There is an Oriental story of two men: one was a king, who every night dreamed he was a beggar; the other was a beggar, who every night dreamed he was a prince and lived in a palace.  I am not sure that the king had very much the best of it.  Imagination is sometimes more vivid than reality.  But, however this may be, when we read we may not only ( if we wish it ) be kings and live in palaces, but, what is far better, we may transport ourselves to the mountains or the seashore, and visit the most beautiful parts of the earth, without fatigue, inconvenience, or expense.

    Many of those who have had, as we say, all that this world can give, have yet told us they owed much of their purest happiness to books.

    Macaulay had wealth and fame, rank and power, and yet he tells us in his biography that he owed the happiest hours of his life to books.  In a charming letter to a little girl, he says: "Thank you for your very pretty letter.  I am always glad to make my little girl happy, and nothing pleases me so much as to see that she likes books, for when she is as old as I am, she will find that they are better than all the tarts and cakes, toys and plays, and sights in the world.  If any one would make me the greatest king that ever lived, with palaces and gardens and fine dinners, and wines and coaches, and beautiful clothes, and hundreds of servants, on condition that I should not read books, I would not be a king.  I would rather be a poor man in a garret with plenty of books than a king who did not love reading."

    Precious and priceless are the blessings which the books scatter around our daily paths.  We walk, in imagination, with the noblest spirits, through the most sublime and enchanting regions.

    Without stirring from our firesides we may roam to the most remote regions of the earth, or soar into realms where Spenser's shapes of unearthly beauty flock to meet us, where Milton's angels peal in our ears the choral hymns of Paradise.  Science, art, literature, philosophy-- all that man has thought, all that man has done-- the experience that has been bought with the sufferings of a hundred generations-- all are garnered up for us in the world of books. 

2.閱讀時,  我 們可以化身為國王或乞丐,   遨遊五湖四海。                                    

3.在書本中可以找到最純粹的喜悅、幸福。

4.與其當一個華衣美食但不能閱讀的國王，不如做一個坐擁書城的窮人。