200
volumes. I had found out the unspeakable delight of drinking all my
heart could desire, and struck the matchless intoxication of noble and
wholesome books, that leave no headache or heartache when you are sober,
only it was a good while before I got sober.

Then I came in due time to this new world and began to work again at the
anvil in Pennsylvania, my own proper business I expected to follow all
my life, and presently heard of a library in the small town of Hatboro,
six or seven miles away, six one way and seven the other. A fine old
farmer had found a long while ago that this was the noblest use he could
make of a good deal of his money, to build up a library away among the
rich green lands, and so there it was waiting for me with its treasure
of good books. I see them again as they stand on the shelves, and think
I could walk right in and lay my hands on those that won me most
potently and cast their spell again over my heart, though it is five and
thirty years since I was within the doors. I may mention Hawthorne among
them all as the author I found there for the first time who won my heart
for good and all, as we may say, and holds it still. Then I found a
great treasure in no long time in Philadelphia, that I could no more
exhaust than you can exhaust the spring we have been glancing at by
drinking, which dips down toward the deepness of the world. I was still
bound fast to the anvil, for this was our living, but there was my life,
so far as good books could make it, rich for me and noble in the great
library again seven miles away. So what matter about the hard day's work
at the anvil, while there was some new volume to read when the day's
work was done or old one to read with an ever new delight. My new book
or old one, with the sweet green lane in the summer time where I could
walk while the birds sang their mating song, and the fragrance of the
green things growing floated on the soft summer air, and the fireside in
winter with the good wife busy about the room, and the little ones
sleeping in their cribs, I look back to those times still and wonder
whether they were not the best I ever knew. I was reading some lines the
other day in an old English ballad written 300 years ago, and they told
the story of those times:

"O for a booke, and a shadie nook, eyther indoore, or out,
With the green leaves whisp'ring overhede, or the streete cries all