one hungry for more
than he needs for the nourishment of his thinking-marrow. To feed this
insatiable hunger, the abstracts, the reviews, do their best. But these,
again, have grown so numerous and so crowded with matter that it is hard
to find time to master their contents. We are accustomed, therefore,
to look for analyses of these periodicals, and at last we have placed
before us a formidable-looking monthly, "The Review of Reviews." After
the analyses comes the newspaper notice; and there is still room for the
epigram, which sometimes makes short work with all that has gone before
on the same subject.

It is just as well to recognize the fact that if one should read day and
night, confining himself to his own language, he could not pretend to
keep up with the press. He might as well try to race with a locomotive.
The first discipline, therefore, is that of despair. If you could stick
to your reading day and night for fifty years, what a learned idiot you
would become long before the half-century was over! Well, then, there
is no use in gorging one's self with knowledge, and no need of
self-reproach because one is content to remain more or less ignorant of
many things which interest his fellow-creatures. We gain a good deal of
knowledge through the atmosphere; we learn a great deal by accidental
hearsay, provided we have the mordant in our own consciousness which
makes the wise remark, the significant fact, the instructive incident,
take hold upon it. After the stage of despair comes the period of
consolation. We soon find that we are not so much worse off than most of
our neighbors as we supposed. The fractional value of the wisest shows a
small numerator divided by an infinite denominator of knowledge.

I made some explanations to The Teacups, the other evening, which they
received very intelligently and graciously, as I have no doubt the
readers of these reports of mine will receive them. If the reader will
turn back to the end of the fourth number of these papers, he will find
certain lines entitled, "Cacoethes Scribendi." They were said to have
been taken from the usual receptacle of the verses which are contributed
by The Teacups, and, though the fact was not mentioned, were of my own
composition. I found them in manuscript in my drawer, and as my subject
had naturally suggested the train of thought they carried out into
extravagance, I printed them. At the same time they sounded very
natural, as we say, and