the roots of the world. She is just as simple and just as strange. O!
little shining spring of woman that is called Jenny, a great man must
draw up through you the unfathomed, deep strengths of the old world. He
bends above you and drinks, and as he drinks, his face is mirrored
in yours.

"Jenny, I don't think I'd read 'Miss ----,' if I were you," would say
the great man.

"No, dear?" So Jenny was presently reading Ruskin instead, and wondering
how she could ever have read "Miss ----." And deep in her dear heart she
was saying, "Of course not; great men's wives never read 'Miss ----.'"

And yet had the great man said, "Read Gaboriau instead,"--as a certain
very great man does,--Jenny's heart would have said, "Of course, great
men's wives always read Gaboriau."

No! great men's wives read "Sesame and Lilies," and "Sartor Resartus,"
and "Marius the Epicurean," and "Richard Feverel," and "Virginibus
Puerisque,"--they even try to read Newman's "Apologia." Such were the
books on the sunnier side of Theophilus Londonderry's little library in
No. 3 Zion Place. In dark corners behind easy-chairs were the deep-sea
pools of theology,--pools which had long since given up all the fish
they had in them for their owner,--slabs of antique divinity, such as
you would find likewise in the equally cherished library of
Londonderry Senior.

Such were the fathers that slumbered on in a well-earned repose, and
which, far from desiring new readers, were so old that they were glad to
rest undisturbed,--being far too self-important to confuse a considerate