Planter of the rich Havana,
Mopping brow with sheer bandanna;
Russian prince in fur arrayed;
Paris fop on dress parade;
London swell just after dinner;
Wall Street broker--gambling sinner;
Delver in Nevada mine;
Scotch laird bawling "Auld Lang Syne;"
Thus Raleigh's weed my fancy warms.
Life's review in smoke goes past.
Fickle fortune, stubborn fate,
Right discovered all too late,
Beings loved and gone before,
Beings loved but friends no more,
Self-reproach and futile sighs,
Vanity in birth that dies,
Longing, heart-break, adoration,--
Nothing sure in expectation
Save ash-receiver at the last.
In the early history of New England, when the town of Deerfield was burned
by the Indians, Captain Dunstan, who was the father of a large family,
deeming discretion the better part of valor, made up his mind to run for
it and to take one child (as a sample, probably), that being all he could
safely carry on his horse. But on looking about him, he could not
determine which child to take, and so observing to his wife, "All or
none," he set her and the baby on the horse, and brought up the rear on
foot with his gun, and fended off the redskins and brought the whole
family into safety. Such is the tale, and in the old primer there was a
picture of the scene--although I do not understand that it was taken from
the life, and the story reflects small credit on the character of the
aborigines for enterprise.
I have often conjectured which of my books I would save in case of fire in
my library, and whether I should care to rescue any if I could not bring
off all. Perhaps the problem would work itself out as follows:
THE FIRE IN THE LIBRARY.
Twas just before midnight a smart conflagration
Broke out in my dwelling and threatened my books;
Confounded and dazed with a great consternation
I gazed at my treasures with pitiful looks.
"Oh! which shall I rescue?" I cried in deep feeling;
I wished I were armed like Briareus of yore,
While sharper and sharper the flames kept revealing
The sight of my bibliographical store.
"My Lamb may remain to be thoroughly roasted,
My Crabbe to be broiled and my Bacon to fry,
My Browning accustomed to being well toasted,
And Waterman Taylor rejoicing to dry."
At hazard I grasped at the rest of my treasure,
And crammed all pockets with dainty eighteens;
I packed up a pillow case, heaping good measure,
And turned me away from the saddest of scenes.
But slowly departing, my face growing sadder,
At leaving old favorites behind me so far,
A feminine voice from the foot of the ladder
Cried, "Bring down my Cook-Book and Harper's Bazar!"
It has been hereinbefore intimated that women may be classed among the
enemies of books. There is at least one time of the year when every
Book-Worm thinks so, and that is the dread period of
house-cleaning--sometimes in the spring, sometimes in the autumn, and
sometimes, in the case of excessively finical housewives, in both. That
is the time looked forward to by him with apprehension and looked back
upon with horror, because the poor fellow knows what comes of
CLEANING THE LIBRARY.
With traitorous kiss remarked my spouse,
"Remain down town to lunch to-day,
For we are busy cleaning house,
And you would be in Minnie's way."
When I came home that fateful night,
I found within my sacred room
The wretched maid had wreaked her spite
With mop and pail and witch's broom.
The books were there, but oh how changed!
They startled me with rare surprises,
For they had all been rearranged,
And less by subjects than by sizes.
Some volumes numbered right to left,
And some were standing on their heads,
And some were of their mates bereft,
And some behind for refuge fled.
The women brave attempts had made
At placing cognate books together;--
They looked like strangers close arrayed
Under a porch in stormy weather.
She watched my face--that spouse of mine--
Some approbation there to glean,
But seeing I did not incline
To praise, remarked, "I've got it clean."
And so she had--and also wrong;
She little knew--she was but thirty--
I entertained a preference strong
To have it right, though ne'er so dirty.
That wife of mine has much good sense,
To chide her would have been inhuman,
And it would be a great expense
To graft the book-sense on a woman.
Such are my reflections when I consider a fire in my own little library.
