As the bookman grows old and many of his pleasures cease, he thanks God for one which grows the richer for the years and never fades. He pities those who have not this retreat from the weariness of life, nor this quiet place in which to sit when the sun is setting. By the mellow wisdom of his books and the immortal hope of the greater writers, he is kept from peevishness and discontent, from bigotry and despair. Certain books grow dearer to him with the years, so that their pages are worn brown and thin, and he hopes with a Birmingham book-lover, Dr. Showell Rogers, whose dream has been fulfilled, that Heaven, having a place for each true man, may be “a bookman’s paradise, where early black-lettered tomes, rare and stately, first folios of Shakespeare, tall copies of the right editions of the Elzevirs, and vellumed volumes galore, uncropped, uncut, and unfoxed in all their verdant pureness, fresh as when they left the presses of the Aldi, are to be had for the asking.” Between this man at least and his books there will be no separation this side the grave, but his gratitude to them and his devotion will ever grow and their ministries to him be ever dearer, especially that Book of books which has been the surest guide of the human soul. “While I live,” says one who both wrote and loved books and was numbered among our finest critics, “while I live and think, nothing can deprive me of my value for such treasures. I can help the appreciation of them while I last and love them till I die, and perhaps if fortune turns her face once more in kindness upon me before I go, I may chance, some quiet day, to lay my overbeating temples on a book, and so have the death I most envy.”