make perfect conquest of a volume without first owning it physically. To read a

borrowed book may be a joy, but to assign your own book a place of its own on

your own shelves--be they few or many--to love the book and feel of its worn

cover, to thumb it over slowly, page by page, to pencil its margins in agreement

or in protest, to smile or thrill with its remembered pungencies--no mere book

borrower could ever sense all that delight.

 

The reader who possesses books in this double sense finds also that his books

possess him, and the volumes which most firmly grip his life are likely to be

those it has cost him some sacrifice to own. These lightly-come-by titles, which

Mr. Fatpurse selects, perhaps by proxy, can scarcely play the guide, philosopher

and friend in crucial moments as do the books--long coveted, joyously

attained--that are welcomed into the lives, and not merely the libraries, of us

others who are at once poorer and richer.

 

So it is scarcely too much to say that of all the many ways in which an owned--a

mastered--book is like to a human friend, the truest ways are these: A friend is

worth making sacrifices for, both to gain and to keep; and our loves go out most

dearly to those into whose inmost lives we have sincerely entered.

 

When you have not the advantage of the test of time by which to judge books,

investigate as thoroughly as possible the authority of the books you read. Much

that is printed and passes current is counterfeit. "I read it in a book" is to

many a sufficient warranty of truth, but not to the thinker. "What book?" asks

the careful mind. "Who wrote it? What does he know about the subject and what