One would think, to listen to the High Priests of Culture, that man was made for literature, not literature for man.

Thought existed before the Printing Press; and the men who wrote the best hundred books never read them.
Books have their place in the world, but they are not its purpose.

They are things side by side with beef and mutton, the scent of the sea, the touch of a hand, the memory of a hope, and all the other items in the sum- total of our three-score years and ten.

Yet we speak of them as though they were the voice of Life instead of merely its faint echo.

Tales are delightful _as_ tales--sweet as primroses after the long winter, restful as the cawing of rooks at sunset.