back to the bitter reality of cramped legs and numbed fingers. 'My brother!' or 'My sister!' I would cry inwardly, feeling the link that bound us together. They possessed, for the hour, the two gifts most precious to the student—light and solitude: the true solitude of the roaring street.
Somehow this vision rarely greets me now. Probably the Free Libraries have supplanted the flickering shop-lights; and every lad and lass can enter and call for Miss Braddon and batten thereon 'in luxury's sofa-lap of leather;' and of course this boon is appreciated and profited by, and we shall see the divine results in a year or two. And yet sometimes, like the dear old Baron in the Red Lamp, I wonder?'
For myself, public libraries possess a special horror, as of lonely wastes and dragon-haunted fens. The stillness and the heavy air, the feeling of restriction and surveillance, the mute presence of these other readers, 'all silent and all damned,' combine to set up a nervous irritation fatal to quiet study. Had I to choose, I would prefer the windy street. And possibly others have found that the removal of checks and obstacles makes the path which leads to the divine mountain-tops
