Frontispiece to the First Edition of "Gulliver's Travels"--A
Portrait Engraved in Copper of Captain Lemuel Gulliver
of Redriff 128
Facsimile of the Title Page of the First Edition of "Gulliver's
Travels," issued in 1726 130
_Introduction_
_These short essays on the best old books in the world were inspired by
the sudden death of an only son, without whom I had not thought life
worth living. To tide me over the first weeks of bitter grief I plunged
into this work of reviewing the great books from the Bible to the works
of the eighteenth century writers. The suggestion came from many readers
who were impressed by the fact that in the darkest hour of sorrow my
only comfort came from the habit of reading, which Gibbon declared he
"would not exchange for the wealth of the Indies." If these essays
induce any one to cultivate the reading habit, which has been so great a
solace to me in time of trouble, then I shall feel fully repaid._
_This book is not intended for those who have had literary training in
high school or university. It was planned to meet the wants of that
great American public which yearns for knowledge and culture, but does
not know how to set about acquiring it. For this reason I have discussed
the great books of the world from De Quincey's standpoint of the
literature of power, as distinguished from the literature of knowledge.
By the literature of power the author of the_ Confessions of an English
Opium Eater _meant books filled with that emotional quality which lifts
the reader out of this prosaic world into that spiritual life, whose
dwellers are forever young._
_No book has lived beyond the age of its author unless it were full of
this spiritual force which endures through the centuries. The words of
the Biblical writers, of Thomas a Kempis, Milton, Bunyan, Dante and
others who are discussed in this book, are charged with a spiritual
potency that moves the reader of today as they have moved countless
generations in the past. Could one wish for a more splendid immortality
than this, to serve as the stimulus to ambitious youth long after one's
body has moldered in the dust?_
_Even the Sphinx is not so enduring as a great book, written in the
heart's blood of a man or woman who has sounded the deeps of sorrow only
to rise up full of courage and faith in human nature._
_Comfort Found in Good Old Books_
_Nothing Soothes Grief Like Sterling Old Books--How the
Sudden Death of an Only Son Proved the Value of the
Reading Habit._
_For the thirty years that I have spoken weekly to many hundreds of
readers of_ The Chronicle _through its book review columns, it has been
my constant aim to preach the doctrine of the importance of cultivating
the habit of reading good books, as the chief resource in time of
trouble or sickness. This doctrine I enforced, because for many years
reading has been my principal recreation, and I have proved its
usefulness in broadening one's view of life and in storing up material
from the world's greatest writers which can be recalled at will. But it
never occurred to me that this habit would finally come to mean the only
thing that makes life worth living. When one passes the age of forty he
begins to build a certain scheme for the years to come. That scheme may
involve many things--domestic life, money-getting, public office,
charity, education. With me it included mainly literary work, in which I
was deeply interested, and close companionship with an only son, a boy
of such lovable personal qualities that he had endeared himself to me
from his very childhood. Cut off as I have been from domestic life,
without a home for over fifteen years, my relations with my son Harold
were not those of the stern parent and the timid son. Rather it was the
relation of elder brother and younger brother._
_Hence, when only ten days ago this close and tender association of many
years was broken by death--swift and wholly unexpected, as a bolt from
cloudless skies--it seemed to me for a few hours as if the keystone of
the arch of my life had fallen and everything lay heaped in ugly ruin. I
had waited for him on that Friday afternoon until six o'clock. Friday is
my day off, my one holiday in a week of hard work, when my son always
dined with me and then accompanied me to the theater or other
entertainment. When he did not appear at six o'clock in the evening I
left a note saying I had gone to our usual restaurant. That dinner I
ate alone. When I returned in an hour it was to be met with the news
that Harold lay cold in death at the very time I wrote the note that his
eyes would never see._
_When the first shock had passed came the review of what was left of
life to me. Most of the things which I had valued highly for the sake of
my son now had little or no worth for me; but to take up again the old
round of work, without the vivid, joyous presence of a companion dearer
than life itself, one must have some great compensations; and the chief
of these compensations lay in the few feet of books in my library
case--in those old favorites of all ages that can still beguile me,
though my head is bowed in the dust with grief and my heart is as sore
