MY STUDY FIRE.

THE BOOK AND THE READER.

MRS. BATTLE, intent upon whist, insisted upon "a clear fire, a clean hearth, and the rigour of the game." The veteran reader, who has come to love his occupation not only for what it gives him but for itself, is equally punctilious; he must have a quiet room, a cheerful blaze, and the book that fits his mood. He has meditated before the fire, book in hand, so many silent and happy days that he knows all the subtle adjustments which a man may make between himself and his library. I rarely look at my books in that leisurely half-hour which precedes getting to work without fancying myself at the keyboard of an organ, the pipes of which are the gilded and many-coloured rows on the shelves about me. One may have any kind of music he chooses; it is only a question of mood. There is no deep harmony, no haunting melody, ever heard by the spirit of man which one may not hear if he knows his books thoroughly. The great gales that swept Ulysses into unknown seas, and the soft winds that stirred the myrtles and brought down

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the pine cones about Theocritus are still astir, if one knows how to listen. And those inner melodies which the heart of man has been singing to itself these thousands of years are audible above all the tumult of the world if one has a place of silence, an hour of solitude, and a heart that has kept the freshness of its youth.

The quality which makes a reader master of the secret of books is primarily of the soul, and only secondarily of the mind; and to get the deepest and sweetest out of literature one must read with the heart. A book read with the mind only is skimmed; true reading involves the imagination and the feelings. And it is for this reason that one needs to select a book for the day, instead of taking the first one that comes to hand. If one reads simply as a mental exercise or for information, one book is as good as another; but if one reads for personal enlargement and enrichment, every hour has its own book. There are days for Sir Thomas Browne and days for Lamb - although I am often of opinion that all days are for Lamb; there are days for Shakespeare and days for Wordsworth, days for Scott and days for Thackeray. The great days when one is buoyant, fertile, virile, belong to the great writers. Emerson says, with regard to that difficult dialogue of Plato's, the "Timæus," that one must wait long for the fit hour in which to read it : "At last the elect morning arrives, the early dawn— a few lights conspicuous in the heavens, as of a world just created and still becoming- and in its wide leisure one dare open that book." These hours of