CHAPTER I

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CONFESSIONS OF A

BOOK-LOVER

BY

MAURICE FRANCIS EGAN

[Illustration]

GARDEN CITY NEW YORK

DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY

1922

COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY

DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF TRANSLATION

INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES, INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES

AT

THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, N. Y.

IN MEMORY OF

THEODORE ROOSEVELT

A MAN OF ACTION

IN LOVE WITH BOOKS

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

I. MY BOYHOOD READING 1

Early Recollections.

The Bible.

Essays and Essayists.

II. POETS AND POETRY 76

France--Of Maurice de Gu['e]rin.

Dante.

English and American Verse.

III. CERTAIN NOVELISTS 134

IV. LETTERS, BIOGRAPHIES, AND MEMOIRS 156

V. BOOKS AT RANDOM 205

CONFESSIONS OF A BOOK-LOVER

CHAPTER I

MY BOYHOOD READING

_Early Recollections_

To get the best out of books, I am convinced that you must begin to love

these perennial friends very early in life. It is the only way to know

all their "curves," all those little shadows of expression and small

lights. There is a glamour which you never _see_ if you begin to read

with a serious intention late in life, when questions of technique and

grammar and mere words begin to seem too important.

Then you have become too critical to feel through all Fenimore Cooper's

verbiage the real lakes and woods, or the wild fervour of romance

beneath dear Sir Walter's mat of words. You lose the unreclaimable

flavour of books. A friend you may irretrievably lose when you lose a

friend--if you are so deadly unfortunate as to lose a friend--for even

the memories of him are embittered; but no great author can ever have

done anything that will make the book you love less precious to you.

The new school of pedagogical thought disapproves, I know, of

miscellaneous reading, and no modern moralist will agree with Madame de

S['e]vign['e] that "bad books are better than no books at all"; but

Madame de S['e]vign['e] may have meant books written in a bad style, or

feeble books, and not books bad in the moral sense. However, I must

confess that when I was young, I read several books which I was told

afterward were very bad indeed. But I did not find this out until

somebody told me! The youthful mind must possess something of the

quality attributed to a duck's back! I recall that once "The Confessions

of Rousseau" was snatched suddenly away from me by a careful mother just

as I had begun to think that Jean Jacques was a very interesting man and

almost as queer as some of the people I knew. I believe that if I had

been allowed to finish the book, it would have become by some mental

chemical process a very edifying criticism of life.

"Tom Jones" I found in an attic and I was allowed to read it by a pious

aunt, whom I was visiting, because she mixed it up with "Tom Brown of

Rugby"; but I found it even more tiresome than "Eric, or Little by

Little," for which I dropped it. I remember, too, that I was rather

shocked by some things written in the Old Testament; and I retorted to

my aunt's pronouncement that she considered "the 'Arabian Nights' a

dangerous book," by saying that the Old Testament was the worst book I

had ever read; but I supposed "people had put something into it when God

wasn't looking." She sent me home.

At home, I was permitted to read only the New Testament. On winter

Sunday afternoons, when there was nothing else to do, I became sincerely

attached to the Acts of the Apostles. And I came to the conclusion that

nobody could tell a short story as well as Our Lord Himself. The

Centurion was one of my favourite characters. He seemed to be such a

good soldier; and his plea, "Lord, I am not worthy," flashes across my

mental vision every day of my life.

In the Catholic churches, a part of the Gospel is read every Sunday, and

carefully interpreted. This always interested me because I knew in

advance what the priest was going to read. Most of the children of my

acquaintance were taught their Scriptures through the International

Sunday-school lessons, and seemed to me to be submerged in the geography

of Palestine and other tiresome details. For me, reading as I did, the

whole of the New Testament was radiant with interest, a frankly human

interest. There were many passages that I did not pretend to understand,

sometimes because the English was obscure or archaic, and sometimes

because my mind was not equal to it or my knowledge too small. Whatever

may be the opinion of other people, mine is that the reading of the New

Testament in the simplicity of childhood, with the flower of intuition

not yet blighted, is one of the most beautiful of mental experiences. In

my own case, it gave a glow to life; it caused me to distinguish between

truth and fairy tales, between fact and fiction--and this is often very

difficult for an imaginative child.

This kind of reading implies leisure and the absence of distraction.

Unhappily, much leisure does not seem to be left for the modern child.

The unhappy creature is even told that there will be "something in

Heaven for children to do!" As to distractions, the modern child is

surrounded by them; and it appears to be one of the main intentions of

the present system of instruction not to leave to a child any moments of

leisure for the indulgence of the imagination. But I am not offering the

example of my childhood for imitation by the modern parents.

Nevertheless, it had great consolations. There were no "movies" in those

days, and the theatre was only occasionally permitted; but on long

afternoons, after you had learned to read, you might lose yourself in

"The Scottish Chiefs" to your heart's content. It seems to me that the

beauty of this fashion of leisurely reading was that you had time to

visualize everything, and you felt the dramatic moments so keenly, that

a sense of unreality never obtruded itself at the wrong time. It was not

necessary for you to be told that Helen Mar was beautiful. It was only

necessary for her to say, in tones so entrancing that you heard them,

"My Wallace!" to know that she was the loveliest person in all Scotland.

But "The Scottish Chiefs" required the leisure of long holiday

afternoons, especially as the copy I read had been so misused that I

had to spend precious half hours in putting the pages together. It was

worth the trouble, however.

Before I could read, I was compelled on rainy days to sit at my mother's

knee and listen to what _she_ read. I am happy to say that she never

read children's books. Nothing was ever adapted to my youthful

misunderstanding. She read aloud what she liked to read, and she never

considered whether I liked it or not. It was a method of discipline. At

first, I looked drearily out at the soggy city street, in which rivulets

of melted snow made any exercise, suitable to my age, impossible. There

is nothing so hopeless for a child as an afternoon in a city when the

heavy snows begin to melt. My mother, however, was altogether regardless

of what happened outside of the house. At two o'clock precisely--after

the manner of the King in William Morris's "Earthly Paradise"--she waved

her wand. After that, all that I was expected to do was to make no

noise.

In this way I became acquainted with "The Virginians," then running in

_Harper's Magazine_, with "Adam Bede" and "As You Like It" and "Richard

III." and "Oliver Twist" and "Nicholas Nickleby" and "Valentine

Vox"--why "Valentine Vox?"--and other volumes when I should have been

listening to "Alice in Wonderland." But when I came, in turn, to "Alice

in Wonderland," I found Alice's rather dull in comparison with the

adventures of the Warrington brothers. And Thackeray's picture of Gumbo

carrying in the soup tureen! To have listened to Rebecca's description

of the great fight in "Ivanhoe," to have lived through the tournament of

Ashby de la Zouche, was a poor preparation for the vagaries of the queer

creatures that surrounded the inimitable Alice.

There appeared to be no children's books in the library to which we had

access. It never seemed to me that "Robinson Crusoe" or "Gulliver's

Travels" or "Swiss Family Robinson" were children's books; they were not

so treated by my mother, and I remember, as a small boy, going up to

Chestnut Street in Philadelphia, with divine eagerness, to buy the

latest number of a Dickens serial. I think the name of the shop--the

shop of Paradise--which sold these books was called Ashburnham's. It may

be asked how the episode in "Adam Bede" of Hetty and that of "little

Em'ly" in Dickens struck the child mind. As I remember, the child mind

was awed and impressed, by a sense of horror, probably occasioned as

much by the force of the style, by the suggestions of an unknown terror,

as by any facts which a child could grasp.

It was a curious thing that my mother, who had remarkably good taste in

literature, admired Mrs. Henry Wood extravagantly. She also admired

Queen Victoria. She never read "East Lynne" aloud, because, I gathered,

she considered it "improper"; and Miss Braddon's "Lady Audley's Secret"

came under the same ban, though I heard it talked of frequently. It was

difficult to discover where my mother drew the line between what was

"proper" and what was "not proper." Shakespeare she seemed to regard as

eminently proper, and, I noticed, hesitated and mumbled only when she

came to certain parts of Ophelia's song. It seems strange now that I

never rated Mrs. Henry Wood's novels with those of George Eliot or

Thackeray or Dickens. There seemed to be some imperceptible difference

which my mother never explained, but which I, instinctively, understood;

and when Anthony Trollope's "Orley Farm" was read, I placed him above

Mrs. Henry Wood, but not on an equality with Dickens or Thackeray.

_Harper's Magazine_, in those days, contained great treasure! There, for

instance, were the delightful articles by Porte Crayon--General

Strothers, I think. These one listened to with pleasure; but the bane of

my existence was Mr. Abbott's "Life of Napoleon Bonaparte." It seemed to

me as if it would never end, and it stretched as dolorously before me as

that other fearful process which appalled my waking days--the knowledge

that all my life I should be obliged to clean my teeth three times a day

with powdered charcoal!

After a time, I began to read for myself; but the delights of desultory

reading were gloomed by the necessity of studying long lessons that no

emancipated child of to-day would endure. Misguided people sometimes

came to the school and told childish stories, at which we all laughed,

but which even the most illiterate despised. To have known George

Warrington, to have mingled familiarly in the society of George

Washington, to remember the picture of Beatrix Esmond coming down the

stairs--I am not speaking of Du Maurier's travesties of that delightful

book--to have seen the old ladies in "Cranford," sucking their oranges

in the privacies of their rooms, made one despise foolish little tales

about over-industrious bees and robins which seemed not even to have the

ordinary common sense of geese!

