beyond the grave we may well call that land of the ghosts,--a book
collection.

"Pisistratus," said my father one evening, as he arranged his notes
before him and rubbed his spectacles, "Pisistratus, a great library is
an awful place! There, are interred all the remains of men since the
Flood."

"It is a burial-place!" quoth my Uncle Roland, who had that day found us
out.

"Please, not such hard words," said the Captain, shaking his head.

"Heraclea was the city of necromancers, in which they raised the dead.
Do want to speak to Cicero?---I invoke him. Do I want to chat in the
Athenian market-place, and hear news two thousand years old?---I write
down my charm on a slip of paper, and a grave magician calls me up
Aristophanes. And we owe all this to our ancest--"

"Ancestors who wrote books; thank you."

Here Roland offered his snuff-box to my father, who, abhorring snuff,
benignly imbibed a pinch, and sneezed five times in consequence,--an
excuse for Uncle Roland to say, which he did five times, with great
unction, "God bless you, brother Austin!"

As soon as my father had recovered himself, he proceeded, with tears in
his eyes, but calm as before the interruption--for he was of the
philosophy of the Stoics,--