INTRODUCTION. . XV

   
  
   
    
 
    
 
   
 
   
 
  
  
 
   
     
  
  
  

im, the book had introduced him into another, where everything was bright and fair,
nd for the time it was his home. To lift us out of the rut of custom, to arouse our
aculties and implement them with new powers, to make us forget ourselves, our infirm-
ies and hard lot of poverty, toil and pain, to purge our eyes that we may behold ‘‘the
ke that never was on land or sea,’’ to open our ears that we may listen to the harmony
f harps as they pour forth their seven-fold hallelujahs and hosannas, and make us feel
hat we are not of the earth, earthy, but that our true home is in ‘“‘an ampler ether, a
iviner air,’’ this is, in part at least, what books may do for us. My dwelling place may
be rude, my fare ated and comiods scant; I may be denied access to the society, picture-
Palleries, concerts, theatres, ball-rooms, halls of high debate, for which I crave, but a
few well-chosen books andthe habit of reading them aright, will make amends for all
privations. Gibbon said, ‘‘My early invincible love of reading I would not exchange
for the treasures of India.’? Addison said: ‘‘Reading is to the mind what exercise is to
the body. As by the one, health is preserved, strengthened and invigorated; by the
ther, virtue (which is the health of the mind) is kept alive, cherished and confirmed.”
A good reader not only grows familiar with the secrets of land, sea and sky; with the
ast and the present, but the best heads and hearts the planet has yet produced grow in
me to be his friends, his intimates, and to him unburden themselves of their confidence.
ot only is his brain enlarged, stored with knowledge, and furnished with power for
higher work on easier terms, but his sympathies are widened and quickened, so that he
can make his own the thoughts, deeds, temper and spirit of the wisest and noblest men
at have appeared in the theatre of time. He drops the narrow and provincial that
ere in him, puts off petty prejudices and hatreds, rises to higher planes of judgment so
at he can estimate things at their true value, reversing many a former opinion, learn
that humility is the only way to true exaltation, and that to exchange pride for lowliness
is great gain.

Books used to be so costly that only princes, nobles and other very rich people could own
em, and to read them was the privilege of afew; now scarcely any are so poor as to be
denied their royal luxury. I well remember the time, in what was then the far West,

where I was a growing boy, when books were hard to be had, and the reader’s longing
for them was like the hunger and thirst of the traveler in the desert. At the age of
ght or nine years, and after many months of careful hoarding and painful earning, I
anaged to get money enough to buy twelve volumes of the ‘‘Boys and Girls Lithia 2?
published more than fifty years ago, and I doubt if any prince in the world felt as rich
Idid then. The contents of those volumes, read over and over again, gave me such
elight that I cannot put it into words, and that delight abode with me for years.

‘The volume herewith presented to the young people of this country is one which ought
to do for them what those books did for me. ‘The publishers have spared neither pains