Suddenly, my mother became a devout Catholic. The scene changed. On one

unhappy Sunday afternoon "Monte Cristo" was rudely snatched from my

entranced hands. Dumas was on the list of the "improper," and to this

day I have never finished the episodes in which I was so deeply

interested. Now the wagon of the circulating library ceased to come as

in the old days. The children of the neighbours offered me Sunday-school

books, taken from the precious store of the Methodist Sunday School

opposite our house. They seemed to me to be stupid beyond all words.

There was not one really good fight in them all, and after an honest

villain like Brian de Bois Guilbert, the bad people in these volumes

were very lacking in stamina. The "Rollo" books were gay compared to

them. I concluded that if anything on earth could make a child hate

religion, it was the perusal of these unreal books. My mother saw that I

had Alban Butler's "Lives of the Saints" for Sunday reading. They were

equally dull; and other "Lives," highly recommended, were quite as

uninspiring as the little volumes from the Protestant library. They were

generally translated from the French, without vitality and without any

regard for the English idiom. I recall, through the mists, sitting down

one Sunday afternoon, to read "The Life of Saint Rose of Lima." As it

concerned itself with South America, it seemed to me that there might be

in it a good fighter or two; or, at least, somebody might cut off the

ear of a High Priest's servant as was done in the New Testament. But no,

I was shocked to read in the very beginning, that

so pure was the little Saint, even in her infancy, that when her

uncle, who was her godfather, kissed her after her baptism, a rosy

glow, a real blush of shame, overspread her countenance.

In that book I read no more that day!

But I discovered a volume I have never forgotten, which probably after

"The Young Marooners," had the greatest influence on me for a short

period. This was "Fabiola," by Cardinal Wiseman. There was good stuff in

it; it made me feel proud to be a Christian; it was full of thrills;

and it taught a lot about the archaeology of Rome, for it was part of

that excellent story. I have always looked on "Fabiola" as a very great

book. Then at Christmas, when my father gave me "The Last Days of

Pompeii," I was in a new world, not alien to the world of "Fabiola," but

in some way supplementary to it. This gift was accompanied by Washington

Irving's "Tales of the Alhambra." _Conspuez les livres des poup['e]es!_

What nice little story books, arranged for the growing mind, could

awaken such visions of the past, such splendid arabesques and trailing

clouds of glory as this book! Read at the right time, it makes the

pomegranate and the glittering crescents live forever, and creates a

love for Spain and a romance of old Spain which can never die.

After this, I had a cold mental douche. I was given "Les Enfants des

Bois," by Elie Berthet in French, to translate word for word. It was a

horrible task, and the difficulties of the verbs and the laborious

research in the dictionary prevented me from enjoying the adventures of

these infants. I cannot remember anything that happened to them; but I

know that the book gave me an ever-enduring distrust of the subjunctive

mood in the Gallic language. Somebody had left about a copy of a French

romance called "Les Aventures de Polydore Marasquin." It was of things

that happened to a man in a kingdom of monkeys. It went very well, with

an occasional use of the dictionary, until I discovered that the

gentleman was about to engage himself to a very attractive monkeyess. I

gave up the book in disgust, but I have since discovered that there have

been lately several imitators of these adventures, which I think were

written by an author named L['e]on Gozlan.

About this time, the book auction became a fashion in Philadelphia. If

your people had respect for art, they invariably subscribed to a

publication called the _Cosmopolitan Art Magazine_, and you received a

steel engraving of Shakespeare and his Friends, with Sir Walter Raleigh

very much in the foreground, wearing a beautifully puffed doublet and

very well-fitting hose, and another steel engraving of Washington at

Lexington. If your people were interested in literature, they frequented

the book auctions. My father had a great respect for what he called

"classical literature." He considered Cowper's "The Task" immensely

classical; it was beautifully bound, and he never read it. One day he

secured a lovely edition of the "Complete Works of Thomas Moore." It had

been a subject of much competition at the auction, and was cherished

accordingly. The binding was tooled. It was put on the centre table and

adored as a work of art. Here was richness!

Tom Moore's long poems are no doubt classed at present as belonging to

those old and faded gardens in which "The Daisy" and "The Keepsake," by

Lady Blessington, once flourished; but if I could only recall the

pleasure I had in the reading of "Lalla Rookh" and "The Veiled Prophet

of Korhasson," I think I should be very happy. And the notes to "Lalla

Rookh" and to Moore's prose novel of "The Epicurean"! "The Epicurean"

was not much of a novel, but the notes were full of amazing Egyptian

mysteries, which seemed quite as splendid as the machinery in the

"Arabian Nights." The notes to "Lalla Rookh" smelled of roses, and I

remember as a labour of love copying out all the allusions to roses in

these notes with the intention of writing about them when I grew up. My

mother objected to the translations from Anacreon; she said they were

"improper"; but my father said that he had been assured on competent

authority that they were "classic," and of course that settled it. There

was no story in them, and they seemed to me to be stupid.

Just about this time, one of the book auctions yielded up a copy of the

"Complete Works of Miss Mitford." You perhaps can imagine how a city

boy, who was allowed to spend two weeks each year at the most on the

arid New Jersey seacoast, fell upon "Our Village." It became an

incentive for long walks, in the hope of finding some country lanes and

something resembling the English primroses. I read and reread "Our

Village" until I could close my eyes at any time and see the little

world in which Miss Mitford lived. I tried to read her tragedy, "The Two

Foscari." A tragedy had a faint interest; but, being exiled to the attic

for some offense against the conventionalities demanded of a

Philadelphia child, with no book but Miss Mitford's, I spent my time

looking up all the references to roses in her tragedies. These I

combined with the knowledge acquired from Tom Moore, and made notes for

a paper to be printed in some great periodical in the future. Why roses?

Why Miss Mitford and roses? Why Tom Moore and roses? I do not know,

but, when I was sixteen years of age, I printed the paper in _Appleton's

Journal_, where it may still be found. My parents, who did not look on

my literary attempts, at the expense of mathematics, with favour,

suggested that I was a plagiarist, but as I had no time to look up the

meaning of the word in the dictionary, I let it go. It simply struck me

as one of those evidences of misunderstanding which every honest artist

must be content to accept.

My mother, evidently fearing the influence of "classical" literature,

gave me one day "The Parent's Assistant," by Miss Edgeworth. I think

that it was in this book that I discovered "Rosamond; or The Purple Jar"

and the story of the good boy or girl who never cut the bit of string

that tied a package; I sedulously devoted myself to the imitation of

this economic child, and was very highly praised for getting the best

out of a good book until I broke a tooth in trying to undo a very tough

knot.

It was a far cry from the respectable Miss Edgeworth to a series of

Beadle's "Dime Novels." I looked on them as delectable but inferior.

There was a prejudice against them in well-brought-up households; but

if you thoughtfully provided yourself with a brown paper cover, which

concealed the flaring yellow of Beadle's front page, you were very

likely to escape criticism. I never finished "Osceola, the Seminole,"

because my aunt looked over my shoulder and read a rapturous account of

a real fight, in which somebody kicked somebody else violently in the

abdomen. My aunt reported to my mother that the book was very

"indelicate" and after that Beadle's "Dime Novels" were absolutely

forbidden. At school, we were told that any boy who read Beadle's was a

moral leper; but as most of us concluded that leper had something to do

with leaper, the effect was not very convincing.

Perhaps I might have been decoyed back to Beadle's, for all the

youngsters knew that there was nothing really wrong in them, but I

happened to remember the scene in Sir Walter Scott's "Abbot," where

Edward Glendenning wades into the sea to prevent Mary Stuart from

leaving Scotland. I hied me to "The Monastery" and devoured everything

of Sir Walter's except "Saint Ronan's Well." That never seemed worthy of

the great Sir Walter. "The Black Dwarf" and "Anne of Geierstein" were

rather tough reading, and "Count Robert of Paris" might have been

written by Lord Bacon, if Lord Bacon had been a contemporary of Sir

Walter's. "Peveril of the Peak" and "Ivanhoe" and "Bride of Lammermoor"

again and again dazzled and consoled me until I discovered "Nicholas

Nickleby."

"Nicholas Nickleby" took entire possession of me. In the rainy winter

afternoons, when nothing could occur out of doors which a respectable

city boy was permitted to indulge in, I found that I was expected to

work. Boys worked hard at their lessons in those days. There was a

kitchen downstairs with a Dutch oven not used in the winter. There it

was easy to build a small fire and to toast bread and to read "Nicholas

Nickleby" after one had rushed through the required tasks, which

generally included ten pages of the "Historia Sacra" in Latin. If you

never read "Nicholas Nickleby" when you were young, you cannot possibly

know the flavour of Dickens. You can't laugh now as you laughed then.

Oh, the delight of Mr. Crummles's description of his wife's dignified

manner of standing with her head on a spear!

