n 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."

"And so there is no positive fruit anywhere," she insisted with her
practical taste for the substantial.

"It is all food, Anna, edible and nourishing to different mouths
and stomachs. Some very great men have lived on the roots of
knowledge, the simplest roots. And here is poetry for dates and
wild honey; and novels for cocoanuts and mushrooms. And here is
Religion: that is for manna."

"What is at the very top?"

His eyes rested upon the highest row of books.

"These are some of the loftiest growths, new buds of the mind
opening toward the unknown. Each in its way shows the best that
man, the earth-animal, has been able to accomplish. Here is a
little volume for instance which tells what he ought to be--and
never is. This small volume deals with the noblest ideals of the
greatest civilizations. Here is what one of the finest of the
world's teachers had to say about justice. Aspiration is at that
end. This little book is on the sad loveliness of Greek girls; and
the volume beside it is about the brief human chaplets that Horace
and some other Romans wore--and then trod on. Thus the long story
of light and shadow girdles the globe. If you were nothing but a
spirit, Anna, and could float in here some night, perhaps you would
see a mysterious radiance streaming upward from this shelf of books
like the northern lights from behind the world--starting no one
knows where, sweeping away we know not whither--search-light of the
mortal, turned on dark eternity."

She stood a little behind him and watched him in silence, hiding
her tenderness.

"If I were a book," she said thoughtlessly, "where should I be?"

He drew the fingers of one hand lingeringly across the New
Testament.

"Ah, now don't do that," she cried, "or you shall have no dinner.
Here, turn round! look at the dust! look at this cravat on one end!
look at these hands! March upstairs."

He laid his head over against hers.

"Stand up!" she exclaimed, and ra