Ursula isn’t much better; but at least she is more practical, and believes in spring cleaning; hence, in _her_ case, she does have a turn-out occasionally, and just throws away indiscriminately whole shelf-loads of books in a fit of desperation, when she has managed to get every article in the flat jumbled up in a heap in the room it has no business in, and no one can find anything. I believe at such time she surreptitiously disposes of some of Virginia’s tomes, too; but this I only suspect. At any rate, Virginia is always bewailing a number of “_most_ important books” that never can be found after one of Ursula’s domestic upheavals. Knowing all this, I said that only a definite number of books would be allowed on The Island. Both girls said it would be impossible to fix any limit that would meet the case. I said I was quite sure humanity, more especially the intellectual feminine portion of it, could do with far less books than they thought they could. Vehement protests! Then I suggested, to prove my words, that we should each start to make out a list of the books we couldn’t possibly do without on The Island—_only_ those we couldn’t possibly do without—and see what it amounted to. “Jot down any book or author that occurs to us as being essential, irrespective of any sort of classification,” I said. “And we had better compare notes every ten books, as we go along.” Forthwith, we each scribbled down our first ten _absolutely indispensable_ books (they were to be exclusive of religious and devotional works). When we compared notes in a few minutes’ time, these were our lists:— VIRGINIA. Encyclopædia. A Dictionary. Jane Austen’s Novels. “The Shepherd of Salisbury Plain.” A Time Table. Franklin’s “Voyages.” “Punch” (regularly). A good Atlas. “The Spectator” (regularly). “A Child’s Garden of Verse.” R. L. Stevenson. URSULA. A good Guide to London. A large selection of Needlework and Crochet Books. My old Scrapbook. Mudie’s Catalogue. An Almanac giving the changes of the moon. “The Old Red Sandstone.” Hugh Miller. The Stores Price List. Mrs. Hemans’ Poems. The Scottish Student’s Song Book. Kipling’s “Kim.” SELF. All Ruskin’s Works. “The Wide, Wide World.” “The Country of the Pointed Firs.” S. O. Jewett. All my Gardening Books and Florists’ Seed Catalogues. All my Wild Flower Books. “A Little Book of Western Verse.” Eugene Field. Poems by Ann and Jane Taylor. All my Cookery Books. All the Board of Agriculture’s Leaflets. A Book on Deer Culture. Of course, we each gazed in profound surprise and contempt on the others’ lists, and asked why this and that had been put down. Why did Ursula want a guide to London, when the object of going to The Island was to get away from London? She said she thought you ought to keep in touch with things even if you were away; and if it came to that, why did I want a Deer book, since I couldn’t look at venison?