But when I regard the great and growing mass of books with which the earth
groans, and reflect how few of them are necessary or original, and how
little the greater part of them would be missed, I sometimes am led to
believe that a general conflagration of them might in the long run be a
blessing to mankind, by the stimulation of thought and the deliverance of
authors from the influence of tradition and the habit of imitation. When I
am in this mood I incline to think that much is
ODE TO OMAR.
Omar, who burned (or did not burn)
The Alexandrian tomes,
I would erect to thee an urn
Beneath Sophia's domes.
So many books I can't endure--
The dull and commonplace,
The dirty, trifling and obscure,
The realistic race.
Would that thy exemplary torch
Could bravely blaze again,
And many manufactories scorch
Of book-inditing men.
The poets who write "dialect,"
Maudlin and coarse by turns,
Most ardently do I expect
Thou'lt wither up with Burns.
All the erratic, yawping class
Condemn with judgment stern,
Walt Whitman's awful "Leaves of Grass"
With elegant Swinburne.
Of commentators make a point,
The carping, blind, and dry;
Rend the "Baconians" joint by joint,
And throw them on to fry.
Especially I'd have thee choke
Law libraries in sheep
With fire derived from ancient Coke,
And sink in ashes deep.
Destroy the sheep--don't save my own--
I weary of the cram,
The misplaced diligence I've shown--
But kindly spare my Lamb.
Fear not to sprinkle on the pyre
The woes of "Esther Waters";
They'll only make the flame soar higher,
And warn Eve's other daughters.
But 'ware of Howells and of James,
Of Trollope and his rout;
They'd dampen down the fiercest flames
And put your fire out.
XVIII.
LIBRARY COMPANIONS.
As a rule I do not care for any constant human companion in my library,
but I do not object to a cat or a small dog. That picture of Montaigne,
drawn by himself, amusing his cat with a garter, or that other one of
Doctor Johnson feeding oysters to his cat Hodge, is a very pleasing one.
In my library hangs Durer's picture of St. Jerome in his cell, busy with
his writing, and a dog and a lion quietly dozing together in the
foreground. As I am no saint I have never been able to keep a lion in my
library for any great length of time, but I have maintained a dog there.
Lamb even contended that his books were the better for being dog's-eared,
but I do not go so far as that. Nor do I pretend that his presence will
prevent the books from becoming foxed. Here is a portrait of
MY DOG.
He is a trifling, homely beast,
Of no use, or the very least;
To shake imaginary rat
Or bark for hours at china cat;
To lie at head of stairs and start,
Like animated, woolly dart,
Upon a non-existent foe;
Or on hind legs like monkey go,
To beg for sugar or for bone;
Never content to be alone;
To bask for hours in the sun.
Rolled up till head and tail are one;
Usurping all the softest places
And keeping them with doggish graces;
To sneak between the housemaid's feet
And scour unnoticed on the street;
Wag indefatigable tail;
Cajole with piteous human wail;
To dance with dainty dandy air
When nicely parted is his hair,
And look most ancient and dejected
When it has been too long neglected;
To sleep upon my book-den rug
And dream of battle with a pug;
To growl with counterfeited rabies;
To be more trouble than twin babies;--
These are the qualities and tricks
That in my heart his image fix;
And so in cursory, doggerel rhyme
I celebrate him in his time,
Nor wait his virtues to rehearse
In cold obituary verse.
There is one other speaking companion that I would tolerate in my library,
and that is a clock. I have a number of clocks in mine, and if it were not
for their unanimous and warning voice I might forget to go to bed.
Perhaps my reader would like to hear an account of
MY CLOCKS.
Five clocks adorn my domicile
And give me occupation,
For moments else inane I fill
With their due regulation.
Four of these clocks, on each Lord's Day,
As regular as preaching,
I wind and set, so that they may
The flight of time be teaching.
My grandfather's old clock is chief,
With foolish moon-faced dial;
Procrastination is a thief
It always brings to trial.
