"I object to your offering your mind as the banks to such a stream. Still I'm glad that I live near the banks," and he kissed his hand to her.
"When one woman tells another anything and the other woman does not tell, remember it is not scandal—it is confidence."
"Then there is no such thing as confidence," he replied, laughing.
He turned toward his shelves.
"Now do rest," she pleaded, "you look worn out."
She had a secret notion that books instead of putting life into people took it out of them. At best they performed the function of grindstones: they made you sharper, but they made you thinner—gave you more edge and left you less substance.
"I wish every one of those books had a lock and I had the bunch of keys."
"Each has a lock and key; but the key cannot be put into your pocket, Anna, my dear; it is the unlocking mind. And you are not to speak of books as a collection of locks and keys; they make up the living tree of knowledge, though of course there is very little of the tree in this particular bookcase."
"I don't see any of it," she remarked with wholesome literalness.
"Well, here at the bottom are lexicons—think of them as roots and soil. Above them lie maps and atlases: consider them the surface. Then all books are history of course. But here is a great central trunk rising out of the surface which is called History in especial. On each side of that, running to the right and to the left, are main branches. Here for instance is the large limb of Philosophy—a very weighty limb indeed. Here is the branch of Criticism. Here is a bough consisting principally of leaves on which live unnamed venomous little insects that poison them and die on them: their appointed place in creation."