THE LIBRARY IN THE GARRET
Books, books, books!
I had found the secret of a garret-room
Piled high with cases in my father's name;
Piled high, packed large,—where, creeping in and out
Among the giant fossils of my past,
Like some small nimble mouse between the ribs
Of a mastodon, I nibbled here and there
At this or that box, pulling through the gap,
In heats of terror, haste, victorious joy,
The first book first. And how I felt it beat
Under my pillow, in the morning's dark,
An hour before the sun would let me read!
My books!
E. B. Browning. Aurora Leigh.
Every library should try to be complete on something, if it were only on the history of pin-heads.—O. W. Holmes. The Poet at the Breakfast-Table.