light accomplishment, and that the histories of fiction are purely
imaginary and not to be taken seriously. That is pure falsehood. The
truth of all humanity, as well as all its untruth, flows in a noble
stream through the pages of fiction. Do not allow the elders to persuade
you that pirate stories, battles, sieges, murders and sudden deaths, the
road to transgression and the face of dishonesty are not good for you.
They are 90 per cent. pure nutriment to a healthy boy's mind, and any
other sort of boy ought particularly to read them and so learn the
shortest cut to the penitentiary for the good of the world. Whenever you
get hold of a novel that preaches and preaches and preaches, and can't
give a poor ticket-of-leave man or the decentest sort of a villain
credit for one good trait--Gee, Whizz! how tiresome they are--lose it,
you young scamp, at once, if you respect yourself. If you are pushed you
can say that Bill Jones took it away from you and threw it in the creek.
The great Victor Hugo and the authors of that noble drama "The Two
Orphans," are my authorities for the statement that some fibs--not all
fibs, but some proper fibs--are entered in heaven on both debit and
credit sides of the book of fate.

There is one book, the Book of Books, swelling rich and full with the
wisdom and beauty and joy and sorrow of humanity--a book that set
humility like a diamond in the forehead of virtue; that found mercy and
charity outcasts among the minds of men and left them radiant queens in
the world's heart; that stickled not to describe the gorgeous esotery of
corroding passion and shamed it with the purity of Mary Magdelen; that
dragged from the despair of old Job the uttermost poison-drop of doubt
and answered it with the noble problem of organized existence; that
teems with murder and mistake and glows with all goodness and honest
aspiration--that is the Book of Books. There hasn't been one written
since that has crossed the boundary of its scope. What would that