Yet perhaps no better book than a good dictionary could be found whereon to base a library and a knowledge of literature. The wit who said that the dictionary is a good book, but changes the subject too often, told but a partial truth, for the dictionary keeps consistently to the first of all subjects, the language in which all subjects are expressed. If it be true that Americans are of all peoples the most assiduous patrons of the dictionary, the future of our popular education and of our national literature is secure, for although mere words will not make thought, it is only thoughtful people who have a zealous interest in the dictionary. The schoolmaster who first made the present writer conscious that there is a difference between good English and bad used to tell us in the moments when regular school exercises were pending to study our dictionaries. The dictionary would be a reasonable answer to that delightful conundrum: “If you were wrecked on a desert island, and could have only one book, what book would you choose?” The shrewdest of all answers to that question evaded it: “I should spend so much time trying to choose the book that I should miss the steamer and not be wrecked.” These conundrums--the best book?--the best hundred books?--the greatest novel?--the greatest poem?--are not to be answered. The use of them is that they stir our imaginations and whet our judgments. If we come close and try to settle them in earnest, we bring tumbling about our heads a multitude of conflicting answers. Then we flee from the disorder and realize that conundrums are only stimulating nonsense. Individual choice among the riches of the world’s literature is not to be confined by hard and fast rules and tests. As a practical matter we are not altogether free to choose. Our book friends, like our human friends, are in part chosen for us by accidental encounters. We do not wander over the world seeking for the dozen souls that are most fit to be grappled to us with hoops of steel. We merely choose the most congenial among our neighbors. So it is with books. Each of us wishes to select the best among such as are available, to have judgment in accepting the right one when it falls in our way. Biography is full of instances of chance encounters in the world’s library that have shaped great careers.