There is another lure that lays hands on a man like grappling-irons tackling a Spanish galleon laden with treasure, with a grip which cannot be shaken off: I mean the writer’s lure. I am fond of reading. The enticements of a good book are hard to resist, especially if you have no inclination to resist, but tumble a ready victim to the writer’s charm. What is the writer’s lure? How does it cast its spell? You can talk round the subject by metaphor and symbol and figure of speech, but cannot solve it like a problem in Euclid and add Q.E.D. at the end. The writer’s lure is the vividest way of saying things. It is a bolt shot from the mind that hits the penman’s mark. The writer’s lure fixes you even as a beautiful sympathetic picture holds you up by its witchery of art. In the picture warmth of colour, grace of line, melting tints, dreamy distance, and an added mystic charm brooding over all, voice lovingly your taste in art, and, like a haunted man, you carry the landscape about with you all day long. It intrudes on your mind midst pressing business affairs; the sunlight sleeping on the hills creates a pleasant interlude of thought when engrossed in life’s little worries. Turner’s "Crossing the Brook" in the Tate Gallery is a picture that bewitches me when I see it. It stimulates my imagination and sets my thoughts sailing over the country carried on the breezes which blow across the Turner landscape. A book haunts you in the selfsame way as a picture. You read a book, and it stirs your emotions and captivates your fancy, and for a time it possesses you like a living spirit. The writer’s lure holds you in its grip. The book soaks into you. A sentence here and there leaps to memory during odd moments of the day; the rhythm of the language ripples musically as a chime of bells, and you repeat the sentence to yourself again and again. The aptness of an image is lifelike, and a vision floats across your mind; the happy turn of a sentence sticks. The fresh, clear-cut thought shot out boldly from the writer’s brain conveys a new idea; you recall the touch of humour resembling a patch of warm sunshine twinkling on the landscape, and your lips curve into a smile. There are passages of tenderness also that you treasure, because they find your heart like shafts of love feathered with joy. All these things in the book come back to you vividly, and whisper their fond message over again.