I made up the fire, turned up the switch of my electric-lamp, drew my arm-chair within the narrow circle of its light, and paused to wonder with what book, with what companion, I should spend the hour or so before I should be tired enough to go to bed. At such an hour one cannot choose a book from the shelves haphazardly and allow it to evoke its own particular series of emotions. The book must suit the mood, must fit it as the words of a song fit the accompaniment. The varied incidents of the day, the people we have seen and spoken to, the words we have written and read, have created little by little the nature and intensity of the state of mind that is upon us at this late hour. Slowly I ran my eye along the shelves. There in the corner of the wall were the novels, marshalled like soldiers on parade, an even row, with their plain cloth bindings and ink lettering--serviceable stuff for the most part; fashioned to supply a want; strong enough to resist a six months’ battery on the shelves of Smith’s and Boot’s and Mudie’s, and flimsy enough to sink afterwards, without too great resistance, into coverless, dog-eared decomposition. Next to them the taller, prouder, more exclusive demy octavos; the gleaming white backs of the George Moore limited edition; the slim, calf-bound Maupassants; the heavy, formidable works of reference and criticism; and beyond them the gay adventurers; the many sized, the many coloured, the many covered; plays and books of verse, and volumes of essays; “Jurgen,” Max Beerbohm, and Petronius; anthologies, large and square and squat and oblong; personal books whose shape and format have been the result of much thought; for whose sake many specimen pages, many bindings have been returned to their artificer; and on the extreme left, in the shadow of the screen, the cricket books, a shelf of reminiscence and exhortation; and below it a long row of battered _Wisden’s_, and beside them the faded rust-red _Lillywhite’s_. A small library, not more than a thousand books probably; but I would rather have a few friends than many acquaintances, and there is hardly a book there that has not some personal significance.