The tragedy in "Nicholas Nickleby" never appealed to me. It was

necessary to skip that. When the people were gentlemanly and ladylike,

they became great bores. But what young reader of Dickens can forget the

hostile attitude of Mr. Lillyvick, great-uncle of the little Miss

Kenwigses, when Nicholas attempted to teach them French? As one grows

older, even Mr. Squeers and 'Tilda give one less real delight; but think

of the first discovery of them, and it is like Balboa's--or was it

Cortez's?--discovery of the Pacific in Keats's sonnet. "Nicholas

Nickleby" was read over and over again, with unfailing pleasure. I found

"Little Dorrit" rather tiresome; "Barnaby Rudge" and "A Tale of Two

Cities" seemed to be rather serious reading, not quite Dickensish enough

for my taste, yet better than anything else that anybody had written. My

later impressions of Dickens modified these instinctive intuitions.

One day, a set of Thackeray arrived, little green volumes, as I

remember, and I began to read "Vanity Fair." My mother seized it and

read it aloud again. Her confessor had told her that a dislike for good

novels was "Puritan" and she, shocked by the implied reproach, took

again to novel reading. I am afraid that I disliked Colonel Dobbin and

Amelia very much. Becky Sharp pleased me beyond words; I don't think

that the morality of the case affected my point of view at all. I was

delighted whenever Becky "downed" an enemy. They were such a lot of

stupid people--the enemies--and I reflected during the course of the

story that, after all, Thackeray had said that poor Becky had no mother

to guide her footsteps. When the Marquis of Steyne was hit on the

forehead with the diamonds, I thought it served him right; but I was

unhappy because poor Becky had lost the jewels. In finishing the book

with those lovely Thackerayan cadences, my mother said severely, "That

is what always happens to bad people!" But in my heart I did not believe

that Becky Sharp was a bad person at all.

For a time I returned to Dickens, to "Nicholas Nickleby," to "David

Copperfield." I respected Thackeray. He had gripped me in some way that

I could not explain. But Dickens I loved. Later--it was on one June

afternoon I think--when the news of Dickens's death arrived, it seemed

to me that for a while all delight in life had ended.

One of those experts in psychology who are always seeking questions

sometime ago wrote to me demanding if "Plutarch's Lives" had influenced

me, and whether I thought they were good reading for the young. Our

"Plutarch" was rather appalling to look at. It was bound in mottled

cardboard, and the pages had red edges; but I attacked it one day, when

I was about ten years of age, and became enthralled. It was "actual." My

mother was a veteran politician, and read a daily paper, with Southern

tendencies called the _Age_; my father belonged to the opposite party,

and admired Senator Hoar as greatly as my mother admired the famous

Vallandigham. Between the two, I had formed a very poor opinion of

American statesmen in general; but the statesmen in "Plutarch" were of a

very different type.

Julius Caesar interested me; but Brutus filled me with exaltation. I had

not then read Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar." It seemed to me that Brutus

was a model for all time. Now, understand I was a good Christian child,

and I said my prayers every night and morning, but this did not prevent

me from hating the big bully of the school, who made the lives of the

ten or fifteen small boys a perpetual torment. How we suffered, no

adult human tongue can tell--and our tongues never told because it was a

convention that tales should not be told out of school. One of the

pleasant tricks of the bully and his friends was to chase the little

boys after school in the winter and bury them until they were almost

suffocated in the snow which was piled up in the narrow streets. It was

not only suffocating snow, but it was dirty snow. It happened that I had

been presented with a penknife consisting of two rather leaden blades

covered with a brilliant iridescent mother-of-pearl handle. The bully

wanted this knife, and I knew it. Generally, I left it at home; but it

occurred to me on one inspired morning, after I had read "Plutarch" the

night before, that I would display the knife open in my pocket, and when

he threw the full weight of his body upon me, I would kill him at once,

by an upward thrust of the knife.

This struck me as a good deed entirely worthy of Brutus. Of course, I

knew that I should be hanged, but then I expected the glory of making a

last dying speech, and, besides, the school would have a holiday. On the

morning preceding the great sacrifice, I gave out dark hints to the

small boys, distributed my various belongings to friends who were about

to be bereaved, and predicted a coming holiday. I was looked on as

rather "crazy," but I reflected that I would soon be considered heroic,

and my friends gladly accepted the gifts.

The fatal afternoon came. I displayed the penknife. The chase began. The

bully and his chosen friends threw themselves upon me. The moment had

come; I thrust the knife upward; the big boy uttered a howl, and ran,

still howling. I looked for blood, but there was none visible; I came to

the conclusion, with satisfaction, that he was bleeding internally. I

spent a gloomy evening at home uttering dire predictions which were

incomprehensible to the members of my family, and reread Brutus, in the

"Lives."

The next morning I went to school with lessons unstudied and awaited

events. The mother of the bully appeared, and entered into an excited

colloquy with the very placid and dignified teacher. I announced to the

boy next to me, "My time has come." I was called up to the awful desk.

"Is he dead?" I asked. "Did he bleed internally?" "You little wretch,"

the mother of the tyrant said, "you cut such fearful holes in my son's

coat, that he is afraid to come to school to-day!" Then I said,

regretfully, "Oh, I hoped that I had killed him." There was a sensation;

my character was blackened. I was set down as a victim of total

depravity; I endured it all, but I knew in my heart that it was

"Plutarch." This is the effect that "Plutarch" had on the mind of a good

Christian child.

The effects of "Plutarch" on my character were never discovered at home,

and as I grew older and learned one or two wrestling tricks, the bully

let me alone. Besides, my murderous intention, which had leaked out,

gave me such a reputation that I became a dictator myself, and made

terms for the small boys, in the name of freedom, which were sometimes

rather despotic.

It was also during these days that I remember carrying confusion into

the family when a patronizing, intellectual lady called and said, "I

hope that this dear little boy is reading the Rollo books?" "No," I

answered quickly and indiscreetly, "I am reading 'The New Magdalen,' by

Wilkie Collins." I did not think much of Wilkie Collins until I read

"The Moonstone." It seemed that "The New Magdalen" had been purchased

inadvertently by my father, in a packet of "classics."

My father generally arrived at home late in the afternoon, when he read

the evening paper. After a very high tea, he stretched himself on a long

horsehair-covered sofa, and bade me read to him, generally from the

novels of George Eliot, or from certain romances running through the New

York _Ledger_ by Sylvanus Cobb, Jr. These were generally stories of the

times of the Irish Kings, in which gallowglasses and lovely and

aristocratic Celtic maidens disported themselves. My mother, after her

conversion, disapproved of the New York _Ledger_. In fact, there were

families in Philadelphia whose heads regarded it with real horror! In

our house, there was a large stack of this interesting periodical,

which, with many volumes of Godey's _Lady's Book_, were packed in the

attic.

It happened that a young man, in whom my father had a great interest,

was threatened with tuberculosis. An awful rumour was set abroad that he

was about to die. He sent over a messenger asking my father for the back

numbers of the New York _Ledger_ containing a long serial story by Mrs.

Anna Cora Mowatt. As I remember, it was a story of the French

Revolution, and the last number that I was allowed to read ended with a

description of a dance in an old ch[^a]teau, when the Marquise, who was

floating through the minuet, suddenly discovered blood on the white-kid

glove of her right hand! I was never permitted to discover where the

blood came from; I should like to find out now if I could find the

novel. I remember that my mother was terribly shocked when my father

sent the numbers of the New York _Ledger_ to the apparently dying man.

"It's a horrible thing," my mother said, "to think of any Christian

person reading the New York _Ledger_ at the point of death." The young

man, however, did not die; and I rather think my father attributed his

recovery to the exhilarating effect of one of his favourite stories.

There were certain other serial stories I was ordered to read; they were

stories of the Irish Brigade in France. My mother, I remember,

disapproved of them because Madame de Pompadour was frequently

mentioned, and she thought that my father regarded the lady in question

too tolerantly. These romances were, I think, written by a certain Myles

O'Reilly who was in some way connected with the army. This procedure of

reading aloud was not always agreeable, as my father frequently went to

sleep in the middle of a passage and forgot what I had already read. The

consequence was that I was obliged to begin the same old story over

again on the following evening.

It happened that my father was one of the directors of a local library,

and in it I found Bates's volume on the Amazon--I forget the exact title

of the book. I found myself in a new world; I lived in Para; I tried to

manufacture an imitation of the Urari poison with a view to

exterminating rats in the warehouse by the use of arrows; I lived and

had my being in the forests of Brazil; and I produced, at intervals, a

thrilling novel, with the glowing atmosphere of the Amazon as a

background. I preferred Mr. Bates to any novelist I had ever read. He

held possession of my imagination, until he was forced out by a Mr.

Jerningham who wrote a most entrancing book on Brittany. Saint Malo

became the only town for me; I adored Henri de la Rochejaquelein; and

the Stuarts, whom I had learned to love at the knees of Sir Walter

Scott, were displaced by the Vend['e]ans.

Noticing that I was devoted to books of travel, my father asked me to

parse Kane's "Arctic Voyages." I found the volumes cold and repellent.

They gave me a rooted prejudice against the North Pole which even the

adventure of Doctor Cook has never enabled me to overcome.

About this time, my mother began to feel that I needed to read something

more gentle, which would root me more effectively in my religion. She

began, I think, with Cardinal Newman's "Callista" in which there was a

thrilling chapter called "The Possession of Juba." It seemed to me one

of the most stirring things I had ever read. Then I was presented with

Mrs. Sadlier's "The Blakes and the Flanagans," which struck me as a very

delightful satire, and with a really interesting novel of New York

called "Rosemary," by Dr. J. V. Huntington; and then a terribly

blood-curdling story of the Carbonari in Italy, called "Lionello." After

this I was wafted into a series of novels by Julia Kavanagh; "Natalie,"

and "Bessie," and "Seven Years," I think were the principals. My father

declined to read them; he thought they were too sentimental, but as the

author had an Irish name he was inclined to regard them with tolerance.

