and, when the time for sleep comes at last, it passes into
unconsciousness, tranquilized and sweetened with thought and pleasantly
weary with healthy exercise. One awakens, too, next morning, with, so
to say, a very pleasant taste of meditation in the mouth. Erasmus,
again, has a counsel for the bedtime reader, expressed with much
felicity. "A little before you sleep," he says, "read something that is
exquisite, and worth remembering; and contemplate upon it till you fall
asleep; and, when you awake in the morning, call yourself to an account
for it."

In an old Atlantic Monthly, from which, if I remember aright, he
never rescued it, Oliver Wendell Holmes has a delightful paper on the
delights of reading in bed, entitled "Pillow-Smoothing Authors."

Then, though I suppose we shall have the oculists against us, the cars
are good places to read in--if you have the power of detachment, and
are able to switch off your ears from other people's conversation. It
is a good plan to have a book with you in all places and at all times.
Most likely you will carry it many a day and never give it a single
look, but, even so, a book in the hand is always a companionable
reminder of that happier world of fancy, which, alas! most of us can
only visit by playing truant from the real world. As some men wear
boutonnieres, so a reader carries a book, and sometimes, when he
is feeling the need of beauty, or the solace of a friend, he opens it,
and finds both. Probably he will count among the most fruitful moments
of his reading the snatched glimpses of beauty and wisdom he has caught
in the morning car. The covers of his book have often proved like some
secret door, through which, surreptitiously opened, he has looked for a
moment into his own particular fairy land. Never mind the oculist,
therefore, but, whenever you feel like it, read in the car.