Then, again,
there is a subject, perhaps I may say there is more than one, that I want
to exhaust, to know to the very bottom. And besides, of course I must
have my literary harem, my pare aux cerfs, where my favorites await my
moments of leisure and pleasure,--my scarce and precious editions, my
luxurious typographical masterpieces; my Delilahs, that take my head in
their lap: the pleasant story-tellers and the like; the books I love
because they are fair to look upon, prized by collectors, endeared by old
associations, secret treasures that nobody else knows anything about;
books, in short, that I like for insufficient reasons it may be, but
peremptorily, and mean to like and to love and to cherish till death us
do part.
Don't you see I have given you a key to the way my library is made up, so
that you can apriorize the plan according to which I have filled my
bookcases? I will tell you how it is carried out.
In the first place, you see, I have four extensive cyclopaedias. Out of
these I can get information enough to serve my immediate purpose on
almost any subject. These, of course, are supplemented by geographical,
biographical, bibliographical, and other dictionaries, including of
course lexicons to all the languages I ever meddle with. Next to these
come the works relating to my one or two specialties, and these
collections I make as perfect as I can.
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