f time. Remember that the farther away we get from the
beginning of learning, the greater accumulation there is for us to
master. Like a mammoth snowball, each century has rolled up its treasure
until such a mass has come down to us that it is practically impossible
for us to possess ourselves of it. Sometimes when I think of all there
is to know, I am depressed."

"And me, too, Mater," echoed Paul. "It seems hopeless."

"But there are short outs," argued Mr. Cameron. "No one expects any of
us to read all the books of the past. The years have sifted the wheat
from the chaff, and by a process of elimination we have found out pretty
well by this time what the great books are. By classifying our subjects
we can easily trace the growth and development of any of the really
significant movements of the world; we can follow the path of the
sciences; study the progress of the drama from its infancy to the
present moment; trace the growth of the novel; note the perfecting of
the poetic form. History, philosophy, the thought of all the ages is
ours. That is what I mean when I say there is no excuse for persons of
our era being uninformed. We are reaping the results of many unfoldings
and can see things with a degree of completeness that our ancestors
could not; they looked at life's problems from the bottom of the hill
and got only a partial view; we are seeing them from the top, and
understanding--or we should be understanding--more fully, their
interrelation."

"I suppose," mused Paul thoughtfully, "that those who come after us will
see even farther than we."

"They ought to, and I believe they will," his father answered. "_Nothing
walks with aimless feet_, in my opinion. It is all part of a gigantic,
divine plan. The small beginnings of the past have been the seed of
to-day's harvest. We thank Gutenburg for our books. We thank such men as
Nicholas V and many another of his ilk for the Vatican Library, the
British Museum, the numberless foreign museums; we owe a debt to our
nation for our own Congressional Library, to say nothing of the smaller
ones that, through the public spirit of generous citizens, have opened
their doors to our people and done so much to educate and democratize
our country."

There was a moment of silence.

"And quite aside from the thousands of volumes written in our own
language, we have access to the literature of other nations both in
translation and in their mother tongue. Remember that after p