Its height is as the tallest men,
Its pendulum beats slow,
And when its awful bell booms ten,
Young men get up and go.
Another clock is bronze and gilt,
Penelope sits on it,
And in her fingers holds a quilt--
How strange 'tis not a bonnet!
Memorial of those weary years
When she the web unravelled,
While Ithacus choked down his fears
And slow from Ilium travelled.
Ceres upon the third, with spray
Of grain, in classic gown,
Seems sadly to recall the day
Proserpine sank down,
With scarcely time to say good-bye,
Unto the world of Dis;
And keeps account, with many a sigh,
Of harvest time in this.
Another clock is rococo,
Of Louis Sept or Seize,
With many a dreadful furbelow
An artist's hair to raise,
Suggestions of a giddy court,
With fan and boufflant bustle,
When silken trains made gallant sport
And o'er the floor did rustle.
The fourth was brought, in foolish trust
From Alpland far away,
A baby clock, and so it must
Be tended every day.
Importunate and trivial thing!
Thou katydid of clocks!
Defying all my skill to bring
Right time from out thy box.
With works of wood and face of brass
On which queer cherubs play,
The tedious hours thou well dost pass,
And none thy chirp gainsay.
Among the silent companions in my study are the effigies of the four
greatest geniuses of modern times in the realms of literature, art, music
and war--a print of Shakespeare; one of Michael Angelo's corrugated face
with its broken nose; a bust of Beethoven, resembling a pouting lion; and
a print of Napoleon at St. Helena, representing him dressed in a white
duck suit, with a broad-brimmed straw hat, and sitting looking seaward,
with those unfathomable eyes, a newspaper lying in his lap. Unhappy
faces all except the first--his cheerful, probably because he has effected
an arrangement with an otherwise idle person, named Bacon, to do all his
work for him. But there is another portrait, at which I look oftener, the
original of which probably takes more interest in me, but is unknown to
every visitor to my study. I myself have not seen her in half a century.
I call it simply
A PORTRAIT.
A gentle face is ever in my room,
With features fine and melancholy eyes,
Though young, a little past life's freshest bloom,
And always with air of sad surmise.
A great white cap almost conceals her hair,
A collar broad falls o'er her shoulders slender;
The fashion of a bygone age an air
Of quaintness to her simple garb doth render.
Those hazel eyes pursue me as I move
And seem to watch my busy toiling pen;
They hold me with an anxious yearning love,
As if she dwelt upon the earth again.
My mother's portrait! fifty years ago,
When I was but a heedless happy boy,
The influence of her being ceased to flow,
And she laid down life's burden and its joy.
And now as I sit pondering o'er my books,
So vainly seeking a receding rest,
I read the wonder in her steadfast looks:
"Is this my son who lay upon my breast?"
And when for me there is an end of time,
And this unsatisfying work is done,
If I shall meet thee in thy peaceful clime,
Young mother, wilt thou know thy gray-haired son?
There is one other work of art which adorns my library--a medallion by a
dear friend of mine, an eminent sculptor, the story of which I will put
into his mouth. He calls the face
MY SCHOOLMATE.
The snows have settled on my head
But not upon my heart,
And incidents of years long fled
From out my memory start.
My hand is cunning to contrive
The shapes my brain invents,
And keep in marble forms alive
That which my soul contents;
And I have wife, and children tall,
Grandchildren cluster near,
And sweet the applause of men doth fall
On my undeafened ear.
But still my mind will backward turn
For half a century,
And without reasoning will yearn
For sight or news of thee,
Thou playmate of my boyhood days,
When life was all aglow,
When the sweetest thing was thy girlish praise,
As I drew thee o'er the snow
To the old red school-house by the road,
Where we learned to spell and read,
When thou wert all my fairy load
And I was thy prancing steed.
Oh! thou wert simple then and fair.
