I shall not say that ``Robinson Crusoe'' supplanted the Primer in
my affections; this would not be true. I prefer to say what is
the truth; it was my second love. Here again we behold another
advantage which the lover of books has over the lover of women.
If he be a genuine lover he can and should love any number of
books, and this polybibliophily is not to the disparagement of
any one of that number. But it is held by the expounders of our
civil and our moral laws that he who loveth one woman to the
exclusion of all other women speaketh by that action the best and
highest praise both of his own sex and of hers.

I thank God continually that it hath been my lot in life to found
an empire in my heart--no cramped and wizened borough wherein
one jealous mistress hath exercised her petty tyranny, but an
expansive and ever-widening continent divided and subdivided into
dominions, jurisdictions, caliphates, chiefdoms, seneschalships,
and prefectures, wherein tetrarchs, burgraves, maharajahs,
palatines, seigniors, caziques, nabobs, emirs, nizams, and nawabs
hold sway, each over his special and particular realm, and all
bound together in harmonious cooperation by the conciliating
spirit of polybibliophily!

Let me not be misunderstood; for I am not a woman-hater. I do
not regret the acquaintances--nay, the friendships--I have formed
with individuals of the other sex. As a philosopher it has
behooved me to study womankind, else I should not have
appreciated the worth of these other better loves. Moreover, I
take pleasure in my age in associating this precious volume or
that with one woman or another whose friendship came into my life