-Fiat experimentum in corpore vili,—­I said, laughing at my own expense.  I don’t doubt the medicament is quite as good as the patient deserves, and probably a great deal better,—­I added, reinforcing my feeble compliment.

[When you pay a compliment to an author, don’t qualify it in the next sentence so as to take all the goodness out of it.  Now I am thinking of it, I will give you one or two pieces of advice.  Be careful to assure yourself that the person you are talking with wrote the article or book you praise.  It is not very pleasant to be told, “Well, there, now!  I always liked your writings, but you never did anything half so good as this last piece,” and then to have to tell the blunderer that this last piece is n’t yours, but t’ other man’s.  Take care that the phrase or sentence you commend is not one that is in quotation-marks.  “The best thing in your piece, I think, is a line I do not remember meeting before; it struck me as very true and well expressed: 

“‘An honest man’s the noblest work of God.’

“But, my dear lady, that line is one which is to be found in a writer of the last century, and not original with me.”  One ought not to have undeceived her, perhaps, but one is naturally honest, and cannot bear to be credited with what is not his own.  The lady blushes, of course, and says she has not read much ancient literature, or some such thing.  The pearl upon the Ethiop’s arm is very pretty in verse, but one does not care to furnish the dark background for other persons’ jewelry.]

I adjourned from the table in company with the old Master to his apartments.  He was evidently in easy circumstances, for he had the best accommodations the house afforded.  We passed through a reception room to his library, where everything showed that he had ample means for indulging the modest tastes of a scholar.

—­The first thing, naturally, when one enters a scholar’s study or library, is to look at his books.  One gets a notion very speedily of his tastes and the range of his pursuits by a glance round his bookshelves.

Of course, you know there are many fine houses where the library is a part of the upholstery, so to speak.  Books in handsome binding kept locked under plate-glass in showy dwarf bookcases are as important to stylish establishments as servants in livery; who sit with folded arms, are to stylish equipages.  I suppose those wonderful statues with the folded arms do sometimes change their attitude, and I suppose those books with the gilded backs do sometimes get opened, but it is nobody’s business whether they do or not, and it is not best to ask too many questions.