He affirmed within
himself that it must be a novel. He ventured to approach near enough
to read the title, holding, rightly enough, that a book is not
personal property, and that his act involved no violation of privacy.
He discovered that the great man was reading a Greek play with such
relish and abandon that he had turned a railway station into a private
library! One of the foremost of American novelists, a man of real
literary insight and of genuine charm of style, says that he can write
as comfortably on a trunk in a room at a hotel, waiting to be called
for a train, as in his own library. There is a good deal of discipline
behind such a power of concentration as that illustrated in both these
cases; but it is a power which can be cultivated by any man or woman
of resolution. Once acquired, the exercise of it becomes both easy and
delightful. It transforms travel, waiting, and dreary surroundings
into one rich opportunity. The man who has the "Tempest" in his
pocket, and can surrender himself to its spell, can afford to lose
time on cars, ferries, and at out-of-the-way stations; for the world
has become an extension of his library, and wherever he is, he is at
home with his purpose and himself.
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