talked-of novel. Let a violent attack be made on the decency
of a new story and instantly, if only it is clever, its author
becomes famous.

But the fashions in reading of a restless race--the women too idle,
the men too heavily worked--I will not discuss here. Let light
literature be devourered by our populace as his drug is taken
by the opium-eater, and with a similar narcotic effect. We can
only seek out the children, and hope by giving them from babyhood
bits of the noblest literature, to prepare them for the great
opportunities of mature life. I urge, therefore, reading as a
mental stimulus, as a solace in trouble, a perpetual source of
delight; and I would point out that we must not delay to make
the great friendships that await us on the library shelves until
sickness shuts the door on the outer world, or death enters the
home and silences the voices that once helped to make these
friendships sweet. If Homer and Shakespeare and Wordsworth and
Browning are to have meaning for us when we need them most, it
will be because they come to us as old familiar friends whose
influences have permeated the glad and busy days before. The
last time I heard James Russell Lowell talk to college girls, he
said,--for he was too ill to say many words--"I have only this one
message to leave with you. In all your work in college never
lose sight of the reason why you have come here. It is not that
you may get something by which to earn your bread, but that every
mouthful of bread may be the sweeter to your taste."

And this is the power possessed by the mighty dead,--men of every
time and nation, whose voices death cannot silence, who are waiting
even at the poor man's elbow, whose illuminating words may be