something
about the treasury of rich and rare literature which you and I and
everybody may be free of in opening the covers of our Bibles.

Is it your habit, dear child, to read a few verses or a chapter of the
best of books every day, perhaps before you leave your room in the
morning, or before you go to bed at night? Have you your very own Bible,
and do you keep it in your room, and just where you can easily put your
hand upon it? Each of us should have her own Bible, for this is not a
book to share with others. If we are studying a foreign language we
should have, in addition to our English Bible, a French or German or
Italian Bible, a Bible in the language we are trying to learn, and by
reading in it every day we will greatly add to our vocabulary, and find
ourselves rapidly growing used to the looks and sounds of the most
familiar words.

No single book in the world has so many interesting features as the
Bible, partly because it is a library or collection of books in itself,
written by many different authors, in different periods of the world.
The Old Testament, which some people neglect, is full of the most
exciting and beautiful stories. There is the story of Job, one of the
very oldest in literature, telling how this "man in the land of Uz had
seven thousand sheep, and three thousand camels, and five hundred yoke
of oxen, and a very great household, and was the greatest of all the men
of the East." By a series of calamities, robbers, fires, earthquakes,
and cyclones, Job lost all his wealth, in the twinkling of an eye; and
then follow a wonderful series of chapters in which he and his three
friends and the Lord God, "out of a whirlwind," discuss the situation.
There are the stories of David and Saul, of David and Goliath, of David
and Jonathan, of David and Absalom; indeed the whole history of David is
a succession of amazing stories most splendidly told. Coming down from
David are the stories of Solomon and the great temple he built, "a
mountain of snow and gold"; and then we have the narratives of Nehemiah
and Ezra; of Daniel and his wonderful life; of the three friends who
were thrown into a fiery furnace, but stepped out unhurt; of many others
whom I cannot mention here. Long before David's days we find the
beautiful story of Ruth; and we have the story of little Samuel, and of
Samuel grown to be a man and a prophet. We have in the old Testament the
histories of Elijah and of Elisha, of Abraham, Isaac, and