“I find here,” she said, “that the Bible is to be our food, and that it is intended to make us grow.  Now one can’t grow without the right kind of food.  The verse makes me think of my dear little grandson Neddie.  His mother was taken away, and he was left a wee baby for us to bring up.  We had such a hard time to find anything to agree with him.  We tried milk and water, and arrowroot, and cracker-water, but he didn’t thrive, he was nothing but skin and bone; finally he got sick and we called the doctor, and he said, ’Why this child is starving to death!  What do you feed him?  Don’t give him any more such stuff,’ he said.  ‘Try another cow, and give him pure milk.’  So we got a new milch cow and fed him fresh milk, and I can’t begin to tell you what a wonderful change it made in that child in less than three weeks’ time; the dear little fellow got just as plump, his hands were like cushions, and he was well and happy as a robin.  Maybe that’s the reason there are so many weakly Christians.  I shouldn’t wonder if souls need the right sort of food as well as bodies in order to be healthy.  I have some neighbours that my heart just aches for; all their reading is yellow-covered books, such as ‘The Pirate’s Bride,’ and ‘The Fatal Secret.’  Such food is worse than cracker-water, and arrowroot, for they are starving souls instead of bodies, and the Word can’t find any place to take root, much less to grow, when the mind is filled up with such trash.”

“Joseph Cook thinks,” said Mrs. Lewis, “that even Bunyan, Jeremy Taylor, Pascal, and Thomas a’Kempis himself, work mischief, if these books shut out the Bible from daily and almost hourly use.’

“Is it possible,” said Mrs. Etheridge, “that anybody can make out what Joseph Cook thinks?  I know everybody is running wild over him, so I just took one of his lectures the other day after dinner, and sat down by the fire.  But dear me!  I couldn’t make anything out of it.  Now, I can take one of Mrs. Henry Wood’s lovely books and read from dinner to tea, without being tired or sleepy.”

Mrs. Lewis smiled as she answered: 

“I admit that, like Paul, Joseph Cook writes some things hard to be understood, and it often takes considerable thought to get at his meaning, but when you have studied it out it is something worth having.  He speaks to Boston people mostly, you know, and perhaps they would not understand very plain English.  Here is a sentence from him, though, that is clear enough:  ’Do you know a book that you are willing to put under your head for a pillow when you lie dying?  Very well, that is the book you want to study while you are living.’”

“But, Mrs. Lewis,” continued Mrs. Etheridge, “you know some physicians think we ought to eat the sort of food that relishes most.  Why does that not apply to our minds as well?  Now I am naturally melancholy, and need something to raise my spirits.  Don’t you think that the Bible is almost too sober, dreary reading for such persons—­at least until they begin to grow old?”