What were days without such fellowship? We were alone in the world
without it. Nor does our faith falter though the secret we search for
and do not find in them will not commit itself to literature, still we
take up the new issue with the old expectation, and again and again, as
we try our friends after many failures at conversation, believing this
visit will be the favoured hour and all will be told us....
One must be rich in thought and character to owe nothing to books,
though preparation is necessary to profitable reading; and the less
reading is better than more;--book-struck men are of all readers least
wise, however knowing or learned.--A. B. ALCOTT. _Tablets._