CHAPTER 15.
When, in the course of our tour of inspection, we came to the library, we succumbed to the temptation of the luxurious leather chairs with which it was furnished, and sat down in one of the book-lined alcoves to rest and chat awhile.[1] "Edith tells me that you have been in the library all the morning," said Mrs.Leete.

"Do you know, it seems to me, Mr.West, that you are the most enviable of mortals." "I should like to know just why," I replied.
"Because the books of the last hundred years will be new to you," she answered.

"You will have so much of the most absorbing literature to read as to leave you scarcely time for meals these five years to come.
Ah, what would I give if I had not already read Berrian's novels." "Or Nesmyth's, mamma," added Edith.
"Yes, or Oates' poems, or 'Past and Present,' or, 'In the Beginning,' or--oh, I could name a dozen books, each worth a year of one's life," declared Mrs.Leete, enthusiastically.
"I judge, then, that there has been some notable literature produced in this century." "Yes," said Dr.Leete.

"It has been an era of unexampled intellectual splendor.

Probably humanity never before passed through a moral and material evolution, at once so vast in its scope and brief in its time of accomplishment, as that from the old order to the new in the early part of this century.