bottom? Every one of those represents a lunch. They were bought in
my student days, when times were not too affluent. Threepence was
my modest allowance for my midday sandwich and glass of beer; but,
as luck would have it, my way to the classes led past the most
fascinating bookshop in the world. Outside the door of it stood a
large tub filled with an ever-changing litter of tattered books,
with a card above which announced that any volume therein could be
purchased for the identical sum which I carried in my pocket. As I
approached it a combat ever raged betwixt the hunger of a youthful
body and that of an inquiring and omnivorous mind. Five times out of
six the animal won. But when the mental prevailed, then there was an
entrancing five minutes' digging among out-of-date almanacs, volumes
of Scotch theology, and tables of logarithms, until one found
something which made it all worth while. If you will look over these
titles, you will see that I did not do so very badly. Four volumes
of Gordon's "Tacitus" (life is too short to read originals, so
long as there are good translations), Sir William Temple's Essays,
Addison's works, Swift's "Tale of a Tub," Clarendon's "History,"
"Gil Blas," Buckingham's Poems, Churchill's Poems, "Life of
Bacon"--not so bad for the old threepenny tub.

They were not always in such plebeian company. Look at the thickness
of the rich leather, and the richness of the dim gold lettering.
Once they adorned the shelves of some noble library, and even among
the odd almanacs and the sermons they bore the traces of their
former greatness, like the faded silk dress of the reduced
gentlewoman, a present pathos but a glory of the past.

Reading is made too easy nowadays, with cheap paper editions and
free libraries. A man does not appreciate at its full worth the