and makes