THE LIBRARIAN AT PLAY
THE
LIBRARIAN AT PLAY
BY
EDMUND LESTER PEARSON
AUTHOR OF "THE OLD LIBRARIAN'S ALMANACK"
"THE LIBRARY AND THE LIBRARIAN"
[Illustration: LOGO]
BOSTON
SMALL, MAYNARD AND COMPANY
PUBLISHERS
COPYRIGHT, 1911
BY SMALL, MAYNARD AND COMPANY
(INCORPORATED)
_Entered at Stationers' Hall_
Published, November, 1911
Second Printing, March, 1912
THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, CAMBRIDGE, U.S.A.
TO MY MOTHER
NOTE TO SECOND EDITION
Since the publication of the first edition of this book two or three
readers have pointed out that it needs an index. By the addition of an
index, they say, its value as a work of reference would become almost
wholly negligible. Impressed by the force of their remarks, I employed
expert aid, and the index now printed at the end of the volume is the
result. It was prepared by Miss Narcissa Bloom, an honor graduate of
the Philander Library School, and it may therefore be relied upon as
the flower of modern library science.
E. L. P.
CONTENTS
PAGE
THE INTEREST GAUGE 3
THE GARDENER'S GUIDE 19
VANISHING FAVORITES 41
BY TELEPHONE 63
A LITERARY MEET 89
"THE DESERT ISLAND TEST" 109
THE CONVERSATION ROOM 131
THE LITERARY ZOO 167
THEIR JUST REWARD 187
THE CROWDED HOUR 209
TO A SMALL LIBRARY PATRON 231
BY-WAYS AND HEDGES 235
MULCH 265
A BOOKMAN'S ARMORY 277
INDEX 303
THE INTEREST GAUGE
THE INTEREST GAUGE
"We are thinking of calling them 'interest gauges,'" said the agent,
"but perhaps you can suggest a better name."
I took one of the little instruments and examined it. Hardly over
an inch long, with its glass tube and scale, it resembled a tiny
thermometer. The figures and letters were so small that I could not
make them out, though they became clear enough through a reading-glass.
"Interest gauges," I remarked, "sounds like something connected with
banks. I should think you could find a better name. Who invented them?"
The agent looked important.
"They were invented," he explained, "by Professor Dufunnie, the great
psychologist. They are a practical application of psychology. Let
me show you how they are used. Allow me--I will take this book--the
'Letters of Junius,' and attach the interest gauge. Here in the back,
you see, the gauge is invisible to the reader. You will notice now,
if you look through the glass, that the gauge marks zero. No one is
reading the book, we have not even opened it, and the human mind is
not acting upon the book. If you will take it into your hand, and look
down at the gauge through the glass, you will see probably some little
agitation of the liquid within the tube. You do, do you not? I thought
so. That is because you are probably already familiar, to some extent,
with the 'Letters of Junius' and the recollections that they arouse
in your mind are exerting themselves upon the fluid. Now, if you will
oblige me, open the book and read attentively for a few moments."
I did so, and then handed it back to the agent.
"Look," he cried, "as soon as you cease reading, the fluid sinks back
to zero. But the little aluminum arrow remains at the highest point
which the fluid reached--that is, the highest point of interest which
you felt in the book. Ah, yes--40 degrees--a faint interest. You will
notice that the degree-points are marked at intervals with descriptive
phrases--40 is 'faint interest,' 30 is 'indifference,' 20 is 'would not
keep you awake after 9 P.M.,' and so on."
The thing was very fascinating.
"It is astounding," I said, "for that is exactly my feeling towards
Junius, and yet I tried to get more interested in him than usual."
The agent laughed.
"You can't fool the gauges," he said. "You can't do it, even when you
know one is attached to your book. I need not say that it is absolutely
correct when the reader is not aware that there is a gauge upon his
book. You must see the value of these to a librarian. Let me show you
how incorruptible they are. Have you something there in which you have
absolutely no interest--some book or article that is dry as dust?"
I looked about.
