Part 10 (1/2)
Some, by their vivacity, drive away ive fortitude to my mind, and teach me the important lesson how to deport myself, and to depend wholly on myself They open to me, in short, the various avenues of all the arts and sciences and upon their inforencies In return for all their services, they only ask me to accommodate them with a convenient chamber in some corner of my humble habitation where they hted by the tranquility of retirement than with the tumults of society”
--_Petrarch_
134
BOOKS
Books introduce us into the best society; they bring us into the presence of the greatest minds that have ever lived We hear what they said and did; we see them as if they were really alive; we are participators in their thoughts; we syrieve with them; their experience becomes ours, and we feel as if ere in a measure actors with them in the scenes which they describe
135
BOOK-LENDING
Those who have collected books, and whose good nature has prompted the of the answer made by a man of wit to one who la his friends to return the volumes that he had lent them:
”Sir,” said he, ”your acquaintances find, I suppose, that it is much more easy to retain the books themselves, than what is contained in theives a pathetic description of a studious boy lingering at a bookstall:
I saw a boy with eager eye Open a book upon a stall, And read, as he'd devour it all; Which, when the stall-man did espy, Soon to the boy I heard him call, ”You, sir, you never buy a book, Therefore in one you shall not look”
The boy passed slowly on, and with a sigh He wished he never had been taught to read, Then of the old churl's books he should have had no need
--_Mary Lamb_
137
Books that you may carry to the fire, and hold readily in your hand, are the most useful after all A o on, when he would have been frightened at books of a larger size and of a more erudite appearance
--_Dr Johnson_
138
COSTLY, YET USEFUL BOOKS
How foolish is the man who sets up a number of costly volumes, like superfluous furniture, for mere orna a single spot of ink, than to use the his faults!
Better a man without books, than books without a man