that if I were to enumerate all the books,
so to say, 'implicated' in the love of Narcissus and his Thirteenth
Maid, I should have to catalogue quite a small library. I forgot for the
moment what literal truth I was writing, for it was indeed in quite a
large library that they first met. In 'our town' there is, Reader, an
old-world institution, which, I think, you would well like transported
to yours, a quaint subscription library 'established' ever so long ago,
full of wonderful nooks and corners, where (of course, if you are a
member) one is sure almost at any time of the day of a solitary corner
for a dream. It is a sweet provision, too, that it is managed by ladies,
whom you may, if you can, image to yourself as the Hesperides; for there
are three of them; and may not the innumerable galleries and spiral
staircases, serried with countless shelves, clustered thick with tome on
tome, figure the great tree, with its many branches and its wonderful
gold fruit--the tree of knowledge? The absence of the dragon from the
similitude is as well, don't you think?

Books, of all things, should be tended by reverent hands; and, to my
mind, the perfunctory in things ecclesiastical is hardly more
distressing than the service of books as conducted in many great
libraries. One feels that the _librarii_ should be a sacred order,
nearly allied to the monastic, refined by varying steps of initiation,
and certainly celibates. They should give out their books as the priest
his sacrament, should wear sacred vestments, and bear about with them
the priestlike _aura_, as of divine incarnations of the great spirit of
Truth and Art in whose temples they are ministrants. The next step to
this ideal ministry is to have our books given out to us by women.
Though they may understand them not, they handle them with gentle
courtesy, and are certainly in every way to be preferred to the youthful
freckled monster with red spines upon his head, and nailed boots, 'the
work of the Cyclops,' upon his feet, whose physiognomy is contorted by
cinnamon-balls at the very moment he carries in his arms some great
Golden-lips or gentle Silver-tongue. What good sweet women there are,
too, who would bless heaven for the occupation!

Well, as I said, we in that particular library are more fortunate, and
two of the 'subscribers,' at least, did at one time express their
appreciation of its privileges by a daily dream among its shelves. One
day--had Hercules been the