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I am afraid I have written too much about my book-friends; yet I have mentioned only the authors I love most, and from this fact one might easily suppose that my circle of friends was limited and undemocratic --- a sort of literary "Four Hundred" -- which would be a very wrong impression.

Many Reasons for Liking Many Writers

I LIKE many writers for many reasons -- Carlyle, for his ruggedness and Hebraic scorn of shams; Wordsworth, "the bard of the river and the wood"; I find an exquisite pleasure in the oddities and surprises of Hood, in Herrick's quaintness and the palpable scent of lily and rose in his verses; I like Whittier for his enthusiasms and moral rectitude. I love all writers whose minds, like Lowell's, bubble up in the sunshine of optimism -- fountains of joy and good-will, with occasionally a splash of anger and here and there a healing spray of sympathy and pity. I love Addison who "makes us laugh and leaves us good and happy." I love Goldsmith for his sweetness. I love Mark Twain -- who does not? The gods, too, loved him and put into his heart all manner of wisdom; then, fearing lest he should become a pessimist, they spanned his mind with a rainbow of love and faith. I like Scott for the freshness, dash and large honesty which make his novels so delightful.

In a word, literature is my Utopia. Here I am not disfranchised. No barrier of the senses shuts me out from the sweet, gracious discourse of my book-friends. They talk to me without embarrassment or awkwardness. The grotesque trappings of life, the things I have learned and the things I have been taught, seem of little importance compared with their "large loves and heavenly charities."

(CONCLUDED IN THE SEPTEMBER JOURNAL)