ok the rescue of a beautiful princess
who had been enchanted by a cruel witch and was kept in prison by the
witch's son, a hideous ogre with seven heads, whose companions were
four equally hideous dragons.

This undertaking in which I was engaged involved a period of five
years, but time is of precious little consideration to one when he is
dreaming of exploits achieved in behalf of a beautiful princess. My
fairy godmother (she wore a mob-cap and was hunchbacked) took good care
of me, and conducted me safely through all my encounters with demons,
giants, dragons, witches, serpents, hippogriffins, ogres, etc.; and I
had just rescued the princess and broken the spell which bound her, and
we were about to "live in peace to the end of our lives," when I awoke
to find it was all a dream, and that the gas-light over my bed had been
blazing away during the entire period of my five-year war for the
delectable maiden.

This incident gives me an opportunity to say that observation has
convinced me that all good and true book-lovers practise the pleasing
and improving avocation of reading in bed. Indeed, I fully believe
with Judge Methuen that no book can be appreciated until it has been
slept with and dreamed over. You recall, perhaps, that eloquent
passage in his noble defence of the poet Archias, wherein Cicero (not
Kikero) refers to his own pursuit of literary studies: "Haec studia
adolescentiam alunt, senectutem oblectant; secundas res ornant,
adversis perfugium ac solatium praebent; delectant domi, non impediunt
foris; PERNOCTANT nobiscum, peregrinantur, rusticantur!"

By the gods! you spoke tally, friend Cicero; for it is indeed so, that
these pursuits nourish our earlier and delight our later years,
dignifying the minor details of life and affording a perennial refuge
and solace; at home they please us and in no vocation elsewhere do they
embarrass us; they are with us by night, they go with us upon our
travels, and even upon our retirement into the country do they
accompany us!

I have italicized pernoctant because it is that word which demonstrates
beyond all possibility of doubt that Cicero made a practice of reading
in bed. Why, I can almost see him now, propped up in his couch,
unrolling scroll after scroll of his favorite literature, and enjoying
it mightily, too, which enjoyment is interrupted now and then by the
occasion which the noble reader takes to mutter maledictions upon the
slave who has let the l