to save himself the labor and trouble of writing out a quotation.

But perhaps the person who did most to bring reading in bed into
evil repute was Mrs. Charles Elstob, ward and sister of the Canon
of Canterbury (circa 1700). In his ``Dissertation on
Letter-Founders,'' Rowe Mores describes this woman as the
``indefessa comes'' of her brother's studies, a female student in
Oxford. She was, says Mores, a northern lady of an ancient
family and a genteel fortune, ``but she pursued too much the drug
called learning, and in that pursuit failed of being careful of
any one thing necessary. In her latter years she was tutoress in
the family of the Duke of Portland, where we visited her in her
sleeping-room at Bulstrode, surrounded with books and dirtiness,
the usual appendages of folk of learning!''

There is another word which Cicero uses--for I have still
somewhat more to say of that passage from the oration ``pro
Archia poeta''--the word ``rusticantur,'' which indicates that
civilization twenty centuries ago made a practice of taking books
out into the country for summer reading. ``These literary
pursuits rusticate with us,'' says Cicero, and thus he presents
to us a pen-picture of the Roman patrician stretched upon the
cool grass under the trees, perusing the latest popular romance,
while, forsooth, in yonder hammock his dignified spouse swings
slowly to and fro, conning the pages and the colored plates of
the current fashion journal. Surely in the telltale word
``rusticantur'' you and I and the rest of human nature find a
worthy precedent and much encouragement for our practice of
loading up with plenty of good reading before we start for the
scene of our annual summering.