he would favour any of us with an hour of his wit and his fancy. How
eagerly we would seek him out! And yet we have him--the very best of
him--at our elbows from week to week, and hardly trouble ourselves
to put out our hands to beckon him down. No matter what mood a man
may be in, when once he has passed through the magic door he can
summon the world's greatest to sympathize with him in it. If he be
thoughtful, here are the kings of thought. If he be dreamy, here
are the masters of fancy. Or is it amusement that he lacks? He can
signal to any one of the world's great story-tellers, and out comes
the dead man and holds him enthralled by the hour. The dead are such
good company that one may come to think too little of the living.
It is a real and a pressing danger with many of us, that we should
never find our own thoughts and our own souls, but be ever obsessed
by the dead. Yet second-hand romance and second-hand emotion are
surely better than the dull, soul-killing monotony which life brings
to most of the human race. But best of all when the dead man's
wisdom and strength in the living of our own strenuous days.

Come through the magic door with me, and sit here on the green
settee, where you can see the old oak case with its untidy lines of
volumes. Smoking is not forbidden. Would you care to hear me talk of
them? Well, I ask nothing better, for there is no volume there which
is not a dear, personal friend, and what can a man talk of more
pleasantly than that? The other books are over yonder, but these are
my own favourites--the ones I care to re-read and to have near my
elbow. There is not a tattered cover which does not bring its mellow
memories to me.

Some of them represent those little sacrifices which make a
possession dearer. You see the line of old, brown volumes at the