This selection of One hundred best books is made after a different method and with a different purpose from the selections already in existence. Those appar ently are designed to stuff the minds of young persons with an accumulation of standard learning calculated to alarm and discourage the boldest. The following list is frankly subjective in its choice; being indeed the selec tion of one individual, wandering at large and in freedom through these realms of gold. The compiler holds the View that in expressing his own predilection, he is also supplying the need of kindred minds; minds that read purely for the pleasure of read ing, and have no sinister Wish to transform themselves by that process into what are called cultivated persons. The compiler feels that any one who succeeds in reading, with reasonable receptivity, the books in this list, must become, at the end, a person with whom it would be a delight to share that most classic of all pleasurable arts the art of intelligent conversation.