Sesame and Lilies

This is a novel. Before I begin, I'd like to apologize for the vague title of this essay. I'm not going to talk about kings, nor about their vast treasures. I'm going to talk about another kind of royalty and another kind of riches than we usually think of. I want to talk about the treasures hidden in books, and tell you how we can find them--and how we can lose them. That's a serious subject, and a wide one! In fact, it's so wide, I could never even attempt to exhaust it. All I hope to do is to bring up a few simple thoughts about reading that seem more impressive to me every day as I see public opinion wanting to expand education. The way to do this is to read more.