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Books, Influence of—See [Reformation].
Books Less Important than Things—See [Things not Books].
BOOKS, POISON IN
A gentleman in India went into his library and took down a book from the shelves. As he did so he felt a slight pain in his finger like the prick of a pin. He thought that a pin had been stuck by some careless person in the cover of the book. But soon his finger began to swell, then his arm, and then his whole body, and in a few days he died. It was not a pin among the books, but a small and deadly serpent.
There are many books that contain moral poison more deadly to character than this serpent. (Text.)
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BOOKS, THE SIZE OF
We are capable of believing, not only that we love books which we do not love, but that we have read books which we have not read. A lifelong intimacy with their titles, a partial acquaintance with modern criticism, a lively recollection of many familiar quotations—these things come in time to be mistaken for a knowledge of the books themselves. Perhaps in youth it was our ambitious purpose to storm certain bulwarks of literature; but we were deterred by their unpardonable length. It is a melancholy truth, which may as well be acknowledged at the start, that many of the books best worth reading are very, very long, and that they can not, without mortal hurt, be shortened. Nothing less than a shipwreck on a desert island in company with Froissart’s “Chronicles” would give us leisure to peruse this glorious narrative, and it is useless to hope for such a happy combination of chances. We might, indeed, be wrecked—that is always a possibility—but the volume saved dripping from the deep would be “Soldiers of Fortune,” or “Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch.”—Agnes Repplier, “Compromises.”
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