9. Where there is no privation, but every help from former thinkers, how much may we not expect from it! Thus great characters rise. While he who thinks little, however much he reads, or however much he sees, can hardly call anything he has his own. He trades with borrowed capital, and is on the high road to literary or mental bankruptcy.

Isaac Taylor.

LESSON LXXVIII.

MY LIBRARY.

1. In my garden I spend my days; in my library I spend my nights. My interests are divided between my geraniums and my books. With the flowers I am in the present; with the books I am in the past. I go into my library, and all history unrolls before me. I breathe the morning air of the world while the scent of Eden's roses yet lingered in it, while it vibrated only to the world's first brood of nightingales, and to the laugh of Eve.

2. I see the pyramids building; I hear the shoutings of the armies of Alexander; * I feel the ground shake beneath the march of Camby'ses.† I sit as in a theater,—the stage is time, the play is the world. What a spectacle it is! What kingly pomp, what processions file past, what cities burn to heaven, what crowds of captives are dragged at the chariotwheels of conquerors!

3. I hear or cry "Bravo!" when the great actors come on, shaking the stage. I am a Roman emperor when I look at a

Alexander the Great, son of Philip of Macedon, born B. C. 356; died B. C. 324. He was noted for his extensive conquests.

+ Cam by'ses, a noted Persian monarch, the son and successor of Cyrus the Great, and noted for his military expeditions. He commenced his reign

C. 530.

Roman coin. I lift Homer, * and I shout Achilles + in the trenches. The silence of the empeopled Syrian plains, the out-comings and in-goings of the Patriarchs, Abraham and Ishmael, Isaac in the fields at eventide, Rebekah at the well, Jacob's guile, Esau's face reddened by desert sun-heat, Joseph's splendid funeral procession, all these things I find within the boards of my Old Testament.

4. What a silence in those old books, as of a half-peopled world; what bleating of flocks, what green, pastoral rest, what indubitable human existence! Across brawling centuries of blood and war, I hear the bleating of Abraham's flocks, the tinkling of the bells of Rebekah's camels.

5. O men and women, so far separated yet so near, so strange yet so well-known, by what miraculous power do I know you all! Books are the true Elysian fields where the spirits of the dead converse, and into these fields a mortal may venture unappalled. What king's court can boast such company? What school of philosophy such wisdom?

6. There is Pan's pipe; there are the songs of Apollo. § Seated in my library at night, and looking on the silent faces of my books, I am occasionally visited by a strange sense of the supernatural. They are not collections of printed pages; they are ghosts. I take one down, and it speaks with me in a tongue not now heard on earth, and of men and things of which it alone possesses the knowledge.

7. I call myself a solitary, but sometimes I think I misap

His poen called the

* Homer, a celebrated Greek poet, of great antiquity. Iliad, giving an account of the siege and taking of Troy, and the Odyssey, relating the adventures of Ulysses, are considered to be the finest epic poems ever composed. The exact date of Homer's birth and death, as well as the place of his birth, are all wrapped in obscurity.

+ Achilles (a kil'lēz), the most celebrated of the Grecian heroes engaged in the war against Troy. His exploits are described by Homer in the Iliad.

‡ Pan, the fabled god of shepherds among the ancient Greeks and Romans. § Apollo, in the ancient mythology, the divinity that presided over music.

ply the term. No man sees more company than I do. I travel with mightier cohorts around me than ever did Timour* or Genghis Khan† on their fiery marches. I am a sovereign in my library; but it is the dead, not the living, that attend my levees.

Alexander Smith.

WORD ANALYSIS AND DEFINITIONS.

Cō hôrt, a band or body of warriors.

In du bi ta ble (dubit, doubt), not to be doubted.

Lev' ee, a morning assembly of visitors.

Su per nat'u ral (super, beyond), beyond what is natural; contrary to the laws of nature.

LESSON LXXIX.

CATCHING A SALMON.

1. All nature was alive and joyous; the air was vocal with the piping melody of blackbirds and thrushes, caroling in every brake and bosky dingle. The shadowy mists of the faint morning twilight had not been dispersed from the lower regions, and were suspended still in the middle air, in broad, fleecy masses, though melting rapidly away in the increasing warmth and brightness of the day.

