XVI 



OK THE EE-EEADING OF BOOKS 



A FTEE one has passed the middle period of life, 

 -^■^ or even long before that, it is interesting to 

 note what books he spontaneously recurs to and re- 

 reads. Do his old favorites retain anything of their 

 first freshness and stimulus for him, or have they 

 become stale and trite, or completely outgrown ? On 

 taking down for the third or fourth time a favorite 

 author the present winter, I said to myself, " There 

 is no test of a book like that : can we, and do we, 

 go back to it ? " If not, is it at all probable that 

 future generations will go back to it ? One's own 

 experience may be looked upon as the experience of 

 the race in miniature. If one cannot return to an 

 author again and again, is it not pretty good evidence 

 that his work has not the keeping qualities ? One 

 brings a different self, a different experience, to each 

 re-reading, and thus in a measure brings the test of 

 time and humanity. Yet there is always some diffi- 

 culty in going back. It is difficult to go back, after 

 some years, to live in a place from which one has 

 once flitted. Somehow things look stale to us. Is 

 it our dead selves that we encounter at every turn ? 

 Even the old homestead has a certain empty, pa- 