Artless and unconstrained,
With quaintly knotted auburn hair
From which the wind refrained,
And from thine earnest steady eyes
Shone out a nature pure,
Formed by kind Heaven, a man's best prize,
To love and to endure.
Oh! art thou still in life and time,
Or hast thou gone before?
And hath thy lot been like to mine,
Or pinched and bare and sore?
And didst thou marry, or art thou
Still of the spinster tribe?
Perchance thou art a widow now,
Steeled against second bribe?
Do grandsons round thy hearthstone play,
Or dost thou end thy race?
And could that auburn hair grow gray,
And wrinkles line thy face?
I cannot make thee old and plain--
I would not if I could--
And I recall thee without stain,
Simply and sweetly good;
And I have carved thy pretty head
And hung it on my wall,
And to all men let it be said,
I like it best of all;
For on a far-off snowy road,
Before I had learned to read,
Thou wert all my fairy load
And I was thy prancing steed!
I have reserved my queerest library companion till the last. It is not a
book, although it is good for nothing but to read. It is not an autograph,
although it is simply the name of an individual. It is my office sign
which I have cherished, as a memento of busier days. Some singular
reflections are roused when I gaze at
MY SHINGLE.
My shingle is battered and old,
No longer deciphered with ease,
So I've taken it in from the cold,
And fastened it up on a frieze.
A long generation ago,
With feelings of singular pride
I regarded its glittering show,
And pointed it out to my bride.
Companions of youth have grown few,
Its loves and aversions are faint;
No spirit to make friends anew--
An old enemy seems like a saint.
My clients have paid the last fee
For passage in Charon's sad boat,
Imposing no duty on me
Save to utter this querelous note;
And still as I toil in life's mills,
In loneliness growing profound,
To attend on the proof of their wills
And swear that their wits were quite sound!
So I work with the scissors and pen,
And to show of old courage a spark,
I must utter a jest now and then,
Like whistling of boys in the dark.
I tack my old friend on the wall,
So that infantile grandson of mine
May not think, if my life he recall,
That I died without making a sign.
When at court on the great judgment day
With penitent suitors I mingle,
May my guilt be washed cleanly away,
Like that on my faded old shingle!
Of course my chief occupation in my library is reading and writing. To be
sure, I do a good deal of thinking there. But there is another occupation
which I practice to a great extent, which does not involve reading or
writing at all, nor thinking to any considerable degree. That is playing
solitaire. I play only one kind of this and that I have played for many
years. It requires two packs of cards, and requires building on the aces
and kings, and so I have them tacked down on a lap-board to save picking
out and laying down every time. This particular game is called "St.
Elba," probably because Napoleon did not play it, and it can be "won" once
in about sixty trials. I do not care for card-playing with others, but I
have certain reasons for liking
SOLITAIRE.
I like to play cards with a man of sense,
And allow him to play with me,
And so it has grown a delight intense
To play solitaire on my knee.
I love the quaint form of the sceptered king,
The simplicity of the ace,
The stolid knave like a wooden thing,
And her majesty's smirking face.
Diamonds, aces, and clubs and spades--
Their garb of respectable black
A moiety brilliant of red invades,
As they mingle in motley pack.
Independent of anyone's signal or leave,
Relieved from the bluffing of poker,
I've no apprehension of ace up a sleeve,
And fear no superfluous joker.
I build up and down; all the cards I hold,
And the game is always fair,
For I am honest, and so is my old
Companion at solitaire.
Let kings condescend to the lower grades,
Queens glitter with diamonds rare,
Knaves flourish their clubs, and peasants wield spades,
But give me my solitaire.
XIX.
THE FRIENDSHIP OF BOOKS.
