Not to change because of what others may think, is one of the most
abject forms of slavery.

Let us change all we can. My ideal is continual change--change of life,
change of home, of food, and even of skin.




MY LIBRARY


Among the things that I missed most as a student, was a small library.
If I had had one, I believe I should have dipped more deeply into books
and into life as well; but it was not given me. During the period which
is most fruitful for the maturing of the mind, that is, during the years
from twelve to twenty, I lived by turns in six or seven cities, and as
it was impossible to travel about with books, I never retained any.

A lack of books was the occasion of my failure to form the habit of re-
reading, of tasting again and again and of relishing what I read, and
also of making notes in the margin.

Nearly all authors who own a small library, in which the books are
properly arranged, and nicely annotated, become famous.

I am not sentimentalizing about stolid, brazen note-taking, such as that
with which the gentlemen of the Ateneo debase their books, because that
merely indicates barbarous lack of culture and an obtuseness which is