anticipate.

I often work in the National Library; not in the main hall, but in that
reserved for literary men who have a claim, and are provided with a
ticket, to use it. I never enter it without a gentle thrill, in which
respect is mingled with satisfied vanity. For not every one who chooses
may walk in. I must pass before the office of the porter, who retains my
umbrella, before I make my way to the solemn beadle who sits just inside
the doorway--a double precaution, attesting to the majesty of the place.
The beadle knows me. He no longer demands my ticket. To be sure, I am
not yet one of those old acquaintances on whom he smiles; but I am no
longer reckoned among those novices whose passport he exacts. An
inclination of his head makes me free of the temple, and says, as plainly
as words, "You are one of us, albeit a trifle young. Walk in, sir."

And in I walk, and admire on each occasion the vast proportions of the
interior, the severe decoration of the walls, traced with broad foliated
pattern and wainscoted with books of reference as high as hand can reach;
the dread tribunal of librarians and keepers in session down yonder, on a
kind of judgment-seat, at the end of the avenue whose carpet deadens all
footsteps; and behind again, that holy of holies where work the doubly
privileged--the men, I imagine, who are members of two or three
academies. To right and left of this avenue are rows of tables and
armchairs, where scatters, as caprice has chosen and habit consecrated,
the learned population of the library. Men form the large majority.
Viewed from the rear, as they bend over their work, they suggest
reflections on the ravages wrought by study upon hair-clad cuticles.
For every hirsute Southerner whose locks turn gray without dropping off,
heavens, what a regiment of bald heads! Visitors who look in through the
glass doors see only this aspect of devastation. It gives a wrong