"This pretty nearly fills the bill," I said, and I handed him a copy of
a library magazine with an article by Dr. Oscar Gustafsen on "How to
Make the Workingman Read the Greek Tragedies."
The agent attached an interest gauge, and told me to read Dr.
Gustafsen's article, and to try as hard as I could to become
interested; to pretend, if I could not feel, the greatest excitement
over it. I did so, and strained every muscle in my brain, so to speak,
to find something in it to interest or attract me. It was no use--the
fluid gave a few convulsive wabbles, but at the end the little arrow
had not even reached 10, or "Bored to Death."
Then the agent took a copy of "The Doctor's Dilemma," and putting an
interest gauge on the volume, asked me to read a few pages, and to
remain as indifferent as possible. I read it calmly enough, but the
liquid in the tube mounted slow and sure, and when we examined the
arrow it pointed to 80.
"Try it on this," said the agent, handing me Conan Doyle's "Round the
Fire Stories."
I put on an interest gauge and read the tale of "The Lost Special." The
arrow shot up to 98 before I had half finished the yarn.
"The highest that the gauge will record, you see, is 140, though we
guarantee them to stand a pressure of 165. They are not often subjected
to anything like that. The average novel or short story to-day does
not put them under a very severe strain. The greatest risk we run is
from authors reading their own books. We had an especially dangerous
case the other day, during some tests in the laboratory. We had a young
author reading the proofs of his first book, and we put on a high
pressure scale, capable of recording up to 210, and even then we took
off the gauge only just in time. It had reached the limit, and there
were danger signs."
"What are danger signs?" I asked.
"The liquid begins to boil," he said, "and then you have to look out
for trouble. Now how many of these will you take? I can let you have
a trial dozen for $4, or two dozen for $7.50. Two dozen? Thank you.
You attach them in the back of the book--so fashion--or if the book
is bound with a loose back, then you put them down here. There is no
danger of their being seen, in either case. Here is our card, we shall
be very pleased to fill any further orders. Thank you. Good day!"
As soon as he had gone I left my office, and went out into the public
part of the library. I had started for the reading-room, when I heard
my name called. It was Professor Frugles, the well-known scientific
historian. He is giving his course of lectures on "The Constitutional
Development of Schleswig-Holstein" and I had attended one or two of
them. They had already been going on for two months--and although
he lectured four times a week, he hadn't progressed beyond the
introduction and preliminaries. Both of the lectures I had heard were
long wrangles in which the professor devoted his energies to proving
that some writer on this subject (a German whose name I did not catch)
was wholly untrustworthy. I was told by some of the most patient
listeners that so far no single thing about Schleswig-Holstein itself
had been mentioned, and that it did not appear to be in sight. The
course consisted merely of Frugles' opinions of the authorities.
Now the professor came slowly toward me, wiping his face with a large
red handkerchief and waving his cane.
"Got any new books?" he shouted.
I told him we had a few, and took him back into one of the workrooms.
He examined them.
"This will do; I'll look this over," and he picked up something in
German.
I offered him another--in English, and, as I thought, rather
interesting in appearance.
"Pah!" he ejaculated, as if I had put some nauseous thing under his
nose, "popular!"
He exploded this last word, which was his most violent term of
condemnation, and ran through the rest of the books.
"Well, I'll take this into the reading-room and look it through," and
he started with the German book.
I prevailed upon him to take the other as well, and he consented, with
a grunt. He did not notice that I had slipped an interest gauge into
both of them.
After a bit, I followed him into the reading-room. He was in a far
corner, hard at work. Mrs. Cornelia Crumpet was engaged in conversation
with Miss Bixby, the reference librarian, when I came in.
"Oh, here's Mr. Edwards!" she exclaimed. "Why, what a library you
have! I can't find anything at all about the Flemish Renaissance and I
do not know what I shall do, for I have to read a paper on it to-morrow
afternoon before the Twenty-Minute Culture Club. Miss Bixby was just
saying she would get me something. Now what would you advise? There is
nothing at all in the books I looked at."
