places unknown, and every settler's house was a house of entertainment, it was a matter of some importance and some experience to select wisely where you should put up. And we always looked for flowers. If there were no trees for shade, no patch of flowers in the yard, we were suspicious of the place. But no matter how rude the cabin or rough the surroundings, if we saw that the window held a trough for flowers, and that some vines twined about strings let down from the eaves, we were confident that there was some taste and carefulness in the log-cabin.

"In a new country, where people have to tug for a living, no one will take the trouble to rear flowers unless the love of them is pretty strong; and this taste, blossoming out of plain and uncultivated people is itself a clump of harebells growing out of the seams of a rock. We were seldom misled. A patch of flowers came to signify kind people, clean beds, and good bread. But in other states of society other signs are more significant. Flowers about a rich man's house may signify only that he has a good gardener, or that he has refined neighbours and does what he sees them do. But men are not accustomed to buy books, unless they want them. If on visiting the dwelling of a man in slender means we find that he contents himself with cheap carpets and

very plain furniture in order that he may purchase books, he rises at once in our esteem. Books are not made for furniture, but there is nothing else that so beautifully furnishes a house.

"The plainest row of books that cloth or paper ever covered is more significant of refinement than the most elaborately carved etagere or sideboard. Give us a house furnished with books rather than furniture. Both, if you can, but books at any rate! To spend several days in a friend's house, and hunger for something to read, while you are treading on costly carpets and sitting on luxurious chairs, and sleeping upon down, is as if one were bribing your body for the sake of cheating your mind. Is it not pitiable to see a man growing rich, augmenting the comforts of home, and lavishing money on ostentatious upholstery, upon the table, upon everything but what the soul needs. We know of many and many a rich man's house where it would not be safe to ask for the commonest English classics.

"No poets, no essayists, no historians, no travels, no biographies, no select fiction, no curious legendary lore. But the wall paper cost $3 a roll, and the carpet cost $4 a yard! Books are the windows through which the soul looks out. A home without books is like a room without windows. No man has a right to bring up his children without

surrounding them with books, if he has the means to buy them. It is a wrong to his family. He cheats them! Children learn to read by being in the presence of books. The love of knowledge

comes with reading and grows upon it. And the love of knowledge in a young mind is almost a warrant against the inferior excitement of passions and vices. Let us pity these poor rich men who live barrenly in great bookless houses!"

4. WHAT A SINGLE BOOK MAY DO FOR A YOUTH.

A book that starts a young person off in a lifecareer, good or bad, is a power. Nothing is more to be coveted or dreaded. The inspiration of a single book, or a few, has made preachers, poets, philosophers, authors, and statesmen. On the other hand, the demoralisation of a book has sometimes made infidels, profligates, and criminals.

Benjamin Franklin read an infidel book by Shaftesbury, and another by Collins, at fifteen years of age; and they demoralised his religious opinions for years. But for the excellent books he read before, his infidelity would have blasted his life. As it was, his influence became baneful over two associates, whom he made as thorough sceptics as himself. One of them became a

drunkard and died in disgrace; the other lived without moral principle, holding the Christian religion in contempt. In ripe manhood the good lessons of his boyhood in a Christian home asserted themselves, and Franklin confessed his grave mistake, and became a defender of Christianity. books created that painful episode in his life.

Two

In his early manhood Abraham Lincoln had several boon companions who were infidels, and they influenced him to read Paine's "Age of Reason" " and Volney's "Ruins." The reading of these two books caused him to doubt the truth of the Bible, so that, for a time, he was at one with his companions in their hostility to religion. He even wrote an essay upon the unreliability of the Bible, which he read to his associates. But after a few years he saw his folly, renounced all sceptical opinions, and returned to his early familiarity with and confidence in the Scriptures. Those two books well-nigh unsettled his moral character, and robbed the Republic of a good president.

In his youth the late President Garfield worked for a "Black-Selter," a few miles from his home. His employer owned Marryat's Novels, "Sinbad the Sailor," "The Pirate's Own Book," "Jack Halyard," "Lives of Eminent Criminals," and, perhaps, one or two other books of the same character. Young Garfield read them with avidity. He read

them over and over. They opened a new and untried world before him. The life of a sailor fascinated him. He resolved to go to sea. His wise and tender mother put obstacles in his way. The books had made an inroad upon his love of mother and home, and he was fully determined to try a "life on the wave." His mother saw that the books had sown the seeds of evil in his heart, and that he had started on the road to ruin. With wise management, and the aid of a mutual friend when a serious illness had prostrated him, his mother induced him to go to school and not to sea; and here was the turning point of his life. Two or three years before his death he declared in public, that the influence of those few books was never wholly eliminated from his mind.

On the other hand, a single good book has often conspired with good counsels and good principles to make life a success. It has started the reader off upon a career of honour and usefulness. Rev. John Sharp said, "Shakespeare and the Bible have made me Archbishop of York." John Wesley claimed that "The Imitation of Christ," and Taylor's "Holy Living and Dying," determined both his calling and character. Henry Martyn was made a missionary by reading the lives of Brainerd and Carey. Pope was indebted to Homer for his poetical inspiration, and it was the