To go back to our old illustration and consider for a moment not the book
but the mind, the personality whose ideas it records, such association
with books represents association with one's fellowmen in society--at a
reception, in school or college, at a club. Some we pass by with a nod,
with some we exchange a word; sometimes there is a warm handgrasp;
sometimes a long conversation. No matter what the mental contact may be,
it has its effects--we are continually gaining knowledge, making new
friends, receiving fresh inspiration. The complexion of this kind of daily
association determines the cast of one's mind, the thoroughness of his
taste, the usefulness or uselessness of what he does. A man is known by
the company he keeps, because that company forms him; he gets from it what
becomes brain of his brain and soul of his soul.

And no less is he formed by his mental associations with the good and the
great of all ages whom he meets in books and who talk to him there. More
rather than less; for into a book the writer puts generally what is best
in him, laying aside the pettiness, the triviality, the downright
wickedness that may have characterized him in the flesh.

I have often heard the comment from one who had met face to face a writer
whose work he loved--"Oh! he disappointed me so!" How disappointed might
we be with Thackeray, with Dickens, even with Shakespeare, could we meet
them in the flesh! Now they can not disappoint us, for we know only what
they have left on record--the best, the most enduring part, purified from
what is gross and earthly.

In and among such company as this it is your privilege to live and move,
almost without money and without price. Thank God for books; let them be
your friends and companions through life--for information, for recreation,