Donal was making his way towards the eastern coast, in the certain
hope of finding work of one kind or another. He could have been
well content to pass his life as a shepherd like his father but for
two things: he knew what it would be well for others to know; and he
had a hunger after the society of books. A man must be able to do
without whatever is denied him, but when his heart is hungry for an
honest thing, he may use honest endeavour to obtain it. Donal
desired to be useful and live for his generation, also to be with
books. To be where was a good library would suit him better than
buying books, for without a place in which to keep them, they are
among the impedimenta of life. And Donal knew that in regard to
books he was in danger of loving after the fashion of this world:
books he had a strong inclination to accumulate and hoard; therefore
the use of a library was better than the means of buying them.
Books as possessions are also of the things that pass and
perish--as surely as any other form of earthly having; they are of
the playthings God lets men have that they may learn to distinguish
between apparent and real possession: if having will not teach them,
loss may.
But who would have thought, meeting the youth as he walked the road
with shoeless feet, that he sought the harbour of a great library in
some old house, so as day after day to feast on the thoughts of men
who had gone before him! For his was no antiquarian soul; it was a
soul hungry after life, not after the mummy cloths enwrapping the
dead.
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