As for the millionaire, I frankly say I have no desire his life should
be lengthened, and care nothing about adding 100 per cent. to his
daily pleasures. He is a nuisance, for he has raised prices nearly 100
per cent. We curse the day when he was told it was the thing to buy
old books; and, if he must buy old books, why is he not content with
the works of Gibbon, Hume, and Robertson, and Flavius Josephus, that
learned Jew? But it is not the millionaire who set me thinking; it is
the harassed man of business; and what I am wondering is, whether, in
sober truth and earnestness, it is possible for him, as he shuts his
library door and finds himself inside, to forget his rebuffs and
anxieties--his maturing bills and overdue argosies--and to lose
himself over a favourite volume. The 'article' that wafts him welcome
I take to be his pipe. That he will put the 'article' into his mouth
and smoke it I have no manner of doubt; my dread is lest, in ten
minutes' time, the book should have dropt into his lap and the man's
eyes be staring into the fire. But for a' that, and a' that--great is
bookishness and the charm of books.



CONFIRMED READERS


Dr. Johnson is perhaps our best example of a confirmed reader. Malone
once found him sitting in his room roasting apples and reading a
history of Birmingham. This staggered even Malone, who was himself a
somewhat far-gone reader.

'Don't you find it rather dull?' he ventured to inquire.