He thought I would be better employed in absorbing "Tom and Jerry; or

The Adventures of Corinthian Bob," by Pierce Egan. My mother objected to

this, and substituted "Lady Violet; or the Wonder of Kingswood Chace,"

by the younger Pierce Egan, which she considered more moral.

My father was very generous at Christmas, and I bought a large volume of

Froissart for two dollars and a half at an old book stand on Fifth

Street, near Spruce. After this, I was lost to the world during the

Christmas holidays. After breakfast, I saturated myself with the

delightful battles in that precious book.

My principal duty was to look after the front pavement. In the spring

and summer, it was carefully washed twice a week and reddened with some

kind of paint, which always accompanied a box of fine white sand for the

scouring of the marble steps; but in the winter, this respectable

sidewalk had to be kept free from snow and ice.

Hitherto my battle with the elements had been rather a diversion.

Besides, I was in competition with the other small boys in the block--or

in the "square," as we Philadelphians called it. Now it became irksome;

I neglected to dig the ice from between the bricks; I skimped my

cleaning of the gutter; I forgot to put on my "gums." The boy next door

became a mirror of virtue; he was quoted to me as one whose pavement was

a model to all the neighbours; indeed, it was rumoured that the Mayor

passing down our street, had stopped and admired the working of his

civic spirit, while the result of my efforts was passed by with evident

contempt. I did not care. I hugged Froissart to my heart. Who would

condescend to wield a broom and a wooden shovel, even for the reward of

ten cents in cash, when he could throw javelins and break lances with

the knights of the divine Froissart? The end of my freedom came after

this. The terrible incident of the Mayor's contempt, invented, I

believe, by the boy next door, induced my mother to believe that I was

not only losing my morals, but becoming too much of a book-worm. For

many long weeks I was deprived of any amusing book except "Robinson

Crusoe." After this interval, vacation came; I seemed to have grown

older, and books were never quite the same again.

In the vacation, however, when the days were very long and there was a

great deal of leisure, I found myself reduced to Grimms' "Fairy Tales"

and a delightful volume by Madame Perrault, and I was even then very

much struck by the difference. Of course I read Grimm from cover to

cover, and went back again over the pages, hoping that I had neglected

something. The homeliness of the stories touched me; it seemed to me

that you found yourself in the atmosphere of old Germany. Madame

Perrault was more delicate; her fairy tales were pictures of no life

that ever existed, and there was a great dissimilarity between her

"Cendrillon" and the Grimms' story of "Aschenputtel." As I remember, the

haughty sisters in the story of the beautiful girl who lived among the

ashes each cut off one of her toes, in order to make her feet seem

smaller and left bloody marks on the glass slipper. Madame Perrault's

slipper was, I think, of white fur, and there was no such brutality in

_her_ fairyland. But, except Hans Christian Andersen's, there are no

such gripping fairy tales as those of the Brethren Grimm. During this

vacation, too, I discovered the "Leprachaun," the little Irish fairy

with the hammer. He was not at all like the English fairies in

Shakespeare's "Midsummer Night's Dream," and, leaving out Ariel, I

think I liked him best of all.

That summer, too, I found an old copy of "Midsummer Night's Dream" in

the attic. The print was exceedingly fine, but everything was there. No

doubt there is much to be said by the pedagogues in favour of

scrupulously studying Shakespeare's plays; but if you have never

discovered "As You Like It" or "Midsummer Night's Dream" when you were

very young, you will never know the meaning of that light which never

was on land or sea, and with which Keats surrounds us in the "Ode to the

Nightingale." The love interest did not count much. In my youthful

experience everybody either married or died, in books. That was to be

expected. It was the atmosphere that counted. One could see the troopers

coming into the open space in the Forest of Arden and hear their songs,

making the leaves of the trees quiver before they appeared. And Puck!

and Caliban! When I was young I was always very sorry for Caliban, and,

being very religious, I felt that the potent Prospero might have done

something for his soul.

There was a boy who lived near us called Lawrence Stockdale--peace be

to his ashes where-ever he rests! His father and mother, who were

persons of cultivation, encouraged him to read, but we were not of one

opinion on any subject. He was devoted to Dumas, the Elder. After the

episode of "Monte Cristo" I was led to believe that Dumas was "wrong." I

preferred Sir Walter Scott, and loved all the Stuarts, having a positive

devotion for Mary, Queen of Scots. One day, however, I discovered

somewhere, under a pile of old geometries and books about navigation, a

fat, red-bound copy of "Boccaccio." Stockdale said that "Boccaccio" was

"wronger" than Dumas, and that his people had warned him against the

stories of this Italian. As we lived near an Italian colony, and he

disliked Italians, while I loved them, I attributed this to mere

prejudice.

The "Boccaccio" was, as I have said, fat and large. For a boy who likes

to read, a fat book is very tempting, and just as I had seated myself

one afternoon on the front doorstep, to read the story of the Falcon,

and having finished it with great pleasure, dipped into another tale not

so edifying, my mother appeared. She turned pale with horror, and seized

the book at once. My father was informed of what had occurred. He was

little alarmed, I think. My mother said: "We shall have to change the

whole course of this boy's reading." "We shall have to change the boy

first," my father said, with a sigh. But this was not the end. At the

proper time I was led to the Pastor, who was my mother's confessor. The

book was presented to him for destruction.

"It's a bad book," the Monsignore said. "I hope you didn't talk about

any of these stories to the other boys in school?"

"Oh, no," I said; "if I did, they would say much worse things, and I

would probably have to tell them in confession. Besides," I added, "all

the people in the Boccaccio book were good Catholics, I suppose, as they

were Italians, and I think, after all, when they caught the plague, they

died good deaths."

The Pastor looked puzzled, took the book, and gave me his blessing and

dismissed me. And my mother seemed to think that I was sufficiently

exorcised.

After this the books I read were more carefully considered. I was given

the "Tales of Canon Schmidt"--dear little stories of German children in

the Black Forest, with strange little wood-cuts, which went very well

with another volume I found at this time called "Jack Halifax," not

"John Halifax, Gentleman," which my mother had already read to me--but a

curious little tome long out of print. And then there sailed upon my

vision a long procession of the works of the Flemish novelist, Hendrik

Conscience, whose "Lion of Flanders" opened a new world of romance, and

there were "Wooden Clara," and other pieces which made one feel as if

one lived in Flanders.

Just about this time I read in Littell's _Living Age_ a novel called

"The Amber Witch," and some of Fritz Reuter's Low German stories; but

these were all effaced by "The Quaker Soldier." This may not have been

much of a novel. I did not put it to the touch of comparison with "The

Virginians" or "Esmond." They were what my father called

"classics"--things superior and apart; but "The Quaker Soldier" was

quite good enough for me. It opened a new view of American Revolutionary

history, and then it was redolent of the country of Pennsylvania. I

recall now the incident of the Pennsylvania Dutch housewife's using her

thumb to spread the butter on the bread for the hungry soldier. This is

all that I can recall of those delectable pages. But, later, neither

Henry Peterson's "Pemberton" nor Dr. Weir Mitchell's "Hugh Wynne" seemed

to have the glory and the fascination of the long-lost "Quaker Soldier."

After this, I fell under the spell of the French Revolution through a

book, given to me by my mother, about _la Vend['e]e_. It was a dull book,

but nothing, not even a bad translation, could dim the heroism of Henri

de la Rochejaquelein for me, and I became a Royalist of the Royalists,

and held hotly the thesis that if George Washington had returned the

compliment of going over to France in '89, he would have done Lafayette

a great service by restoring the good Louis XVI. and the beautiful Marie

Antoinette!

When I had reached the age of seventeen I had developed, as the result

of my reading, a great belief in all lost causes. I had become

exceedingly devoted to the cause of Ireland as the kindly Pastor had

sent me a copy of "Willy Reilly and His Colleen Bawn," perhaps as an

antidote to the lingering effects of "Boccaccio." I was rather troubled

to find so many "swear words" in it, but I made all the allowances that

a real lover of literature is often compelled to make!

_The Bible_

The glimpses I had of the Bible, some of which rather prejudiced me, as

a moral child, against the Sacred Book, were, however, of inestimable

value. Of course the New Testament was always open to me, and I read it

constantly as a pleasure. The language, both in the Douai version and

the King James version, was often very obscure. Although I soon learned

to recognize the beauty of the 23rd Psalm in the King James

version--which I always read when I went to one of my cousins--I found

the sonorous Latinisms of the Douai version interesting. For a time I

was limited to a book of Bible stories given us to read at school, as it

was considered unwise to permit children to read the Old Testament

unexpurgated. After a while, however, the embargo seemed to be raised

for some reason or other, and again I was allowed to revel with a great

deal of profit in the wonderful poems, prophecies, and histories of the

Old Testament. I soon discovered that it was impossible to understand

the allusions in English literature without a knowledge of the Bible.

What would "Ruth among the alien corn" mean to a reader who had never

known the beauty of the story of Ruth? And the lilies of the field,

permeating all poetical literature, would have lost all their perfume if

one knew nothing about the Song of Solomon.