as an open wound touched by a careless hand._
_For more than a dozen years in the school vacations and in my midsummer
holidays my son and I were accustomed to take long tramps in the
country. For five of these years the boy lived entirely in the country
to gain health and strength. Both he and his older sister, Mary,
narrowly escaped death by pneumonia in this city, so I transferred them
to Angwin's, on Howell Mountain, an ideal place in a grove of pines--a
ranch in the winter and a summer resort from May to November. There the
air was soft with the balsam of pine, and the children throve
wonderfully. Edwin Angwin was a second father to them both, and his wife
was as fond as a real mother. For five years they remained on the
mountain. Mary developed into an athletic girl, who became a fearless
rider, an expert tennis player and a swimmer, who once swam two miles at
Catalina Island on a foolish wager. She proved to be a happy, wholesome
girl, an ideal daughter, but marriage took her from me and placed half
the continent between us. Harold was still slight and fragile when he
left the country, but his health was firmly established and he soon
became a youth of exceptional strength and energy._
_Many memories come to me now of visits paid to Angwin's in those five
years. Coming home at three o'clock on winter mornings after a night of
hard work and severe nervous strain, I would snatch two or three hours'
sleep, get up in the chill winter darkness and make the tedious
five-hour journey from this city to the upper Napa Valley, in order to
spend one day with my boy and his sister. The little fellow kept a
record on a calendar of the dates of these prospective visits, and
always had some dainty for me--some bird or game or choice fruit which
he knew I relished._
_Then came the preparatory school and college days, when the boy looked
forward to his vacations and spent them with me in single-minded
enjoyment that warmed my heart like old wine. By means of constant talks
and much reading of good books I labored patiently to develop his mind,
and at the same time to keep his tastes simple and unspoiled. In this
manner he came to be a curious mixture of the shrewd man of the world
and the joyous, care-free boy. In judgment and in mental grasp he was
like a man of thirty before he was eighteen, yet at the same time he was
the spontaneous, fun-loving boy, whose greatest charm lay in the fact
that he was wholly unconscious of his many gifts. He drew love from all
he met, and he gave out affection as unconsciously as a flower yields
its perfume._
_In college he tided scores of boys over financial straits; his room at
Stanford University was open house for the waifs and strays who had no
abiding-place. In fact, so generous was his hospitality that the manager
of the college dormitory warned him one day in sarcastic vein that the
renting of a room for a term did not include the privilege of taking in
lodgers. His friends were of all classes. He never joined a Greek
letter fraternity because he did not like a certain clannishness that
marked the members; but among Fraternity men as well as among Barbarians
he counted his close associates by the score. He finished his college
course amid trying circumstances, as he was called upon to voice the
opinion of the great body of students in regard to an unjust ruling of
the faculty that involved the suspension of many of the best students in
college. And through arbitrary action of the college authorities his
degree was withheld for six months, although he had passed all his
examinations and had had no warnings of any condemnation of his
independent and manly course as an editor of the student paper. Few boys
of his age have ever shown more courage and tact than he exhibited
during that trying time, when a single violent editorial from his pen
would have resulted in the walking out of more than half the university
students._
_Then came his short business life, full of eager, enthusiastic work for
the former college associate who had offered him a position on the Board
of Fire Underwriters. Even in this role he did not work so much for
himself as to "make good," and thus justify the confidence of the dear
friend who stood sponsor for him. Among athletes of the Olympic Club he
numbered many warm friends; hundreds of young men in professional and
business life greeted him by the nickname of "Mike," which clung to him
from his early freshman days at Stanford. The workers and the idlers,
the studious and the joy-chasers, all gave him the welcome hand, for his
smile and his gay speech were the password to all hearts. And yet so
unspoiled was he that he would leave all the gayety and excitement of
club life to spend hours with me, taking keen zest in rallying me if
depressed or in sharing my delight in a good play, a fine concert, a
fierce boxing bout or a spirited field day. Our tastes were of wide
range, for we enjoyed with equal relish Mascagni's "Cavalleria," led by
the composer himself, or a championship prize-fight; Margaret Anglin's
somber but appealing Antigone or a funny "stunt" at the Orpheum._
_Harold's full young life was also strongly colored by his close
