ir. It's impractical enough, anyway, just as an idea, and it's
all the more impractical when it's carried out. So far as I can see, at
the rate you're carrying on," said The P. G. S. of M., "what with
improving the world and all with your book, there isn't going to be
anything but You and your Book left."

"Might be worse," I said. "What one wants in a book after the first
three or four chapters, or in a world either, it seems to me, is not its
facts merely, nor its principles, but one's self--one's real relation of
one's real self, I mean, to some real fact. If worst came to worst and I
had to be left all alone, I'd rather be alone with myself, I think, than
with anybody. It's a deal better than being lonely the way we all are
nowadays--with such a lot of other people crowding round, that one has
to be lonely with, and books and newspapers and things besides. One has
to be lonely so much in civilisation, there are so many things and
persons that insist on one's coming over and being lonely with them,
that being lonely in a perfectly plain way, all by one's self--the very
thought of it seems to me, comparatively speaking, a relief. It's not
what it ought to be, but it's something."

I feel the same way about being lonely with a book. I find that the only
way to keep from being lonely in a book--that is, to keep from being
crowded on to the outside of it, after the first three or four
chapters--is to read the first three or four chapters all over
again--read them down through. I have to get hold of my principles in
them, and then I have to work over my personal relation to them. When I
make sure of that, when I make sure of my personal relation to the
author, and to his ideas, and there is a fairly acquainted feeling with
both of us, then I can go on reading for all I am worth--or all he is
worth anyway, whichever breaks down first--and no more said about it.
Everything means something to everybody when one reads down through. The
only way an author and reader can keep from wasting each other's time,
it seems to me, at least from having spells of wasting it, is to begin
by reading down through.

III

Keeping Other Minds Off

What I really mean by reading down through in a book, I suppose, is
reading down through in it to myself. I dare say this does not seem
worthy. It is quite possible, too, that there is no real defence for
it--I mean for my being so much interested in myself in the middle of
other people's boo