History records instance after instance of the consolation dying men have received from the perusal of books, and many a one has made his end holding in his hands a particularly beloved volume.  The reverence which even unlearned men have for books appeals in these splendid libraries which are erected now and again with funds provided by the wills of the illiterate.  How dreadful must be the last moments of that person who has steadfastly refused to share the companionship and acknowledge the saving grace of books!

Such, indeed, is my regard for these friendships that it is with misery that I contemplate the probability of separation from them by and by.  I have given my friends to understand that when I am done with earth certain of my books shall be buried with me.  The list of these books will be found in the left-hand upper drawer of the old mahogany secretary in the front spare room.

When I am done,
I’d have no son
Pounce on these treasures like a vulture;
Nay, give them half
My epitaph
And let them share in my sepulture.

Then when the crack
Of doom rolls back
The marble and the earth that hide me,
I’ll smuggle home
Each precious tome
Without a fear a wife shall chide me.

The dread of being separated by death from the objects of one’s love has pursued humanity from the beginning.  The Hindoos used to have a selfish fashion of requiring their widows to be entombed alive with their corpses.  The North American Indian insists that his horse, his bow and arrows, his spear, and his other cherished trinkets shall share his grave with him.

My sister, Miss Susan, has provided that after her demise a number of her most prized curios shall be buried with her.  The list, as I recall it, includes a mahogany four-post bedstead, an Empire dresser, a brass warming-pan, a pair of brass andirons, a Louis Quinze table, a Mayflower teapot, a Tomb of Washington platter, a pewter tankard, a pair of her grandmother’s candlesticks, a Paul Revere lantern, a tall Dutch clock, a complete suit of armor purchased in Rome, and a collection of Japanese bric-a-brac presented to Miss Susan by a returned missionary.

I do not see what Miss Susan can possibly do with all this trumpery in the hereafter, but, if I survive her, I shall certainly insist upon a compliance with her wishes, even though it involve the erection of a tumulus as prodigious as the pyramid of Cheops.

XIV

ELZEVIRS AND DIVERS OTHER MATTERS

Boswell’s ``Life of Johnson’’ and Lockhart’s ``Life of Scott’’ are accepted as the models of biography.  The third remarkable performance in this line is Mrs. Gordon’s memoir of her father, John Wilson, a volume so charmingly and tenderly written as to be of interest to those even who know and care little about that era in the history of English literature in which ``crusty Christopher’’ and his associates in the making of ``Blackwood’s’’ figured.