2. Once at the water's edge, the young fisherman's tackle was speedily made ready; and in a few minutes, his long line went whistling through the air, as he wielded the powerful two-handed rod as easily as if it had been a stripling's reed, and the large, gaudy fly alighted on the wheeling eddies, at the

*Timour, sometimes called Tamerlane, a noted Tartar chieftain and conqueror. He was born A. D. 1336, and died in 1405. He made conquest of a large part of Western Asia and Eastern Europe.

+ Genghis Khan, a celebrated Tartar conqueror, born A. D. 1155, and died in 1227.

tail of a long, arrowy shoot, as gently as if it had settled from too long a flight.

3. Delicately, deftly, it was made to dance and skim the clear brown surface until it had crossed the pool and neared the hither bank; then again, obedient to the pliant wrist, it arose on glittering wing, circled half round the angler's head, and was sent fifteen yards along, straight as a wild bee's flight, into a little mimic whirlpool, — scarcely larger than the hat of the skillful fisherman, — which spun round and round just to leeward of a gray ledge of limestone.

4. Scarcely had it reached its mark before the water broke all around it, and the gay deceit vanished; the heavy swirl of the surface as the break was closing indicated the great size of the fish which had risen. Just as the wave was subsiding, and the forked tail of the monarch of the stream was half seen as he descended, that indescribable but well-known turn of the angler's wrist fixed the barbed hook, and taught the scaly victim the nature of the prey he had gorged so greedily. 5. With a wild bound, he threw himself three feet out of the water, showing his silver side, with his scales glittering in the light, a fresh, sea-run fish of fifteen, ay, eighteen pounds, and perhaps over. On his broad back he strikes the water, but not, as he meant, the tightened line; for, as he leaped, the practiced hand had lowered the rod's tip so that it fell in a loose bight below him.

6. Again, again, again, and yet a fourth time, he bounded into the air with desperate somersaults, like an unbroken steed that would dismount his rider, lashing the eddies of the dark stream into bright, bubbling streaks, and making the heart of his captor beat high with anticipation of the desperate struggle that should follow, before the monster would lie panting and exhausted on the yellow sand or moist greensward.

7. Away, with the rush of an eagle through the air, he is gone, like an arrow, down the rapids! How the reel rings, and

the line whistles from the swift-working wheel! He is too swift, too headstrong, to be checked as yet; tenfold the strength of that slender tackle might not control him in his first fiery rush.

8. But the fisherman, although young in years, was old in the art, and skillful as the craftiest of the gentle craftsmen. He yields to and strains upon him alternately, trying the strength of his tackle with a delicate, gentle finger, giving him line at every rush, yet firmly, cautiously feeling his mouth all the while, and moderating his speed even while he yields to his fury.

9. Meanwhile, with the eye of intuition and with nerves of iron, he bounds along the difficult shore. He leaps from rock to rock, alighting on their slippery tops with the firm agility of the rope-dancer. He splashes knee-deep through the slippery shallows, keeping his line ever tight, inclining his rod over his shoulder, bearing on his fish ever with a killing pull, steering him clear of every rock or stump against which he would fain smash the tackle, and landing him at length in a fine, roomy, open pool at the foot of a long stretch of white and foamy rapids, down which he had just piloted him with the eye of faith and the foot of instinct.

10. And now the great salmon has turned sulky; like a piece of lead he has sunk to the bottom of the deep, black pool, and lies on the gravel bottom in the sullenness of despair. The fisherman stooped, gathered up in his left hand a heavy pebble, and pitched it into the pool, as nearly as he could guess, to the whereabouts of his game, — another, and another! Aha! that last has roused him. Again he dashes himself clear out of water; and again, foiled in his attempt to smash the tackle, he dashes away down the stream impetuous.

11. But his strength is departing; the vigor of his rush is broken. The angler strains on him with a heavier pull, yet ever yields a little as he exerts his failing powers. See, his broad silver side has thrice turned up, even to the surface, and