BOOKS AND READING
LADY PRESIDENT—"What book has helped you most?"
NEW MEMBER—"My husband's check-book."—Martha Young.
"You may send me up the complete works of Shakespeare, Goethe and Emerson—also something to read."
There are three classes of bookbuyers: Collectors, women and readers.
The owner of a large library solemnly warned a friend against the practice of lending books. To punctuate his advice he showed his friend the well-stocked shelves. "There!" said he. "Every one of those books was lent me."
In science, read, by preference, the newest works; in literature, the oldest.—Bulwer-Lytton.
Learning hath gained most by those books by which the Printers have lost.—Fuller.
Books should to one of these four ends conduce,
For wisdom, piety, delight, or use.
—Sir John Denham.
A darky meeting another coming from the library with a book accosted him as follows:
"What book you done got there, Rastus?"
"'Last Days of Pompeii.'"
"Last days of Pompey? Is Pompey dead? I never heard about it. Now what did Pompey die of?"
"I don't 'xactly know, but it must hab been some kind of 'ruption."
"I don't know what to give Lizzie for a Christmas present," one chorus girl is reported to have said to her mate while discussing the gift to be made to a third.
"Give her a book," suggested the other.
And the first one replied meditatively, "No, she's got a book."—Literary Digest.