d see Harriet near
the fireplace rocking and sewing. Sometimes she hums a little tune which
I never confess to hearing, lest I miss some of the unconscious
cadences. Let the wind blow outside and the snow drift in piles around
the doorway and the blinds rattle--I have before me a whole long
pleasant evening.

* * * * *

What a convenient and delightful world is this world of books!--if you
bring to it not the obligations of the student, or look upon it as an
opiate for idleness, but enter it rather with the enthusiasm of the
adventurer! It has vast advantages over the ordinary world of daylight,
of barter and trade, of work and worry. In this world every man is his
own King--the sort of King one loves to imagine, not concerned in such
petty matters as wars and parliaments and taxes, but a mellow and
moderate despot who is a true patron of genius--a mild old chap who has
in his court the greatest men and women in the world--and all of them
vying to please the most vagrant of his moods! Invite any one of them to
talk, and if your highness is not pleased with him you have only to put
him back in his corner--and bring some jester to sharpen the laughter of
your highness, or some poet to set your faintest emotion to music!

I have marked a certain servility in books. They entreat you for a
hearing: they cry out from their cases--like men, in an eternal struggle
for survival, for immortality.

"Take me," pleads this one, "I am responsive to every mood. You will
find in me love and hate, virtue and vice. I don't preach: I give you
life as it is. You will find here adventures cunningly linked with
romance and seasoned to suit the most fastidious taste. Try _me_."

"Hear such talk!" cries his neighbour. "He's fiction. What he says never
happened at all. He tries hard to make you believe it, but it isn't
true, not a word of it. Now, I'm fact. Everything you find in me can be
depended upon."

"Yes," responds the other, "but who cares! Nobody wants to read you,
you're dull."

"You're false!"

As their voices grow shriller with argument your highness listens with
the indulgent smile of royalty when its courtiers contend for its
favour, knowing that their very life depends upon a wrinkle in your
august brow.

* * * * *

As for me I confess to being a rather crusty despot. When Horace was
over here the other evening talking learnedly about silos and ensilage I