No ornament of a house can compare with books; they are constant company in a room, even when you are not reading them.
MY WIFE AND I.
Our thoughts in others’ words.
The only drawback when one reads poems that exactly express what one would like to say is that it makes us envious; one thinks, why couldn’t I have said it thus?
WE AND OUR NEIGHBORS.
Books of meditation.
St. John was seated in his study, with a book of meditations before him, on which he was endeavoring to fix his mind. In the hot, dusty, vulgar atmosphere of modern life, it was his daily effort to bring around himself the shady coolness, the calm, conventual stillness, that breathes through such writers as St. Francis de Sales and Thomas à Kempis, men with a genius for devotion, who have left to mankind records of the milestones and road-marks by which they traveled towards the highest things. Nor should the most stringent Protestant fail to honor that rich and grand treasury of the experience of devout spirits of which the Romish Church has been the custodian. The hymns and prayers and pious meditations which come to us through this channel are particularly worthy of a cherishing remembrance in this dusty, materialistic age.
Hymns.
Words of piety, allied to a catching tune, are like seeds with wings—they float out in the air, and drop in the odd corners of the heart, to spring up in good purposes.