uations in health, strength
or temper, the progressive ones due to natural growth or to outside
influences.

In his "Introduction to Don Quixote," Heine tells us how that book, the
first that he ever read, was his mental companion through life. In that
first perusal knowing not "how much irony God had interwoven into the
world," he looked upon the luckless knight as a real hero of romance and
wept bitterly when his chivalry and generosity met with ingratitude and
violence. A little later, when the satire dawned upon his comprehension,
he could not bear the book. Still later he read it with contemptuous
laughter at the poor knight. But when in later life, he lay racked on a
bed of pain his attitude of sympathy returned. "Dulcinea del Toboso," he
says "is still the most beautiful woman in the world; although I lie
stretched upon the earth, helpless and miserable, I will never take back
that assertion. I can not do otherwise. On with your lances, ye Knights of
the Silver Moon; ye disguised barbers!"

So every reader's viewpoint shifts with the years.

Our friend who welcomes George Ade to his inner sanctuary may find as the
years go on that his reaction to that contact has altered. I should not
recommend that the author be then be cast into outer darkness. Once a
favorite, always a favorite, for old sake's sake even if not for present
power and influence. Our private libraries will hold shelf after shelf of
these old-time favorites--milestones on the intellectual track over which
we have wearily or joyously traveled.

There will always be a warm spot in my heart and a nook on my private
shelf for Oliver Optic and Horatio Alger. Though I bar them from my
library (I mean my Library with a big L) I have no right to exclude them
from my private collection of favorites, for once I loved them. I scarcely
know why or how. If there had been in those far-off days of my boyhood,
children's libraries and children's librarians, I might not have known
them; as it is, they are incidents in my literary past that can not be
blinked, shameful though they may be. The re-reading of such books as
these is interesting because it shows us how far we have traveled since we
counted them among our favorites.

Then there is the book that, despite its acknowledged excellence, the
reader would not perhaps admit to his inner circle if he read it now for
the first time. It holds its place largely on account of the glamour with
which his youth inve