Confessions of a Book-Lover by E. Walter Walters

The mind relaxing into needful sport, / Should turn to writers of an abler sort, / Whose wit well-managed, and whose classic style / Give truth a lustre and make wisdom smile. / COWPER.

I have confessed that the books which please me most are the books that speak to the heart -- books that greet one with the ease and familiarity of a friend. I desire to feel the humanity, the heart of an author. I desire to know that he is genial, kindly, well-disposed. I have no inclination for angry, fretful men of letters. I no more desire to meet such through the medium of a book, than I desire to make the acquaintance of quarrelsome individuals in the flesh. I, too, ‘find myself facing as stoutly as I can a hard, combative existence, full of doubts, difficulties, and disappointments, quite a hard enough life without dark countenances at my elbow. ' Give me pleasant company. Give me _gentlemen of letters_. Still, I have no taste for the company of the maudlin or weak-kneed. Robert Louis Stevenson says that ‘we are all for tootling on the sentimental flute in literature; and not a man amongst us will go to the head of the march to sound the heady drums! ' Note with what grace he makes the observation! It is more in the nature of a good-tempered laugh than a growl. How gracefully he wears the title -- a Gentleman of Letters! How pleasantly he addresses us! Little wonder if, in his presence, our failings are as open wounds. He has no need to probe. His gentlest touch is sufficient, more effective by far than the rough treatment of the irascible author.