But they were gentle; they did not take away all. The old books are with me, each a benison from a brother. The best works of ancient times are, I think, best understood when read by prison-light. Hist! some visitor comes! Many come from curiosity to see one who thinks he descried a man in a planet "Distinguished man of science from Boston to see me,"--ah, indeed! Celebrated paper on tadpoles, I suppose! But now that I look closer, I like my Boston man-of-science's eye, and his voice is good. I have not yet exhausted the fingers of one hand in counting up all the sane people who have visited me since I have been immured. How do I test them? As now I test you. Here my treasure of treasures I open. It is the old suppressed volume of John de Sacro Bosco, inscribed to that Castilian Alphonso who dared to have the tables of Ptolemy corrected. (Had he not been a king, he had been mad: such men as Bosco were mad after Alphonso died.) And thus to my curious scientific visitor I read what I ask may go into his report along with the description of my case. "John de Sacro Bosco sendeth this book to Alphonso de Castile. A. D. 1237." "They alone are kings who know." "Ken and Can are twins." "God will not be hurried." "Sacred are the fools: God understandeth them." "Impatient, I cried, 'I will clear the stair that leadeth to God!' Now sit I at His feet, lame and weak, and men scoff at knowledge, --'Aha, this cometh of ascending stairways!'" "The silk-worm span its way up to wings. I am ashamed and dumb, who would soar ere I had toiled. "When riseth an Ideal in the concave of some vaulting heart or brain, it is a new heaven and signeth a new earth." "Each clear Idea that ascendeth the vault of Pure Reason is a Bethlehem star; be sure a Messias is born for it on the Earth; the new sign lit up in the heaven of Vision is a new power set in motion among men; and, do what the Herods will, Earth's incense, myrrh, yea, even its gold, must gather to the feet of the Omnipotent Child,--the IDEA." IN WAR-TIME. INSCRIBED TO W.B.