One of Judge Methuen's pet theories is that the soul in the human body
lies near the center of gravity; this is, I believe, one of the tenets
of the Buddhist faith, and for a long time I eschewed it as one might
shun a vile thing, for I feared lest I should become identified even
remotely with any faith or sect other than Congregationalism.
Yet I noticed that in moments of fear or of joy or of the sense of any
other emotion I invariably experienced a feeling of goneness in the pit
of my stomach, as if, forsooth, the center of my physical system were
also the center of my nervous and intellectual system, the point at
which were focused all those devious lines of communication by means of
which sensation is instantaneously transmitted from one part of the
body to another.
I mentioned this circumstance to Judge Methuen, and it seemed to please
him. "My friend," said he, "you have a particularly sensitive soul; I
beg of you to exercise the greatest prudence in your treatment of it.
It is the best type of the bibliomaniac soul, for the quickness of its
apprehensions betokens that it is alert and keen and capable of
instantaneous impressions and enthusiasms. What you have just told me
convinces me that you are by nature qualified for rare exploits in the
science and art of book-collecting. You will presently become
bald--perhaps as bald as Thomas Hobbes was--for a vigilant and active
soul invariably compels baldness, so close are the relations between
the soul and the brain, and so destructive are the growth and
operations of the soul to those vestigial features which humanity has
inherited from those grosser animals, our prehistoric ancestors."
You see by this that Judge Methuen recognized baldness as prima-facie
evidence of intellectuality and spirituality. He has collected much
literature upon the subject, and has promised the Academy of Science
to prepare and read for the instruction of that learned body an essay
demonstrating that absence of hair from the cranium (particularly from
the superior regions of the frontal and parietal divisions) proves a
departure from the instincts and practices of brute humanity, and
indicates surely the growth of the understanding.
It occurred to the Judge long ago to prepare a list of the names of the
famous bald men in the history of human society, and this list has
grown until it includes the names of thousands, representing every
profession and vocation. Homer, Socrates, Confucius, Aristotle, Plato,
Cicero, Pliny, Maecenas, Julius Caesar, Horace, Shakespeare, Bacon,
Napoleon Bonaparte, Dante, Pope, Cowper, Goldsmith, Wordsworth, Israel
Putnam, John Quincy Adams, Patrick Henry--these geniuses all were bald.
But the baldest of all was the philosopher Hobbes, of whom the revered
John Aubrey has recorded that "he was very bald, yet within dore he
used to study and sitt bare-headed, and said he never took cold in his
head, but that the greatest trouble was to keepe off the flies from
pitching on the baldness."
In all the portraits and pictures of Bonaparte which I have seen, a
conspicuous feature is that curl or lock of hair which depends upon the
emperor's forehead, and gives to the face a pleasant degree of
picturesque distinction. Yet this was a vanity, and really a laughable
one; for early in life Bonaparte began to get bald, and this so
troubled him that he sought to overcome the change it made in his
appearance by growing a long strand of hair upon his occiput and
bringing it forward a goodly distance in such artful wise that it right
ingeniously served the purposes of that Hyperion curl which had been
the pride of his youth, but which had fallen early before the ravages
of time.
As for myself, I do not know that I ever shared that derisive opinion
in which the unthinking are wont to hold baldness. Nay, on the
contrary, I have always had especial reverence for this mark of
intellectuality, and I agree with my friend Judge Methuen that the
tragic episode recorded in the second chapter of II. Kings should serve
the honorable purpose of indicating to humanity that bald heads are
favored with the approval and the protection of Divinity.
In my own case I have imputed my early baldness to growth in
intellectuality and spirituality induced by my fondness for and
devotion to books. Miss Susan, my sister, lays it to other causes,
first among which she declares to be my unnatural practice of reading
in bed, and the second my habit of eating welsh-rarebits late of
nights. Over my bed I have a gas-jet so properly shaded that the rays
of light are concentrated and reflected downward upon the volume which
I am reading.
Miss Susan insists that much of this light and its attendant heat falls
upon my head, compelling there a dryness of the scalp whereby the
follicles have been deprived of their natural nourishment and have
consequently died. She furthermore maintains that the welsh-rarebits
of which I partake invariably at the eleventh hour every night breed
poisonous vapors and subtle megrims within my stomach, which humors,
rising by their natural courses to my brain, do therein produce a
fever that from within burneth up the fluids necessary to a healthy
condition of the capillary growth upon the super-adjacent and exterior
cranial integument.
