though the sage Michael complains, as you will remember, that old men
do not relish their wine, or at least the first glass, because "the
palate is furred with phlegms." But I care little either for the liquor
or the lackeys, and not much, I fear, at present, for "the female
friends." I have, then, nothing left for it but to take violently to
books; for I doubt not I shall find almost any house convenient, and I
am sure of one at last which I can claim by a title not to be disturbed
by all the precedents of Cruise, and in which no mortal shall have a
contingent remainder.

To books, then, I betake myself,--to books, "the immortal children" of
"the understanding, courage, and abilities" of the wise and good,--ay!
and to inane, drivelling, doting books, the bastard progeny of vanity
and ignorance,--books over which one dawdles in an amusing dream and
pleasant spasm of amazement, and which teach us wisdom as tipsy Helots
taught the Spartan boys sobriety. Montaigne "never travelled without
books, either in peace or war"; and as I found them pleasant in happier
days, so I find them pleasant now. Of course, much of this omnivorous
reading is from habit, and, _invita Minerva_, cannot be dignified by
the name of study,--that stiff, steady, persistent, uncompromising
application of the mind, by virtue of which alone the _Pons Asinorum_
can be crossed, and the Forty-Seventh Problem of Euclid--which I
entirely disbelieve--mastered.

I own to a prodigious respect, entertained since my Sophomore year at
the University, for those collegiate youth whose terribly hard study of
Bourdon and Legendre seems to have such a mollifying effect upon their
heads,--but, as the tradesmen say, that thing is "not in my line." I
would rather have a bundle of bad verses which have been consigned to
the pastry-cook. I suppose--for I have been told so upon good authority
--that, if "equals be taken from equals, the remainders are equal." I do
not see why they should not be, and, as a citizen of the United States
of America, the axiom seems to me to be entitled to respect. When a
youthful person, with a piece of chalk in his hand, before commencing
his artistic and scientific achievements upon the black-board, says:
"Let it be granted that a straight line may be drawn from any one point
to any other point," I invariably answer, "Of course,--by all manner of
means,"--although you know, dear Don, that, if I should put him upon
mathematical proof of the po