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in an apologetic mood. There can-
not be too many lovers of the best
things in these pessimistic days,
when to have the power of loving
anything is beginning to be a great
and rare gift.
The word love in this connection
is significant of a very definite atti-
tude toward books, -- an attitude not
uncritical, since it is love of the best
only, but an attitude which implies
more intimacy and receptivity than
the purely critical temper makes pos-
sible; an attitude, moreover, which
expects and invites something more
than instruction or entertainment, --
both valuable, wholesome, and neces-
sary, and yet neither descriptive of
the richest function which the book
fulfils to the reader. To love a book
is to invite an intimacy with it which
opens the way to its heart. One of
[[13]]
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