"Perhaps you looked in the wrong books," I suggested, observing that
she had a copy of "Thelma" under her arm.
"Oh, Mr. Edwards, how ridiculous of you! I'm carrying this book home
for the housemaid; she's sick in bed, and the cook said she was
homesick and threatened to leave. So I said I would get her something
to read to occupy her mind. This is fearful trash, I suppose, but I
thought it would keep her contented until she got well. But I do wish
you would tell me what to consult about the Flemish Renaissance."
"Mrs. Crumpet," I said, "Miss Bixby knows more about that subject in
one minute than I do all day, and I advise you to let her prescribe."
Mrs. Crumpet agreed to wait, while Miss Bixby went for the books.
"Where's that copy of 'Thelma'? I put it down here. Oh, you have it,
Mr. Edwards! Well, you had better let me take it; I'm sure it is too
frivolous for you serious-minded librarians to read. I'll sit here and
look it over until she comes back with those books."
She took it, interest gauge and all, and sat down.
Miss Larkin came into the room just then and asked me to come over to
the children's department.
"I want to show you," she said, "what an interest these children take
in serious reading and non-fiction. It is most encouraging."
When we arrived at the children's room she had two or three small
persons arranged about the desks.
"Now, Willie," she said, "which do you like best, story-books or nature
books?"
Willie answered with great promptness: "Nacher books."
The others all confessed to an extraordinary fondness for "hist'ry" or
"biography" or "nacher."
I asked Miss Larkin's leave to try a little experiment, and then
explained to her the workings of the interest gauges. We chose Willie
as a subject for our investigations, and gave him a copy of one of his
beloved "nacher" books, with a gauge attached. Five minutes' reading
by Willie sent the arrow up to 30, but the same time on "The Crimson
Sweater" sent it up to 110.
"He seems to like Mr. Barbour better than the Rev. Dr. Fakir, Miss
Larkin--I'm afraid that his enthusiasm for 'nacher' is in accordance
with what he knows will please you. Why don't you use your influence
with him to lead him toward truthfulness? It's a better quality, even,
than a fondness for non-fiction."
As I went back I met Professor Frugles.
"Let me have this, as soon as it is ready to go out," he said,
brandishing the German work; "this other--trifling, sir, trifling!"
And away he went.
But I noticed that the German book had only sent the gauge up to forty,
while the "trifling" work, which had caused him to express so much
contempt, had registered seventy-five.
At the issue desk was Mrs. Crumpet, having her books charged. As there
were no gauges on the books about the Flemish Renaissance, I had no
data to go on, except the fact that although she declared she had
"skimmed through" them all and found them "very helpful," she had not,
so far, cut any of the pages. I did not mention this to her, as she
might have retorted that we ought to have cut them ourselves. Which was
quite true.
But while she talked with Miss Carey, I managed to extract the gauge
from "Thelma." At least, I took away the fragments of it. The arrow had
gone up to 140, and trying to get still higher the little glass tube
had been smashed to bits.
THE GARDENER'S GUIDE
THE GARDNER'S GUIDE
I was looking over the proof sheets for some Library of Congress
catalogue cards when I observed the name of Bunkum--Mrs. Martha Matilda
Bunkum was the full name, and I was further privileged to learn that
she was born in 1851. Everyone knows Mrs. Bunkum's two great works:
"Handy Hints for Hillside Gardens," and "Care and Cultivation of
Crocuses." Now, it seemed, she had accumulated all her horticultural
wisdom into one book, which was called "The Gardener's Guide, or a Vade
Mecum of Useful Information for Amateur Gardeners, by Martha Matilda
Bunkum." The Library of Congress card went on to say that the book was
published in New York, by the well-known firm of Ponsonby, Perks &
Co., in the year 1911. It brought tears to my eyes, recalling the days
when I, too, was a cataloguer, to see that the book had "xiv, 7, xv,
27, 316 p., illus., plates.", and moreover was 19 centimeters high.
As soon as I had recovered from my emotion, I pressed the electric bell
three times--a signal that brings Miss Anderson, the head of the order
department, into my office, unless she happens to be arranging her hair
before the mirror in the stack-room at the moment. This time she came
promptly.