newspaper associations. The newspaper life, like the theatrical, puts
its stamp on those who love it, and Harold loved it as the child who has
been cradled in the wings loves the stage and its folk. Ever since he
wore knickerbockers he was a familiar figure in the_ The Chronicle
_editorial rooms. He knew the work of all departments of the paper, and
he was a keen critic of that work. He would have made a success in this
field, but he felt the work was too exacting and the reward too small
for the confinement, the isolation and the nervous strain. After the
fire he rendered good service when competent men were scarce, and in the
sporting columns his work was always valued, because he was an expert in
many kinds of sports and he was always scrupulously fair and never lost
his head in any excitement. The news of his death caused as deep sorrow
in_ The Chronicle _office as would the passing away of one of the oldest
men on the force._
_Now that this perennial spirit of youth is gone out of my life, the
beauty of it stands revealed more clearly. Gone forever are the dear,
the fond-remembered holidays, when the long summer days were far too
short for the pleasure that we crowded into them. Gone are the winter
walks in the teeth of the blustering ocean breezes, when we "took the
wind into our pulses" and strode like Berserkers along the gray sand
dunes, tasting the rarest spirit of life in the open air. Gone, clean
gone, those happy days, leaving only the precious memory that wets my
eyes that are not used to tears._
_And so, in this roundabout way, I come back to my library shelves, to
urge upon you who now are wrapped warm in domestic life and love to
provide against the time when you may be cut off in a day from the
companionship that makes life precious. Take heed and guard against the
hour that may find you forlorn and unprotected against death's malignant
hand. Cultivate the great worthies of literature, even if this means
neglect of the latest magazine or of the newest sensational romance. Be
content to confess ignorance of the ephemeral books that will be
forgotten in a single half year, so that you may spend your leisure
hours in genial converse with the great writers of all time. Dr. Eliot
of Harvard recently aroused much discussion over his "five feet of
books." Personally, I would willingly dispense with two-thirds of the
books he regards as indispensable. But the vital thing is that you have
your own favorites--books that are real and genuine, each one brimful of
the inspiration of a great soul. Keep these books on a shelf convenient
for use, and read them again and again until you have saturated your
mind with their wisdom and their beauty. So may you come into the true
Kingdom of Culture, whose gates never swing open to the pedant or the
bigot. So may you be armed against the worst blows that fate can deal
you in this world._
_Who turns in time of affliction to the magazines or to those books of
clever short stories which so amuse us when the mind is at peace and all
goes well? No literary skill can bind up the broken-hearted; no beauty
of phrase satisfy the soul that is torn by grief. No, when our house is
in mourning we turn to the Bible first--that fount of wisdom and comfort
which never fails him who comes to it with clean hands and a contrite
heart. It is the medicine of life. And after it come the great books
written by those who have walked through the Valley of the Shadow, yet
have come out sweet and wholesome, with words of wisdom and counsel for
the afflicted. One book through which beats the great heart of a man who
suffered yet grew strong under the lash of fate is worth more than a
thousand books that teach no real lesson of life, that are as broken
cisterns holding no water, when the soul is athirst and cries out for
refreshment._
_This personal, heart-to-heart talk with you, my patient readers of many
years, is the first in which I have indulged since the great fire swept
away all my precious books--the hoarded treasures of forty years.
Against my will it has been forced from me, for I am like a sorely
wounded animal and would fain nurse my pain alone. It is written in the
first bitterness of a crushing sorrow; but it is also written in the
spirit of hope and confidence--the spirit which I trust will strengthen
me to spend time and effort in helping to make life easier for some poor
boys in memory of the one dearest boy who has gone before me into that
"undiscovered country," where I hope some day to meet him, with the old
bright smile on his face and the old firm grip of the hand that always
meant love and tenderness and steadfast loyalty._
_Among men of New England strain like myself it is easy to labor long
hours, to endure nervous strain, to sacrifice comfort and ease for the
sake of their dear ones; but men of Puritan strain, with natures as hard
as the flinty granite of their hillsides, cannot tell their loved ones
how dear they are to them, until Death lays his grim hand upon the
shoulder of the beloved one and closes his ears forever to the words of
passionate love that now come pouring in a flood from our trembling
lips._
_San Francisco, October 9, 1910._