touch those books on that table by that candle. With those books I read
myself to sleep every night.' Those were your own books." I said:
"There is no question to my mind as to whether I should regard that as a
compliment or not. I do regard it as a very great compliment and a very
high honor that that great mind, laboring for the whole human race,
should rest itself on my books. I am proud that he should read himself
to sleep with them."

Now, I could not keep that to myself--I was so proud of it. As soon as I
got home to Hartford I called up my oldest friend--and dearest enemy on
occasion--the Rev. Joseph Twichell, my pastor, and I told him about that,
and, of course, he was full of interest and venom. Those people who get
no compliments like that feel like that. He went off. He did not issue
any applause of any kind, and I did not hear of that subject for some
time. But when Mr. Darwin passed away from this life, and some time
after Darwin's Life and Letters came out, the Rev. Mr. Twichell procured
an early copy of that work and found something in it which he considered
applied to me. He came over to my house--it was snowing, raining,
sleeting, but that did not make any difference to Twichell. He produced
the book, and turned over and over, until he came to a certain place,
when he said: "Here, look at this letter from Mr. Darwin to Sir Joseph
Hooker." What Mr. Darwin said--I give you the idea and not the very
words--was this: I do not know whether I ought to have devoted my whole
life to these drudgeries in natural history and the other sciences or
not, for while I may have gained in one way I have lost in another. Once
I had a fine perception and appreciation of high literature, but in me
that quality is atrophied. "That was the reason," said Mr. Twichell, "he
was reading your books."

Mr. Birrell has touched lightly--very lightly, but in not an