Putting aside the question as to whether young readers should be let

loose in the Old Testament or not, or whether modern ideas of purity are

justified in including ignorance as the supremest virtue, he who does

not make himself familiar with Biblical ideas and phraseology finds

himself in after-life with an incomplete medium of expression. It used

to be said of the typical English gentleman that all he needed to know

was to ride after the hounds and to construe Horace. This is not so

absurd, after all, as it appears to be to most moderns. To construe

Horace, of course, meant that he should have at least a speaking

acquaintance with one of the masterpieces of Roman literature, and this

knowledge gave him a grip on the universal speech of all cultivated

people. However useless his allusions to Chlo[:e] and to Maecenas were in

the business of practical life, he was at least able to understand what

they meant, and even a slight acquaintance with the Latins stamped him

as speaking the speech of a gentleman.

Similarly, a man who knows the Scriptures is fitted with allusions that

clarify and illuminate the ordinary speech. He may not have any

technical knowledge, or his technical knowledge may be so great as to

debar him from meeting other men in conversation on equal grounds; but

his reading of the Bible gives his speech or writing a background, a

colour, a metaphorical strength, which illuminate even the commonplace.

Strike the Bible from the sphere of any man's experience and he is in a

measure left out of much of that conversation which helps to make life

endurable.

Pagan mythology is rather out of fashion. Even the poets often now

assume that Clytie is a name that requires an explanation and that

Daphne and her flight through the laurel do not bring up immediate

memories of Syrinx and the reeds. The Dictionary of Lampri[`e]re is covered

with dust; and one may quote an episode from Ovid without an answering

glance of comprehension from the hearer. This does not imply ignorance;

it is only that, in the modern system, the old mythology is not taken

very seriously.

Since Latin and Greek have almost ceased to be a necessary part of a

gentleman's education, there is no class of allusions from which we can

draw to lighten or strengthen ordinary speech unless we turn to the

Bible. This deprives conversation of much of its colour and renders it

rather commonplace and meagre. Unfortunately, among many of our young

people, the Bible seems to be a book to be avoided or to be treated in a

rather "jocose" manner. To raise a laugh on the vaudeville stage, a

Biblical quotation has only to be produced, and the weary comedian, when

he is at a loss to get a witty speech across the footlights, is almost

sure to speak of Jonah and the whale!

It is disappointing to notice this gradual change that has taken place

in the attitude of the younger generation toward the Sacred Book. The

Sunday Schools, in their attempt to make the genealogies of importance

and to overload the memories of their little disciples with a multitude

of texts, or to over-explain every allusion in the terms of physical

geography, etc., may in a measure be responsible for this, but they

cannot be entirely responsible. One must admit that diversities of

interpretations of the Sacred Scriptures from a religious point of view

will always be an obstacle to their use in schools where the children of

Jews, of Mohammedans, and of the various Christian denominations

assemble. But there is always the home, where the first impetus to a

satisfactory knowledge of the Sacred Book ought to be given. The decay

of the practice of reading aloud in our homes is very evident in the

lack of real culture--or, rather, rudiments of real culture--in our

children. But there is no use in declaiming against this. Other times,

other manners; accusatory declamation is simply a luxury of Old Age!

Personally, my desultory reading of the Old and the New Testaments gave

me a background against which I could see the trend of the books I

devoured more clearly; it added immensely to my enjoyment of them;

besides, it was a moral and ethical safeguard. It was easy even for a

boy to discover that the morality of the New Testament was the standard

by which not only life, but literature, which is the finest expression

of life, should be judged. If there are great declamations, declamations

full of dramatic fire, which nearly every boy at school learns to love,

in the Old Testament, there are the most moving, tender, and simple

stories in the New. To the uncorrupted mind, to the unjaded mind, which

has not been forced to look on books as mere recitals of exciting

adventures, the Acts of the Apostles are full of entrancing episodes. It

is very easy for a receptive youth to acquire a taste for St. Paul, and

I soon learned that St. Paul was not only one of the greatest of letter

writers, but as a figure of history more interesting than Julius Caesar,

and certainly more modern. Young people delight in human documents. They

may not know why they delight in these documents, but it is because of

their humanity. Now who can be more human than St. Paul? And the more

you read his epistles, and the more you know of his life, the more human

he becomes. He knew how to be angry and sin not, and the way he "takes

it out" of those unreasonable people who would not accept his mission

has always been a great delight to me!

Under the spell of his writing, it was a pleasure to pick out the phases

of his history--a history that even then seemed to be so very modern,

and to a boy, with an unspoiled imagination, so very real. It seemed

only natural that he should be converted by a blast of illumination from

God. It is not hard for young people to accept miracles. All life is a

miracle, and the rising and setting of the sun was to me no more of a

miracle than the conversion of this fierce Jew, who was a Roman citizen.

He seemed so very noble and yet so very humble. He could command and

plead and weep and denounce; and he made you feel that he was generally

right. And then he was a tentmaker who understood Greek and who could

speak to the Greeks in their own language.

Late in the seventies when nearly every student I knew was a disciple of

Huxley and Tyndal and devoted to that higher criticism of the Bible

which was Germanizing us all, I fortified myself with St. Paul, and with

the belief that, if he could break the close exclusiveness of the Jews,

and take in the Gentiles, if he could throw off, not contemptuously,

many of the rigid ceremonies of his people, Christianity, in the modern

time, could very well afford to accept the new geological interpretation

of the story of Genesis without destroying in any way the faith which

St. Paul preached.

Somewhat later, too, when I read constantly and with increasing delight

the letters of Madame de S['e]vign['e], I put her second as a writer of

letters to the great St. Paul. The letters of Lord Chesterfield to his

sons came next, I think; long after, Andrew Lang's "Letters to Dead

Authors," and a very great letter I found in an English translation of

Balzac's "Le Lys dans la Vall['e]e."

It must not be understood that I put St. Paul in the same category with

these mundane persons. Nevertheless, I found St. Paul very often

reasonably mundane. He preferred to work as a tentmaker rather than take

money from his clients, and one could imagine him as preaching while he

worked. He frankly made collections for needy churches, and he was very

grateful to Phoebe for remembering that he was a hungry man and in

need of homely hospitality. He was interested in his fellow passengers

Aquilla and Priscilla whom he met on board the ship that was taking them

from Corinth to Ephesus. It was evident that they had not been able to

make their salt in Corinth, where, however, their poverty had not

interfered with their zeal in the cause of Christ. Any tent marked

"Ephesus" was sure to have a good sale anywhere. The tents from Ephesus

were as fashionable as the purple from Tyre, and St. Paul was pleased

that his two disciples should have a chance of being more prosperous. I

always felt, too, that, in his practical way, he knew that Ephesus would

give him a better chance of supporting himself.

That Saul of Tarsus had not lacked for luxuries in his youth, one easily

guessed. It was plain, too, that he had had the best possible

instructors, and I liked to believe, when I was young, that his muscles

had been well trained in the sports of gentlemen of his class.

Altogether, so graphic were his descriptions and so potent his

personality that, while Julius Caesar and Brutus receded, he filled the

foreground, and all the more because at this time I picked up an English

translation of Suetonius, just by chance one dark winter day, and as I

had not yet discovered that Suetonius was a "yellow" gossip, my idols,

some of the Roman heroes, received a great shock.

The constant reading of St. Paul led me to the Acts of the Apostles, and

I found St. Luke very good reading, though I often wished that, as I

understood he had some reputation as an artist, he had adorned his

writings with illustrations.

It was a great shock to discover that none of the Apostles wrote in

English, for it seemed to me that their styles were as different from

one another as any styles could be, and as I, having lived a great part

of my time in classes where Nepos and Caesar were translated by my dear

young friends, had very little confidence in the work of any translator,

I came to the conclusion that God had taken special care of the

translators of the Bible, for I could not help believing that He had no

interest whatever in the translations which we made daily for the

impatient ears of our instructors!

One could not help loving St. Paul, too, because he was such a good

fighter. When he said he fought with beasts, I was quite sure that these

beasts were the unreasonable and unrighteous persons who persecuted and

contradicted him. No obstacle deterred him, and he was gentle, too,

although he called things by their right names and his denunciations

were so vivid and mouthfilling that you knew his enemies must have been

afraid to open their lips while he was near them, whatever they might

have said behind his back.

My devotion to St. Paul brought me into disrepute one Friday at school

when discipline was relaxed, and the teacher condescended to

conversation. We were asked who was our favourite hero, and when it came

to my turn I answered "St. Paul." As George Washington, Abraham Lincoln,

Thomas Jefferson, General Grant, General Lee, Napoleon, and Alexander

the Great, had walked in procession before I produced my hero, I was

looked on as rather weakminded. The teacher, too, seemed astonished, and

he asked me on what grounds I founded my worship. This question, coming

suddenly, petrified me for a moment, and I answered, "He fought with

beasts." This was taken as a personal allusion by some of my dear

comrades with whom I had had altercations, and I was made to suffer for

it as much as these dear comrades deemed prudent. However, they

discovered that I had "language" on my side, for on the next composition

day, when we read aloud the work of our brains, I accused them of "being

filled with all iniquity," and other evil things which brought down a

horrified remonstrance from the teacher, who was unaccustomed to such

plain English, but he was knocked high and dry by the proof that I was

only quoting St. Paul to the Romans.

