How the mood for a book sometimes rushes upon one, either one knows not
why, or in consequence, perhaps, of some most trifling suggestion.
Yesterday I was walking at dusk. I came to an old farmhouse; at the
garden gate a vehicle stood waiting, and I saw it was our doctor's gig.
Having passed, I turned to look back. There was a faint afterglow in the
sky beyond the chimneys; a light twinkled at one of the upper windows. I
said to myself, "Tristram Shandy," and hurried home to plunge into a book
which I have not opened for I dare say twenty years.
Not long ago, I awoke one morning and suddenly thought of the
Correspondence between Goethe and Schiller; and so impatient did I become
to open the book that I got up an hour earlier than usual. A book worth
rising for; much better worth than old Burton, who pulled Johnson out of
bed. A book which helps one to forget the idle or venomous chatter going
on everywhere about us, and bids us cherish hope for a world "which has
such people in't."
These volumes I had at hand; I could reach them down from my shelves at
the moment when I hungered for them. But it often happens that the book
which comes into my mind could only be procured with trouble and delay; I
breathe regretfully and put aside the thought. Ah! the books that one
will never read again. They gave delight, perchance something more; they
left a perfume in the memory; but life has passed them by for ever. I
have but to muse, and one after another they rise before me. Books
gentle and quieting; books noble and inspiring; books that well merit to
be pored over, not once but many a time. Yet never again shall I hold
them in my hand; the years fly too quickly, and are too few. Perhaps
when I lie waiting for the end, some of those lost books will come into
my wandering thoughts, and I shall remember them as friends to whom I
owed a kindness--friends passed upon the way. What regret in that last
farewell!