That we should find all the classics there we had not the least doubt; who could imagine a community of intelligent persons without Homer and Dante and Shakespeare and Wordsworth! How the volumes would be housed we did not try to divine; but that we should find them there we did not think of doubting.

Our chief thought was of the principle of selection, long sought after by lovers of books but never yet found, which we were certain would be easily discovered when we came to look along the shelves of the libraries in Arden.

With what delight we anticipated the long days when we should read together again, and amid such novel surroundings, the books we loved! For, although our home contained few luxuries, it had fed the mind; there was not a great soul in literature whose name was not on the shelves of our library, and the companionships of that room made our quiet home more rich in gracious and noble influences than many a palace.
And yet we had been in the Forest several months before we even thought of books; so absorbed were we in the noble life of the place, in the inspiring society about us.

There came a morning, however, when, as I looked out into the shadows of the deep woods, I recalled a wonderful line of Dante's that must have come to the poet as he passed through some silent and sombre woodland path.

Suddenly I remembered that months had passed since we had opened a book; we whose most inspiring hours had once been those in which we read together from some familiar page.