Perhaps I became too familiar with St. Paul. Be that as it may, I

regarded him as a very good friend indeed, for some of his "language,"

quoted in times of crisis, produced a much better effect on one's

enemies than any swear word that could be invented. I am not excusing my

attitude toward the Bible, but merely explaining how it affected my

youthful mind. There was something extremely romantic in the very

phrase, "the tumult of the silversmiths" at Ephesus. It seemed to mean a

whole chapter of a novel in itself.

And there was the good centurion--Christ always seemed to have a

sympathy for soldiers--who was willing to save Paul when the ship, on

its way to Rome, was run aground. So he reached Melita where the amiable

barbarians showed him no small courtesy. And one could not help liking

the Romans; that is, the official Romans, even Felix, whose wife was a

Jew like St. Paul, and who, disgusted when the Apostle spoke to him of

chastity and of justice to come, yet hoped that money would be given him

by Paul, and frequently sent for, and often spoke with him. And how fine

seemed the Apostle's belief in his nobility as a Roman citizen! He

rendered unto Caesar the things that were Caesar's. And one could easily

imagine the pomp and circumstance when Agrippa and Bernice entered into

the hall of audience with the tribunes and principal men of the city!

And one could hear St. Paul saying, protecting himself nobly, through

the nobility of a Roman law:

For it seemeth to me unreasonable to send a prisoner and not to

signify the things laid to his charge,

and Agrippa's answer, after Paul's apologia:

In a little thou persuadest me to become a Christian!

But the story did not end then. I rehearsed over and over again what the

King Agrippa might have said to his sister, the noble and beautiful

Bernice--I knew nothing of the lady's reputation then--and how finally

they did become Christians. In my imagination, princely dignity and

exquisite grace were added to the external beauty of religion; and Paul

went to Rome protected by the law of the Romans. And yet the very

fineness of his attitude was the cause of his further imprisonment.

"This man," I often repeated with Agrippa, "might have been set at

liberty, if he had not appealed to Caesar."

It was St. Paul who sent me back to the Prophet Micheas, who had

previously struck me as of no importance at all, and I read:

And Thou, Bethlehem Ephrata, art a little one among the thousands

of Juda; out of thee shall he come forth unto me that is to be the

ruler in Israel; and his going forth is from the beginning, from

the days of eternity.

And back again to St. Matthew--

But they said to him: In Bethlehem of Juda; For so it is written by

the prophet; And thou, Bethlehem, the land of Juda, art not the

least among the princes of Juda; for out of thee shall come forth

the captain, who shall rule my people Israel.

These exercises in completing the prophecies of the Old Testament with

the fulfilments of the New were interesting, and I found great pleasure

in them. And this led me to a greater appreciation of the Old Testament,

against which I had been once rather prejudiced. One day, I was led, by

some reference or other in another book, to read the twenty-third psalm

of David, in the King James version. It struck me as much more simple

and appealing than the version in the Douai Bible, which begins in Latin

"_Dominus regit me_." It runs:

The Lord ruleth me: and I shall want nothing.

2 He hath set me in a place of pasture.

He hath brought me up, on the water of refreshment:

3 He hath converted my soul. He hath led me on the paths of

justice, for his own name's sake.

4 For though I should walk in the midst of the shadow of death, I

fear no evils, for thou art with me.

Thy rod and thy staff, they have comforted me.

5 Thou hast prepared a table before me, against them that afflict

me.

Thou hast anointed my head with oil: and my chalice which

inebriateth me how goodly is it.

And thy mercy will follow me all the days of my life.

And that I may dwell in the house of the Lord, unto length of days.

In the Douai version this psalm was called the twenty-second.

Without any special guidance--I think most of my teachers would have

looked on as dangerous any attempt to ally English literature with the

Bible--I soon discovered that nearly everything I read owed something to

the Bible. At first, the comparison of the twenty-third psalm in the

King James version enraptured me so much that I began to find fault with

the Latinized phrases of the Vulgate in English. It was the fashion in

the early seventies to be very Saxon in speech, especially in the

little group at school interested in English literature. Street cars at

this time were comparatively new in Philadelphia, and I think we reached

the last extremity of Saxonism in speech when we spoke of them as "folk

wains." The tide then turned toward the Latins; and I preferred the Book

of Job and the story of Ruth in the Latinized version, because the words

were more mouth filling, and because it was very difficult to translate

everything into a bald "early English medium", which for a time I had

been trying to do. It was Keats's lovely phrase "amid the alien corn"

which sent me back to "Ruth"; and a quotation in Quackenbos's

"Rhetoric"--"Can'st thou hook the Leviathan" which made me revel in

"Job."

Something Meg Merrilies said bore me on toward the roaring storm of

Isaiah. The Latinized medium seemed to suit his denunciations best; and

then, besides, I found more illuminating footnotes in the Douai version

than in the King James. In both versions, some passages were so obscure

that I often wondered how anybody could get any meaning out of them. I

was often astonished to find in English novels that the old people in

the cottages were soothed by texts, quoted at a great length, out of

which I could make nothing, so I limited myself to the Douai version,

which I found more illuminating.

Whether my system of reading is to be commended or not to young persons,

I am not prepared to say, but for me it made the Bible a really live

book. To be frank, and perhaps shocking at the same time--if anybody had

asked me whether, being marooned on an island, I should have most

preferred the Bible in my loneliness, I should promptly have answered

"No." At this age "Nicholas Nickleby" or "Midsummer Night's Dream," or

"The Tempest," or "As You Like it," or Macaulay's "Lays of Ancient

Rome," would have suited me better, provided, of course, that I could

have chosen only one book.

It was borne in on me many times that no author could improve on the

phrasing of the Bible. Both in the Vulgate and the King James versions

there are passages which, leaving aside all question of doctrine, it is

sacrilege to try to improve. The French translation of the Bible is, as

everybody knows, very paraphrastic, and that may account for the fact

that, while regarded as a precious depository of doctrine, it is not a

household book, and the dreadfully dull interpretations of Clement

Marot--called hymns--naturally bored a people who, in their hearts,

believe that God listens more amiably to petitions uttered in the

language of the Academy! In their novels, dealing with the beginnings of

Christianity--and there are many such novels in French unknown in other

countries--it is hard for a French author not to be rhetorical, in the

manner of the writer of "Ben Hur" when the death of Christ is described.

No human author could improve on the words of the Vulgate, or the words

of the King James version. What young heart can ponder over these words,

without a thrill, St. John XIX (Douai version: 1609; Rheims; 1582):

When Jesus therefore had seen his Mother and the disciple standing

whom he loved, he saith to his Mother: Woman, behold thy son.

After that, he saith to the disciple, Behold thy mother. And from

that day the disciple took her to his own.

Afterwards, Jesus knowing that all things were now accomplished,

that the Scripture might be fulfilled, said: I thirst.

Now there was a vessel set there full of vinegar, and they, putting

a sponge full of vinegar about hyssop, put it to his mouth.

And Jesus therefore when he had taken the vinegar, said, it is

consummated, and bowing his head, gave up the ghost.

When Marie Corelli became a popular author, there were persons

existing--happily, they have all gone to the great beyond--who thought

that the "talented" author could have done better!

_Essays and Essayists_

I am aware that many persons look on Emerson as somewhat dangerous

reading for a boy of sixteen. The mothers and fathers of my Baptist

friends and the uncle of my Methodist cousins forbade the reading of

Emerson because of his Unitarianism; but, as the rector of our parish

never denounced Unitarians from the altar, though he frequently offered

his compliments to Martin Luther, I paid no attention whatever to these

objections. I trust that I am not defending the miscellaneous reading of

my boyhood; I do not recommend this course to the approval of parents

and guardians; I am simply expressing the impression that certain books

made on my youthful mind and heart; for, though I never said so in

words, the books I liked were always nearer to my heart than to my mind.

I owe a great debt to Emerson.

It was on a hot afternoon during the summer vacation that, near sundown,

sitting on the warm marble steps of our house, I dipped into an early

edition of Emerson. I felt inspired at once to think great thoughts and

to do good things, to lift myself above the petty things of the earth,

and to feel that to be an American was to be at once proud and humble.

Emerson's abrupt sentences, like a number of brilliants set close

together, reminded me of "Proverbs"; but the Book of Proverbs did not

get so near to my actual life as the essays of Emerson. I liked the

lessons that he drew from the lives of great men. I was shocked when he

mentioned Confucius and Plato in the same breath as Christ; but I was

amiably tolerant, for I felt that he had never had the privilege of

studying the Little Catechism, and I thought of writing to him on the

subject. But somebody told me that he was an "American Classic" and,

from that, I concluded he was dead, and had doubtless already found out

his mistake.

Perhaps I might have been better engaged in reading the more practical

books offered to boys in our own time, if we had had them. There were

some books then on scientific subjects, reduced to the comprehension of

the young; but not so many as there are now. One of my uncles

recommended the works of Samuel Smiles--"Self-Help" I think was his

favourite; but Samuel Smiles never appealed to me. My small allowance,

paid weekly, could not have been affected by "Thrift", and when my uncle

quoted passages from this tiresome book I astounded him by replying, in

a phrase I wrongly attributed to the adorable Emerson, that if I had a

quarter to spend instead of twelve cents, I would give half of it for a

hyacinth! My miserly uncle said it sounded just like Mohammed, and that

Emerson had doubtless found it in that dangerous book, the Koran.

