weeter bit in all of 'Elia' than this, do you think"?

"'--And when the old bookseller with some grumbling opened his shop,
and by the twinkling taper (for he was setting bedwards) lighted out
the relic from his dusty treasures--and when you lugged it home,
wishing it were twice as cumbersome--'"

She had paused again. To know when to pause! how to make the most of
your author! to draw out the linked sweetness of a passage to its
longest--there reads your loving reader!

"You see," laying her hand on mine, "old books and old friends are
best, and I should think you had really rather have a nice safe old car
than any new one. Thieves don't take old cars, as you know. And you
can't insure them, that's a comfort! And cars don't skid and collide
just because they are _old_, do they? And you never have to scold the
children about the paint and--and the old thing _does_ go--what do you
think Lamb would say about old cars?"

"Lamb be hanged on old cars!" and I sent the sparks flying with a fresh
stick.

"Well, then let's hear the rest of him on 'Old _China_.'" And so she
read, while the fire burned, and outside swept the winter storm.

I have a weakness for out-loud reading and Lamb, and a peculiar joy in
wood fires when the nights are dark and snowy. My mind is not, after
all, _much_ set on automobiles then; there is such a difference between
a wild January night on Mullein Hill and an automobile show--or any
other show. If St. Bernard of Cluny had been an American and not a
monk, I think Jerusalem the Golden might very likely have been a quiet
little town like Hingham, all black with a winter night and lighted for
the Saint with a single open fire. Anyhow I cannot imagine the
mansions of the Celestial City without fireplaces. I don't know how
the equatorial people do; I have never lived on the equator, and I have
no desire to--nor in any other place where it is too hot for a
fireplace, or where wood is so scarce that one is obliged to substitute
a gas-log. I wish I could build an open hearth into every lowly home
and give every man who loves out-loud reading a copy of Lamb and sticks
enough for a fire. I wish--is it futile to wish that besides the
fireplace and the sticks I might add a great many more winter evenings
to the round of the year? I would leave the days as they are in their
beautiful and endless variety, but the long, shut-in winter evenings

"When young and old in circle
About the firebr