Those formative years might have proved a much drearier period but for the circumstance that his uncle's house was provided with a library, made up of books of all grades and qualities. To these volumes young Jonathan was at liberty to help himself without let or hindrance, provided he handled them with care. Mr. Mullett Flint was a collector of books, but not a reader. Elzevirs and Aldines and first editions bound by Riviere pleased him as so much pottery might have pleased him, and he took great pride in relating how the value of his purchases had increased on his hands. His guidance in the paths of literature would not have been of great benefit to his nephew had he been disposed to offer it; but, in fact, he wasted little thought either on the contents of books or on his nephew's mental progress. His tastes, interests, and ambitions lay wholly in the business world, in the making of money, and the handling of mercantile affairs of magnitude. Had Jonathan, as he grew older, shown more sharpness and sagacity, some bond of sympathy, if not attachment, might have formed itself between the two. As it was, they drifted farther and farther apart. The uncle looked with a shrug of his shoulders at the boy curled up in one of the library arm-chairs on a Saturday morning, poring over a volume of the Waverley Novels, when he himself was briskly making ready to betake himself to business. "I wish that boy had any enterprise. I'd rather see him breaking windows or shooting cats out the back door than dawdling like that," he said once to his wife. "Yes," answered that worthy lady,--"and he wears out the furniture so!" Mrs. Mullett Flint was one of those heavy, apathetic women who seem to have a special attraction for brisk, energetic men of Mr. Flint's type. If he ever made the discovery that apathy and amiability are not identical, he never revealed his disappointment to the world,--perhaps for the same reason that he kept silence over the failure of other investments, lest the rumor should injure his reputation for shrewdness as a business-man.