I cannot imagine any other author doing for me just what the essays of

Emerson did. In the first place, they seemed to me to be really

American; in the second, and largely because of their quality, they

offered an antidote to the materialism in the very air, which had

succeeded the Civil War. At this time there was much talk of money and

luxury everywhere about us. Even in our quiet neighbourhood, where

simple living was the rule, many had burst into ostentation, and moved

away into newer and more pretentious quarters, and there was a rumour

that some of these sought unlimited opportunities for extravagant

expenditure. We saw them driving in new carriages, and condescendingly

stopping before the white doors and the green window-shutters of our

old-fashioned colonial houses. They had made money through the war. For

the first time in our lives we boys heard of money making as the

principal aim of life. The fact that these successful persons were

classed as "shoddy" did not lessen the value of the auriferous

atmosphere about us. Emerson was a corrective to this materialism. As to

his philosophy or theology, that did not concern me any more than the

religious opinions of Julius Caesar, whose "Commentaries" I was obliged

to read. Emerson gave me a taste for the reading of essay.

By chance I fell upon some essays of Carlyle. The inflation of his style

did not deter me from thoroughly enjoying the paper on "Novalis." That

on "Cagliostro," however, was my favourite. It introduced me intimately

to the French Revolution. I disliked this great charlatan for his motto,

"Tread the lilies under foot." I was for the Bourbons! The French

Revolution, as a fact, was very near to me. My mother had been born (in

Philadelphia) in 1819, and my great-uncle and my grandfather had lived

through the French Revolution. There was a legend, moreover--probably

the same legend exists in every family of Irish descent whose

connections had lived in France--that one of them had been a clerk to

Fabre d'Eglantine, and had spent his time in crossing off the list of

the condemned the names of the Irish-French aristocrats and substituting

in their place others that did not happen to belong to Celts!

In spite of the Little Catechism and the uplifting influence of Emerson,

I looked on this probably mythical gentleman as one of the glories of

our family. And then there was an old man--very old--who walked up and

down Sixth Street with his head wrapped in a bandanna handkerchief,

bearing a parrot on his shoulder. The boys of the neighbourhood believed

that he was Sanson, the executioner of Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette.

We shivered when we saw him; but we boasted of his existence in our

neighbourhood, all the same. After I had read "Cagliostro" I devoured

every line on the subject of the French Revolution I could find. It

seemed to me that I would have been willing to give five years out of

my life to have lived in Paris during those horrors, and to have rescued

Marie Antoinette and the Princess Elizabeth! Such brutalities seemed

impossible in our time; and yet I have since lived very near to friends

who went through even greater horrors in Russia--the Baroness Sophie de

Buxhoevenden, second lady-in-waiting to the Czarina, for instance, whose

letters lie before me as I write.

In spite of my taste for Carlyle, which induced me to dip into Jean Paul

Richter, of whose writings I remember only one line,

I love God and little children,

I did not get very far into his "French Revolution." It seemed then an

unreal and lurid book.

Emerson led to Montaigne, whose essays, in an old edition which I had

from the Mechanics' Institute, of which my father was a committeeman,

delighted me beyond words. I liked Emerson's essay on "Friendship"

better than his, but for wit, quick repartee, general cheerfulness, he

reminded me of my favourite heroine in literature, Sir Walter Scott's

Catherine Seton! Later, I read with astonishment that Montaigne was an

unbeliever, a skeptic, almost a cynic. I was extremely indignant; he

seemed to me to be a very pious gentleman, with that wit and humour

which I seldom found in professedly pious books; and to this day I

cannot hear Montaigne talked of as a precursor of Voltaire without

believing that there is something crooked in the mind of the talker. So

much for the impressions made in youth, so much for the long, long

thoughts of which Longfellow sings.

Who is more amusingly cheerful than Montaigne, who more amusingly wise,

who so well bred and attractive, who knew the world better and took it

only as the world? Give me the old volume of Montaigne and a loaf of

bread--no Victrola singing to me in the wilderness!--a thermos bottle,

and one or two other things, and I can still spend the day in any wild

place! I did not, of course, know, in those early days, what in his

flavour attracted me. Afterward, I found that it was the very flavour

and essence of Old France. Carlyle's impressions of historical persons

interested me, but Montaigne was the most actual of living persons who

spoke to me in a voice I recognized as wholly his. To be sure, I read

him in Florio's translation.

I think it was about this time, too, that I discovered a very modern

writer, who charmed me very greatly. It was Justin McCarthy who

contributed a series of sketches of great men of the day to a magazine

called the _Galaxy_. He "did" Victor Emmanuel and Pope Pius IX. and

Bismarck, and many other of the worthies of the times. Nothing that he

wrote before or after this pleased me at all; but these sketches were so

interesting and apparently so true that they really became part of my

life. If I had been asked at this time who was my favourite of all

modern authors, and what the name of the composer I admired most, I

should have said Justin McCarthy and Offenbach! I regarded "Voici le

Sabre" in "La Grande Duchesse" as a masterpiece only to be compared to

an "Ave Verum," by Pergolesi, which was often sung in St. Philip's

Church at the Offertory! A strange mixture, but the truth is the truth.

Although I have not been able to find Justin McCarthy's series of

sketches, they still hold a sweet place in my memory. Perhaps, like

other masterpieces that one loves in youth, one would now find them like

those beautiful creatures of the sea that seem to be vermilion and

purple and gold under the waves, but are drab and ugly things when taken

out of the water. This applies to some books that one reads with

pleasure in early days, and wonders, later, how they were endured!

There were not so many outdoor books in the late '60's as there are now.

We were all sent to Thoreau's "Walden" and Dana's "Two Years Before the

Mast." "Walden" I learned to like, but I much preferred Fenimore

Cooper's description of nature. "Walden" struck me as the book of a man

playing at out-of-doors, imagining his wildness, and never really liking

to be too far from the town. Singularly enough, it was not until I

discovered Hamerton's "A Painter's Camp" that I began to see that nature

had beauties in all weathers. In truth, I hate to confess that nature

alone never appealed to me. A landscape without human beings seemed

deadly dull; and I did not understand until I grew much older that I had

really believed that good art was an improvement on nature.

I have not the slightest idea in what light the modern critics see the

works of Philip Gilbert Hamerton. I tried to read one of his novels

recently, and failed; but let me say that, allowing for receptivity and

what one may call temperament, I know of no book more revealing as to

the relations of nature and art than "A Painter's Camp." I recall

vividly the words of the beginning of the preface to the first edition:

It is known to all who are acquainted with the present condition of

the fine arts in England that landscape-painters rely less on

memory and invention than formerly, and that their work from nature

is much more laborious than it used to be.

I had seen so many pictures that seemed to be "made up" in the artist's

studio and I knew so well from my experience in the drawing classes at

school, how nature was neglected for artificial models, that I hailed

these words with great joy.

Everything in life was rather conventional, rather fixed, for the

Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia, to which our country owes the

beginning of the aesthetic awakening, had not yet taken place. It may

seem strange to this generation that we were limited to the wood-cuts in

Godey's _Lady's Book_, the illustrations in _Harper's Magazine_, and an

occasional picture in some short-lived periodical. The reign of the

chromo had just begun. Rogers's groups were a fixture in nearly every

self-respecting house, though I am glad to say, in my own family, very

good casts of the Clytie and the Discus-thrower filled their place. My

father greatly admired Power's Greek Slave, whose praises had been

celebrated in the _Cosmopolitan Magazine_; but my mother regarded it as

almost "improper."

Nearly every youth of my generation, in Philadelphia, wanted not exactly

something better, but something more vivid. There were few sports; long

walks and a little cricket supplied the place of the coming baseball and

tennis.

In his "Steeplejack," James Huneker speaks of his weekly walks with Mr.

Edward Roth, the head of a military school and the author of "Christus

Judex." I, too, looked on these walks with an occasional row on the

Schuylkill with him as the best part of my education. But this was

later. All we could do, then, in our moments of leisure, was to walk and

talk and read.

The cult of the out-of-doors had not yet begun to be developed. The

beginning of "A Painter's Camp" was most attractive to my thirsty soul.

Mr. Hamerton says:

I had a wild walk yesterday. I have a notion of encamping on the

Boulsworth moors to study heather; and heartily tired of being

caged up here in my library, with nothing to see but wet

garden-walks and dripping yew trees, and a sundial whereon no

shadow had fallen the livelong day, I determined, in spite of the

rain to be off to the moors to choose a site for my encampment. Not

very far from this house still dwells an old servant of my uncle's

with whom I am on the friendliest terms. So I called upon this

neighbour on my way and asked him if he would take a walk with me

to the hills. Jamie stared a little and remarked that "it ur feefi

weet" but accompanied me nevertheless, and a very pleasant walk we

had of it.

