Now, this must not happen frequently.  The books must be smuggled home.  Let them be sent to some near place.  Then, when your wife has a headache, or is out making a call, or has lain down, run the books across the frontier and threshold, hastily undo them, stop only for one loving glance as you put them away in the closet, or behind other books on the shelf, or on the topmost shelf.  Clear away the twine and wrapping-paper, and every suspicious circumstance.  Be very careful not to be too kind.  That often brings on detection.  Only the other day we heard it said, somewhere, “Why, how good you have been lately.  I am really afraid that you have been carrying on mischief secretly.”  Our heart smote us.  It was a fact.  That very day we had bought a few books which “we could not do without.”  After a while you can bring out one volume, accidentally, and leave it on the table.  “Why, my dear, what a beautiful book!  Where did you borrow it?” You glance over the newspaper, with the quietest tone you can command:  “That! oh! that is mine.  Have you not seen it before?  It has been in the house these two months.” and you rush on with anecdote and incident, and point out the binding, and that peculiar trick of gilding, and everything else you can think of; but it all will not do; you cannot rub out that roguish, arithmetical smile.  People may talk about the equality of the sexes!  They are not equal.  The silent smile of a sensible, loving woman will vanquish ten men.  Of course you repent, and in time form a habit of repenting.

Another method which will be found peculiarly effective is to make a present of some fine work to your wife.  Of course, whether she or you have the name of buying it, it will go into your collection, and be yours to all intents and purposes.  But it stops remark in the presentation.  A wife could not reprove you for so kindly thinking of her.  No matter what she suspects, she will say nothing.  And then if there are three or four more works which have come home with the gift-book—­they will pass through the favor of the other.

These are pleasures denied to wealth and old bachelors.  Indeed, one cannot imagine the peculiar pleasure of buying books if one is rich and stupid.  There must be some pleasure, or so many would not do it.  But the full flavor, the whole relish of delight only comes to those who are so poor that they must engineer for every book.  They sit down before them, and besiege them.  They are captured.  Each book has a secret history of ways and means.  It reminds you of subtle devices by which you insured and made it yours, in spite of poverty!

Copyrighted by Fords, Howard and Hulbert, New York.

SELECTED PARAGRAPHS

From ‘Selections from the Published Works of Henry Ward Beecher’, compiled by Eleanor Kirk.

An intelligent conscience is one of the greatest of luxuries.  It can hardly be called a necessity, or how would the world have got along as well as it has to this day?—­SERMON:  ‘Conscience.’