Excerpt from Address Delivered Before the New York Society Library on the One Hundredth Anniversary of Its Incorporation, November 9th, 1872Books may be called ancient bottles, where in skins of the goat, the calf, and the sheep are stored the rarest wines, expressed and fermented, of the teeming human brain. Books hold, ever ready for our daily use, the wisdom of sages, the learning of scholars, the fancy of story-tellers, and the song of poets; the best thoughts of the best thinkers; the very essence of the highest mental powers in their happiest moments of inspiration.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition.

We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.