The daily morning journal and courier., 1901-11-23

| man In a thousand years as can Hnt | out now in q few short hours among m, friends on the shelves. Before I wen | to Sicily this summer, into those out O l the way regions where one happen! | upon the ruins of five great civiliza tions, I talked with man who seemed
 perfectly familiar with the parts I was to visit and the sights l was to see said to him, Very few people go tC
 Sicily; when were you there?" "O," he answered. T have never crossed the ocean; have only read about it ir
 books" Every well-informed traveller
 will tell you many ludicrous and pitt
 ful tale of men he met in the Colosse-
 um at Rome, in the art galleries of
 Florence, or riding in a diligence over
 the Furca Pass, whom all the wealth of
 earth could not keep from being
 dragged like sticks and stones through
 the memories and glories of the past,
 because they never had read books.
 What journeys can I take on a steam
 boat or a railroad that will compare
 for a moment with the marvellous
 flights and far visions I can get within
 the walls of my study? With Gibbon I
 can grow old, without wrinkled brow,
 or tottering footstep, or gray hair, and
 can store up in my soul the accumula- =
 ted experience of a thousand years,
 without suffering the tolls and turmoils,
 and bloody strifes with which 1t has
 been bought. With Dana I can dig
 down into the sides of the mountain,
 and read in the lines on the rocks the
 story of smelting furnaces and prime
 val fires that forged the Alps and the
 Andes. With Herschel l can travel
 over the track of the Milky Way, and
 talk familiarly with the Power that
 rolled up tte planets and suns out of
 the morning mists of creation. With Ruskin I can pass through the Palaces of the Doges, and see more in an hour than I could see by myself in a dozen years if I had all the guides in Venice with me. With Plutarch l can rise and look out upon a panorama of Grecian and Roman heroes that makes men seem more majestic than seem the white crests of the Bernese Oberland from the lofty summit of Pilatus l can sit with Bacon by his fireside, when the wild storms of worldly ambition roar in vain without, and can hear him pour forth that pure philosophy that seems like the flow of a river when it hears the tides of the sea. can storm with Carlyle; laugh with Cervantes; soar with Milton; mediate with Epic tetus; gossip with Montaigne; dream with Izaak Walton or stand before Louis XIV. and thunder forth the ser mons of Massillon. All this I can do in a few short hours in that Holy of Ho- lies of my home, where the shades of the centuries rise before me, and the Great Spirit that weaves the wool of time into the warp of eternity reveals His patterns and designs. Well did Ci- cero say, "A room without book is body without a soul"
 But to speak of the friendship of books, and say nothing about the choice of books, is like praisins the power of human companionship, regardless of whether it lifts us into the company of angels. or drags us into the haunts of lends If I were to go to New York ,ity tomorrow, and were to take up with every chance acquaintance whom happened to meet, with some nice ooling gentleman with a big diamond who sat next to me in street car, with some interesting fellow with a red face who offered to show me the sights of he Tenderloin, where do you think l would be in the morning? Where would my watch be? And yet that is ,bout the way many of us choose to come straying into our lives hot from
 he press, fancying that of course book is book, and when we are
 trough with it, it has benumbed our
 conscience, drugged our purity, down our faith, and robbed us if our highest ideals and loftiest stand
 rds of life I would sooner live on a aft In the midst of a malaritl swamp,
 would sooner turn the first story of ny house into hospital for contagion md smallpox, than to trust my mind o live day by day in the atmosphere f wretched books that take it for .ranted that of course all men are sell lsh and all women are weak. Such looks differ from those that are pure nd noble, and true and helpful and in pirlng, as Thomas Starr King has aid, "as the life of healthy body diff CTS from the worm that dieth not in he carcases due to Gehenna" Be i ure to read no mean books said Elm rson. "Shun the spawn of the press n the gossip of the hour. Go with 1ean people, and you think life is 1ean Then read Plutarch, and the 1orld is proud place, peopled with { len of positive quality, with heroes f nd demigods standing around us, who lill not let US sleep" Said some one rho had read Homer's "Iliad" for the { rst time, When I went into the street [ fter reading that book men seemed to ' e ten feet high" But how many a nan could say, after reading a modern f ovel, "As I passed from that book out | Ito the world men seemed to me like | ermin and women seemed like | 'orms." There are books whose words re as sweet as honey and as smooth S oil, that ripple with laughter and re merry as music that for all that ave a subtle way of making purity i sem silly, honesty seem tame, right ousness seem ugly and the very glory heaven seem like the garments of aspair. There are books that create in le mind a keen relish for exquisite