There lies now before me a copy of one of the early editions of "The Bay Psalm-Book." As I open the little dingy octavo volume, with its worn and torn edges, I am conscious of that distinctive, penetrating, _old-booky_ smell,--that ancient, that fairly _obsolete_ odor that never is exhaled save from some old, infrequently opened, leather-bound volume, which has once in years far past been much used and handled. A book which has never been familiarly used and loved cannot have quite the same antique perfume. The mouldering, rusty, flaky leather comes off in a yellow-brown powder on my fingers as I take up the book; and the cover nearly breaks off as I open it, though with tender, book-loving usage. The leather, though strong and honest, has rotted or disintegrated until it has almost fallen into dust. Across the yellow, ill-printed pages there runs, zig-zagging sideways and backwards crab-fashion on his crooked brown legs, one of those pigmy book-spiders,--those ugly little bibliophiles that seem flatter even than the close-pressed pages that form their home. Fair Puritan hands once held this dingy little book, honest Puritan eyes studied its ill-expressed words, and sweet Puritan lips sang haltingly but lovingly from its pages. This was "Cicely Morse Her Book" in the year 1710, and bears on many a page her name and the simple little couplet:-- "In youth I praise And walk thy ways." And pretty it were to see Cicely in her praiseful and godly-walking youth, as she stood primly clad in her sad-colored gown and long apron, with a quoif or ciffer covering her smooth hair, and a red whittle on her slender shoulders, a-singing in the old New England meeting-house through the long, tedious psalms, which were made longer and more tedious still by the drawling singing and the deacons' "lining." Truly that were a pretty sight for our eyes, and for other eyes than ours, without doubt. Staid Puritan youth may have glanced soberly across the old meeting-house at the fair girl as she sung the Song of Solomon, with its ardent wording, without any very deep thought of its symbolic meaning:-- "Let him with kisses of his mouth be pleased me to kiss, Because much better than the wine thy loving-kindness is. To troops of horse in Pharoahs coach, my love, I thee compare, Thy neck with chains, with jewels new, thy cheeks full comely are. Borders of gold with silver studs for thee make up we will, Whilst that the king at's table sits my spikenard yields her smell. Like as of myrrh a bundle is my well-belov'd to be, Through all the night betwixt my breasts his lodging-place shall be; My love as in Engedis vines like camphire-bunch to me, So fair, my love, thou fair thou art thine eyes as doves eyes be."