to St. Paul's
Cathedral. Lamenting the number of books of poor quality now being
published, this author questions whether or not the printing press may
not be one of the scourges of mankind. He tells that he reads but few
books, and those the great ones, and describes his shipwreck on the
infinite sea of printer's ink, and his rescue as of one escaping by
mercy from a region where there was water, water everywhere but not a
drop to drink. Let us confess that books by their very multitude
bewilder, and that careless and purposeless reading destroys the mind.
Let us admit, too, that books no more mean culture than laws mean
virtues.

Doubtless, individuality is threatened by the vast cataract of
literature. As children, we trembled needlessly when the nurse told us
that skies rained pitchforks, but as men we have a right to fear when
the skies rain not pitchforks but pamphlets. Multitudes are in the
condition of the schoolboy who, when asked what he was thinking about,
answered that he had no thoughts, because he was so busy reading he
had no time to think. Like that boy, multitudes to-day cannot see the
wood for the trees. Many stand before the vast abyss of literature as
Bunyan's pilgrim stood before the Slough of Despond, crying: "What
shall I do?" The necessity of severe selection is upon us, but certain
things all must read.

First of all, every year each young man and woman should take a fresh
look about the world house in which all live. When Ivanhoe waked to
find himself a prisoner in a strange castle he straightway explored
the mansion, passing from chamber to banquet hall, and from tower to
moat, and the high walls that shut him in. If, indeed, God did so
dearly love this star as to use its very dust for making man in His
own image, we ought to love and study well this world house, wherein
is enacted the drama of man's life and death. Longfellow thought of
our earth as a granite-sheathed ship sailing through air, with plate
of mail bolted and clamped by the Almighty mechanism, the throbbings
of Vesuvius hinting at the deep furnaces that help to drive her
forward upon the voyage through space. But God's name for this earth
house was Paradise. And a veritable paradise it is, with its vegetable
carpet, soft and embroidered, beneath man's feet; with its valleys
covered with corn until they laugh and sing; with its noble
architecture of the mountains covered with mighty carvings and painted
legends. Verily, it wo