"Of the things which man can do or make here below," it was said by the sage of Chelsea, "by far the most momentous, wonderful, and worthy, are the things we call Books! Those poor bits of rag-paper with black ink on them; from the Daily Newspaper to the sacred Hebrew Book, what have they not done, what are they not doing?"
President Schurmann of Cornell, points with pride to a few books in his library which he says he bought when a poor boy by going many a day without his dinner.
The great German Professor Oken was not ashamed to ask Professor Agassiz to dine with him on potatoes and salt, that he might save money for books.
King George III, used to say that lawyers do not know so much more law than other people; but they know better where to find it.
A practical working knowledge of how to find what is in the book world, relating to any given point, is worth a vast deal from a financial point of view. And by such knowledge, one forms first an acquaintance with books, then friendship.
"When I consider," says James Freeman Clarke, "what some books have done for the world, and what they are doing, how they keep up our hope, awaken new courage and faith, soothe pain, give an ideal of life to those whose homes are hard and cold, bind together distant ages and foreign lands, create new worlds of beauty, bring down truths from heaven,—I give eternal blessings for this gift."
For the benefit of the younger readers we give below a list of forty juveniles.
Aesop's "Fables."
Louise M. Alcott's "Little Women," "Little Men," which stood at the top of a list of books chosen in eleven thousand elementary class-rooms in New York.
T. B. Aldrich's "Story of a Bad Boy."