Hamerton opened his book in Jane Eyre's country; our family had lately

read "Jane Eyre." This added interest to the volume, and there came the

details of the invention of the new hut, intended to be a shelter

against all weathers, so that the artist might study nature on intimate

terms. He made it in order to paint the heather at close range. Now,

this was a revelation! It had never hitherto occurred to me that the

heather changes its aspect day by day, or indeed that our pet place of

beauty, the Wissahickon Creek, or river if you like, was not the same

every day in the year except when the ice bound it! This may seem a

rather stupid state of mind; but it is the stupidity that is very

common. I could understand how interesting it would be to be in

snow-fall while yet safely out of it. Mr. Hamerton thus described his

hut:

It consists entirely of panels, of which the largest are two feet

six inches square: these panels can be carried separately on

packhorses, or even on men's backs, and then united together by

iron bolts into a strong little building. Four of the largest

panels serve as windows, being each of them filled with a large

pane of excellent plate-glass. When erected, the walls present a

perfectly smooth surface outside, and a panelled interior; the

floor being formed in exactly the same manner, with the panelled or

coffered side turned towards the earth, and the smooth surface

uppermost. By this arrangement all the wall-bolts are inside, and

those of the floor underneath it, which protects them not only from

the weather but from theft, an iron bolt being a great temptation

to country people on account of its convenience and utility. The

walls are bolted to the floor, which gives great strength to the

whole structure, and the panels are carefully ordered, like the

stones in a well-built wall, so that the joints of the lower course

of panels do not fall below those of the upper. The roof is arched

and provides a current of fresh air, by placing ventilators at each

end of the arch, which insures a current without inconvenience to

the occupant.

The chapters on "Concerning Moonlight in Old Castles," "The Coming of

the Clouds," and the little sketches, like "Loch Awe after Sunset,

Sept. 23, 1860," enchanted me. It had not before struck me that Loch

Awe was different on September 23, 1860, from what it was at other

times, or--to carry the idea further--that the imperial Delaware had

changed since that momentous time when George Washington crossed it, or

the Schuylkill since Tom Moore looked upon it.

To quote further:

The mountain is green-grey, colder and greener towards the summit.

All details of field and wood are dimly visible. Two islands nearer

me are distinct against the hill, but their foliage seems black,

and no details are visible in them. The sky is all clouded over.

From the horizon to the zenith it is one veil of formless vapour.

And:

There is one streak of dead calm, which reflects the green mountain

perfectly from edge to edge of it. There is another calm shaped

like a great river, which is all green, touched with crimson.

Besides these there are delicate half calms, just dulled over with

faint breathings of the evening air; these, for the most part being

violet (from the sky), except at a distance, where they take a deep

crimson; and there is one piece of crimson calm near me set between

a faint violet breeze and a calm of a different violet. There are

one or two breezes sufficiently strong to cause ripple, and these

rippled spaces take the dull grey slate of the upper sky.

Realise this picture as well as you may be able, and then put in

the final touch. Between the dull calms and the glassy calms there

are drawn thin threads of division burning with scarlet fire.

This fire is of course got from the lower sky. I know whence it

comes, but how or why it lies in those thin scarlet threads there

where it is most wanted, and not elsewhere, I cannot satisfactorily

explain.

Then there was a delightful and illuminating chapter called "A Stream at

Rest." Hamerton, who is probably now very much out of fashion, taught me

the necessity of beauty in life; and, as an accessory to Emerson, the

philosophy of enjoying the little, every-day things. It was Emerson who,

I think, said first to me, "Take short outlooks"; and I still think that

there can be no better introduction to a consideration of the relation

of art to nature than "A Painter's Camp." It was "A Painter's Camp"

which led me to "The Intellectual Life." There is a particular passage

in Hamerton's chapter on "A Little French City" that emphasized the need

of beauty.

The cathedral is all poetry; I mean that every part of it affects

our emotional nature either by its own grandeur or beauty, or by

its allusion to histories of bright virtue or brave fortitude. And

this emotional result is independent of belief in the historical

truth of these great legends: it would be stronger, no doubt, if we

believed them, but we are still capable of feeling their solemn

poetry and large significance as we feel the poetry and

significance of "Sir Galahad" or "The Idylls of the King."

Some persons are so constituted that it is necessary to their

happiness to live near some noble work of art or nature. A mountain

is satisfactory to them because it is great and ever new,

presenting itself every hour under aspects so unforeseen that one

can gaze at it for years with unflagging interest. To some minds,

to mine amongst others, human life is scarcely supportable far from

some stately and magnificent object, worthy of endless study and

admiration. But what of life in the plains? Truly, most plains are

dreary enough, but still they may have fine trees, or a cathedral.

And in the cathedral, here, I find no despicable compensation for

the loss of dear old Ben Cruacha.

There are some humorous and perhaps even comic passages in "The

Intellectual Life"; these passages are unconsciously humorous or comic,

as Mr. Philip Gilbert Hamerton seems to have no sense of humour. For

instance, it was a great surprise to me to discover that poverty was

unfavourable to the intellectual life! It was enlightening to know the

reason why a man should wear evening dress after six o'clock, and why

the sporting of gray clothes in the evening was unworthy of the

Intellectual! Besides, it affects the character!

And letter XI "To a Master of Arts who said that a Certain Distinguished

Painter was Half-educated," was a useful antidote to youthful

self-conceit. I had not reached the stage, treated in the chapters on

"Women and Marriage," "To a Young Gentleman Who Contemplated Marriage,"

but I thought the author very wise indeed, and found many other pages

which were intensely stimulating. Let others decry Hamerton if they

like; I owe a great deal to him; and, though I might be induced to throw

"The Intellectual Life" to the Young Wolves of the Beginning of this

Century, I shall always insist that "A Painter's Camp" ought to be

included in every list of books.

It was George Eliot who sent me to "The Following of Christ," and she

interested me in Saint Teresa, that illustrious woman so well compounded

of mysticism and common sense, of whom, however, I could find no good

"Life." But Thomas [`a] Kempis was a revelation! He fitted into nearly

every crisis of the soul, but all his words are not for every-day life.

He seems to demand too much of us poor folk of the world. Later, I came

to understand that the counsel of perfection which Christ gave to the

rich young man was not intended for the whole world, and many fine

passages in [`A] Kempis were meant for finer temperaments than my own.

Somebody at this time presented me with a copy of Marcus Aurelius. I

found him dull, stale, and unprofitable in comparison with [`A] Kempis. His

philosophy of life seemed to lead to nothing except the cultivation of a

very high opinion of oneself. I gave this conclusion to one of my

English friends, who objected to my uncharted course of reading, and he

said, "A person like you who finds nothing humorous or even

philosophical in 'Alice in Wonderland' cannot be expected to like the

works of Marcus Aurelius!"

It takes a prig to divide his reading into nicely staked off little

plots, each with its own date. The art of injudicious reading, the art

of miscellaneous reading which every normal man ought to cultivate, is a

very fine and satisfactory art; for the best guide to books is a book

itself. It clasps hands with a thousand other books. It has always

seemed to me that "Sesame and Lilies" would not have been conceived by

Ruskin if he had not heard well an echo of "The Following of Christ."

There was a time when the lovers of Ruskin who wanted to read "The

Stones of Venice" and the rest at leisure, felt themselves obliged to

form clubs, and to divide the expense, if they were of moderate means,

in order to get what was good out of him. But somehow or other, probably

because it appealed more to everybody, it was always possible to find a

copy of "Sesame and Lilies" at an old book stand. I think I found one

most unexpectedly at Leary's in Philadelphia, where I also discovered

the copy of Froissart. The Froissart, as I have said, cost me just half

of my father's Christmas present that year, which was five dollars. I

must have managed to get the Ruskin volume out of some other fund, for I

had many things to buy with the other two and one half dollars!

Ruskin is left alone to-day; he does not seem to fill that "long-felt

want" which we, the young of the sixties and seventies, admitted. No

doubt he is very mannered in his style, mitred and coped when he might

have been very simple in his raiment. He was a priest in literature and

art; and he clothed himself as a priest. He marched with a stately

tread, and yet he stooped to the single violets by the wayside.

By the way, I often wished when I was reading Ruskin, who once made

apple blossoms fashionable, that he had led a crusade against the double

and the triple violet, which have destroyed the reputation of the real

violet. What can be more repellent to the lovers of simplicity than a

bunch of these artificialities, without perfume, tied by dark green

ribbon, and with all their leaves removed? "Sesame and Lilies" had the

effect of sending me back to the single violet whenever I was inclined

to admire the _camellia japonica_ or any other thing that was

artificial, or distorted from beauty or simplicity.

Circumstances have a great deal to do with our affection for books.

Propinquity, they say, leads very frequently to marriage, and if a book

happens to be near and if it is any kind of book at all, there is a

great temptation to develop an affection for it. All I can say is that I

think that "Sesame and Lilies" is a good book, for after all a book must

be judged by its effect. It led me further into Ruskin, and helped me to

acquire a reverence for art and to estimate the relations of art and

life. One would steel oneself against the fallacy that art, true art,

might exist only for art's sake, when one had read "Sesame and Lilies"

and "The Stones of Venice." Those wise men who make literary

"selections" for the young have done well to include in their volumes

that graphic description, so carefully modulated in tone, of the

Cathedral of St. Mark. Its only fault is that it comes too near to being

prose poetry; and discriminating readers who ponder over it will find

some epithets possible only to a writer who was an artist in lines and

pigments before he began to paint with the pen.

Ruskin opened our eyes rather violently to some aspects of life which

we, the young, did not know; for the young after all learn very little

by intuition. They must be taught things. This is perhaps an excuse for

those vagaries in youth, those seemingly inexplicable adventures which

shock the old who have forgotten what it is to be young.