Now, this very declaration of Miss Susan's gives me a potent argument
in defence of my practices, for, being bald, would not a neglect of
those means whereby warmth is engendered where it is needed result in
colds, quinsies, asthmas, and a thousand other banes? The same
benignant Providence which, according to Laurence Sterne, tempereth the
wind to the shorn lamb provideth defence and protection for the bald.
Had I not loved books, the soul in my midriff had not done away with
those capillary vestiges of my simian ancestry which originally
flourished upon my scalp; had I not become bald, the delights and
profits of reading in bed might never have fallen to my lot.
And indeed baldness has its compensations; when I look about me and see
the time, the energy, and the money that are continually expended upon
the nurture and tending of the hair, I am thankful that my lot is what
it is. For now my money is applied to the buying of books, and my time
and energy are devoted to the reading of them.
To thy vain employments, thou becurled and pomaded Absalom! Sweeter
than thy unguents and cosmetics and Sabean perfumes is the smell of
those old books of mine, which from the years and from the ship's hold
and from constant companionship with sages and philosophers have
acquired a fragrance that exalteth the soul and quickeneth the
intellectuals! Let me paraphrase my dear Chaucer and tell thee, thou
waster of substances, that
For me was lever han at my beddes hed
A twenty bokes, clothed in black and red
Of Aristotle and his philosophie,
Than robes rich, or fidel, or sautrie;
But all be that I ben a philosopher
Yet have I but litel gold in cofre!
Books, books, books--give me ever more books, for they are the caskets
wherein we find the immortal expressions of humanity--words, the only
things that live forever! I bow reverently to the bust in yonder
corner whenever I recall what Sir John Herschel (God rest his dear
soul!) said and wrote: "Were I to pay for a taste that should stand me
in stead under every variety of circumstances and be a source of
happiness and cheerfulness to me during life, and a shield against its
ills, however things might go amiss and the world frown upon me, it
would be a taste for reading. Give a man this taste and a means of
gratifying it, and you can hardly fail of making him a happy man;
unless, indeed, you put into his hands a most perverse selection of
books. You place him in contact with the best society in every period
of history--with the wisest, the wittiest, the tenderest, the bravest,
and the purest characters who have adorned humanity. You make him a
denizen of all nations, a contemporary of all ages. The world has been
created for him."
For one phrase particularly do all good men, methinks, bless burly,
bearish, phrase-making old Tom Carlyle. "Of all things," quoth he,
"which men do or make here below by far the most momentous, wonderful,
and worthy are the things we call books." And Judge Methuen's favorite
quotation is from Babington Macaulay to this effect: "I would rather
be a poor man in a garret with plenty of books than a king who did not
love reading."
Kings, indeed! What a sorry lot are they! Said George III. to Nicol,
his bookseller: "I would give this right hand if the same attention
had been paid to my education which I pay to that of the prince."
Louis XIV. was as illiterate as the lowliest hedger and ditcher. He
could hardly write his name; at first, as Samuel Pegge tells us, he
formed it out of six straight strokes and a line of beauty, thus:
| | | | | | S
--which he afterward perfected as best he could, and the result was
LOUIS.
Still I find it hard to inveigh against kings when I recall the
goodness of Alexander to Aristotle, for without Alexander we should
hardly have known of Aristotle. His royal patron provided the
philosopher with every advantage for the acquisition of learning,
dispatching couriers to all parts of the earth to gather books and
manuscripts and every variety of curious thing likely to swell the
store of Aristotle's knowledge.
Yet set them up in a line and survey them--these wearers of crowns and
these wielders of scepters--and how pitiable are they in the paucity
and vanity of their accomplishments! What knew they of the true
happiness of human life? They and their courtiers are dust and
forgotten.
Judge Methuen and I shall in due time pass away, but our
courtiers--they who have ever contributed to our delight and
solace--our Horace, our Cervantes, our Shakespeare, and the rest of the
innumerable train--these shall never die. And inspired and sustained
by this immortal companionship we blithely walk the pathway illumined
by its glory, and we sing, in season and out, the song ever dear to us
and ever dear to thee, I hope, O gentle reader:
Oh, for a booke and a shady nooke,
Eyther in doore or out,
With the greene leaves whispering overhead,
Or the streete cryes all about;
Where I maie reade all at my ease
Both of the newe and old,
For a jollie goode booke whereon to looke
Is better to me than golde!