quantity from quality, and replaces the elusive balancing of results by the unchallenged roll-call of statistics. It expresses that unshaken belief which is the gospel of the librarian,—namely, that the number of books taken from his shelves within a given time has something to do with the educational efficiency of his library.
Our power of self-deception—without which we should shrivel into humility—is never so comfortable nor so resourceful as in the matter of reading. We are capable of believing, not only that we love books which we do not love, but that we have read books which we have not read. A life-long intimacy with their titles, a partial acquaintance with modern criticism, a lively recollection of many familiar quotations,—these things come in time to be mistaken for a knowledge of the books themselves. Perhaps in youth it was our ambitious purpose to storm certain bulwarks of literature, but we were deterred by their unpardonable length. It is a melancholy truth, which may as well be acknowledged in the start, that many of the books best worth reading are very, very
