past generations, none younger than fifty years ago. There was a
bookcase of white wood ruled with gold lines, like the spindly chairs
and tables, and here Bessie could study, if she pleased, the literary
tastes of ancient ladies, matrons and virgins, long since departed this
life in the odor of gentility and sanctity. The volumes were in bindings
rich and solid, and the purchase or presentation of each had probably
been an event. Bessie took down here and there one. Those ladies who
spent their graceful leisure at embroidery-frames were students of
rather stiff books. Locke _On the Conduct of the Human Understanding_
and Paley's _Evidences of the Christian Religion_ Bessie took down and
promptly restored; also the _Sermons_ of Dr. Barrow and the _Essays_ of
Dr. Goldsmith. The _Letters_ of Mrs. Katherine Talbot and Mrs. Elizabeth
Carter engaged her only a few minutes, and the novels of Miss Edgeworth
not much longer. The most modern volumes in the collection were
inscribed with the name of "Dorothy Fairfax," who reigned in the days of
Byron and Wordsworth, Keats and Shelley, and had through them (from the
contents of three white vellum-covered volumes of extracts in her
autograph) learnt to love the elder poets whose works in quarto
populated the library. To Bessie these volumes became a treasure out of
which she filled her mind with songs and ballads, lays and lyrics. The
third volume had a few blank pages at the end, and these were the last
lines in it:

"Absence, hear thou my protestation
Against thy strength,
Distance and length;
Do what thou canst for alteration:
For hearts of truest mettle
Absence doth join, and Time doth settle."