To many peaceful men of the legal robe the companionship of books is
inexpressibly dear. What a privilege it is to summon the greatest and most
charming spirits of the past from their graves, and find them always
willing to talk to us! How delightful to go to our well-known
book-shelves, lay hands on our favorite authors--even in the dark, so well
do we know them--take any volume, open it at any page, and in a few
minutes lose all sense and remembrance of the real world, with its strife,
its bitterness, its disappointments, its hollowness, its unfaithfulness,
its selfishness, in the pictures of an ideal world! The real world, do we
say? Which is the real world, that of history or that of fiction? In this
age of historic doubt and iconoclasm, are not the heroes of our favorite
romances much more real than those of history? Captain Ed'ard Cuttle,
mariner, is much more real to us than Captain Joseph Cook; Cooper's Two
Admirals than the great Nelson; Leather-Stocking than the yellow-haired
Custer; Henry Esmond than any of the Pretenders; Hester Prynne and Becky
Sharp than Catherine of Russia or Aspasia or Lucrezia; Sidney Carton than
Philip Sidney. Even the kings and heroes who have lived in history live
more vividly for us in romance. We know the crooked Richard and the
crafty Louis XI. most familiarly, if not most accurately, through
Shakespeare and Scott; and where in history do we get so haunting a
picture of the great Napoleon and Waterloo as in Victor Hugo's wondrous
but inaccurate chapter? Happy is the man who has for his associates David,
Solomon, Job, Paul, and John, in spite of the assaults of modern criticism
upon the Scriptures! No one can shake our faith in Don Quixote, although
the accounts of the Knight "without fear and without reproach" are so
short and vague. There is no doubt about the travels of Christian,
although those of Stanley may be questioned. The Vicar of Wakefield is a
much more actual personage than Peter who preached the Crusades. Sir Roger
de Coverley and his squire life are much more probable to us than Sir
William Temple in his gardens. There is no character in romance who has
not or might not have lived, but we are thrown into grave doubts of the
saintly Washington and the devilish Napoleon depicted three quarters of a
century ago. We cast history aside in scepticism and disgust; we cling to
romance with faith and delight. "The things that are seen are temporal;
the things that are not seen are eternal." So let the writer hereof sing a
song in praise of
MY FRIENDS THE BOOKS.
Friends of my youth and of my age
Within my chamber wait,
Until I fondly turn the page
And prove them wise and great.
At me they do not rudely glare
With eye that luster lacks,
But knowing how I hate a stare,
Politely turn their backs.
They never split my head with din,
Nor snuffle through their noses,
Nor admiration seek to win
By inartistic poses.
If I should chance to fall asleep,
They do not scowl or snap,
But prudently their counsel keep
Till I have had my nap.
And if I choose to rout them out
Unseasonably at night,
They do not chafe nor curse nor pout,
But rise all clothed and bright.
They ne'er intrude with silly say,
They never scold nor worry;
They ne'er suspect and ne'er betray,
They're never in a hurry.
Anacreon never gets quite full,
Nor Horace too flirtatious;
Swift makes due fun of Johnny Bull,
And Addison is gracious.
Saint-Simon and Grammont rehearse
Their tales of court with glee;
For all their scandal I'm no worse,--
They never peach on me.
For what I owe Montaigne, no dread
To meet him on the morrow;
And better still, it must be said,
He never wants to borrow.
Paul never asks, though sure to preach,
Why I don't come to church;
Though Dr. Johnson strives to teach,
I do not fear his birch.
My Dickens never is away
Whene'er I choose to call;
I need not wait for Thackeray
In chill palatial hall.
I help to bring Amelia to,
Who always is a-fainting;
I love the Oxford graduate who
Explains great Turner's painting.
My memory is full of graves
Of friends in days gone by;
But Time these sweet companions saves,--
These friends who never die!
SO HERE ENDETH "IN THE TRACK OF THE
BOOK-WORM." PRINTED BY ME, ELBERT
HUBBARD, AT THE ROYCROFT SHOP IN
EAST AURORA, N. Y., U. S. A., AND
COMPLETED THIS TWENTY-SIXTH DAY OF
JUNE, MDCCCXCVII.
End of Project Gutenberg's In the Track of the Bookworm, by Irving Browne