him back across the centuries and he lives for an hour with The
Puritans or with Dr. Samuel Johnson. Carlyle carries him unharmed for
an hour through the exciting scenes of the French Revolution; or he
chuckles over the caustic humor of Thackeray's semi-caricatures of
English snobs. With Jonathan Swift as a guide he travels with Gulliver
into no-man's land and visits Lilliput or Brobdingnag; or Oliver
Goldsmith enables him to forget the strenuous life of America by taking
him to "The Deserted Village." He joins Charles Lamb's friends, listens
to the prose-poet's reveries on Dream-Children, then closes his eyes
and falls into a reverie of his own childhood days; or he spends an
hour with Tennyson, charmed by his always musical but not often virile
verse, or with Browning, inspired by his always virile but often rugged
verse, or with Milton or Dante, and forgets this world altogether, with
its problems and perplexities, convoyed to another realm by these
spiritual guides; or he turns to the autobiography of one of the great
men of the past, telling of his achievements, revealing his doubts and
difficulties, his self-conflicts and self-victories, and so inspiring
the reader to make his own life sublime. Or one of the great scientists
may interpret to him the wonders of nature and thrill him with the
achievements of man in solving some of the riddles of the universe and
winning successive mastery over its splendid forces.

It is true that no dead thing is equal to a living person. The one
afternoon I spent in John G. Whittier's home, the one dinner I took
with Professor Tyndall in his London home, the one half hour which
Herbert Spencer gave to me at his Club, mean more to me than any equal
time spent in reading the writings of either one of them. These
occasions of personal fellowship abide in the memory as long as life
lasts. This I say with emphasis that what I say next may not be
misunderstood--that there is one respect in which the book is the best