The Bibliophile Is The Master

All Human Affairs Follow Nature's Great Analogue, The Growth Of Vegetation. There Are Three Periods Of Growth In Every Plant. The First, And Slowest, Is The Invisible Growth By The Root; The Second And Much Accelerated Is The Visible Growth By The Stem; But When Root And Stem Have Gathered Their Forces, There Comes The Third Period, In Which The Plant Quickly Flashes Into Blossom And Rushes Into Fruit.

Men Think God Is Destroying Them Because He Is Tuning Them. The Violinist Screws Up The Key Till The Tense Cord Sounds The Concert Pitch; But It Is Not To Break It, But To Use It Tunefully, That He Stretches The String Upon The Musical Rack.

The Pie Should Be Eaten "while It Is Yet Florescent, White Or Creamy Yellow, With The Merest Drip Of Candied Juice Along The Edges, (as If The Flavor Were So Good To Itself That Its Own Lips Watered!) Of A Mild And Modest Warmth, The Sugar Suggesting Jelly, Yet Not Jellied, The Morsels Of Apple Neither Dissolved Nor Yet In Original Substance, But Hanging As It Were In A Trance Between The Spirit And The Flesh Of Applehood...then, O Blessed Man, Favored By All The Divinities! Eat, Give Thanks, And Go Forth, 'in Apple-pie Order!'"

Every Green Thing Loves To Die In Bright Colors. The Vegetable Cohorts March Glowing Out Of The Year In Flaming Dresses, As If To Leave This Earth Were A Triumph And Not A Sadness. It Is Never Nature That Is Sad, But Only We, That Dare Not Look Back On The Past, And That Have Not Its Prophecy Of The Future In Our Bosoms.

There Is A Temperate Zone In The Mind, Between Luxurious Indolence And Exacting Work; And It Is To This Region, Just Between Laziness And Labor, That Summer Reading Belongs.