"Miss Anderson," I said, "we must get a copy of Mrs. Bunkum's
'Gardener's Guide.'"
She instantly looked intelligent and replied, "We have one here now, on
approval; it came in from Malkan this morning," and she hurried out to
get it.
When I had the book, I regarded it lovingly.
"I wish I knew what the 'A. L. A. Book List' says about this," I
pondered.
"It will be along in a couple of months," said Miss Anderson, "and then
we can find out."
I told Miss Anderson to keep the book, anyhow, and to have this copy
charged to my private account.
That night, on the way home, I expended $1.65 for flower seeds. They
were all put up in attractive little envelopes, with the most gorgeous
pictures on the front, representing blossoms of tropical splendor. On
the backs was a great deal of information, as well as Latin names,
confident prediction of what a dazzling mass of bloom the little
packets would bring forth, and warnings "not to plant these seeds
deeper than one-sixteenth of an inch."
All but the sunflowers. I could not get any sunflower seeds in packets,
and finally had to get them in a paper bag--an enormous lot of them,
for five cents. But there were no pictures, and no directions about
depth. All this, I reflected, would be forthcoming from the pages of
Mrs. Bunkum.
On the following evening, in company with Jane, I went forth to
sow. Jane had the "Gardener's Guide" and I took certain tools and
implements. By the time I had a trench excavated a little shower came
up, and Jane retreated to the veranda. I had on old clothes and didn't
mind.
"Jane!" I called, "look up Mrs. Bunkum and see how deep to plant
sunflower seeds."
All the directions on the little packets were so precise about
depths--some seeds an inch, some half an inch, and some (the poppies,
for instance) only a sixteenth of an inch below the surface--that I was
tremendously impressed with the importance of it all. Previously, I had
thought you just stuck seeds in any old way.
But the rain was coming down harder now, and my spectacles were getting
blurred. Jane seemed to be lost in admiration of the frontispiece to
the "Gardener's Guide."
She began to turn the leaves of the index rapidly, and I could hear
her mutter: "Q, R, S--here it is. Scrap-book, screens, slugs, sowing,
spider on box. Oh, I hate spiders! Sunbonnet, sun-dial, sweet peas.
Why, there isn't anything about sunflowers!"
This annoyed me very much.
"Jane," I said, "how perfectly absurd! Do you suppose an authority like
Mrs. Bunkum would write a book on gardening, and not mention such
common things as sunflowers? Look again."
She did so, but presently shouted back: "Well, I don't care! It goes
right from sun-dial to sweet peas, and then Sweet William, and then to
the T's--Tigrinum and Tobacco Water. I don't see what this 'Sunbonnet'
means, do you? Perhaps it's a misprint for sunflower. I'll look it
up--page 199."
Presently Jane found the reference she was hunting, and read it to me,
leaning out over the rail of the veranda.
"Unless a woman possesses a skin impervious to wind and sun, she is
apt to come through the summer looking as red and brown as an Indian;
and if one is often out in the glare, about the only headgear that
can be worn to prevent this, is the old-fashioned sunbonnet. With
its poke before and cape behind, protecting the neck, one really
cannot become sunburned, and pink ones are not so bad. Retired behind
its friendly shelter, you are somewhat deaf to the world; and at the
distant house, people may shout to you and bells be rung at you, and,
if your occupation be engrossing, the excuse 'no one can hear through a
sunbonnet' must be accepted."
Jane read this with the liveliest interest, and at its conclusion
remarked: "I believe I'll get a blue one, in spite of her!"
I sneezed two or three times at this point, and asked her to try again
for sunflowers.
"Look here," I suggested, "I've noticed that index. Perhaps sunflowers
are entered under their class as hardy annuals, or biennials, or
periodicals, or whatever they are. Look 'em up that way."
She did so.
"Nothing under 'Hardy annuals,'" she announced, "except 'hardy roses';
under 'Biennials' it says 'see also names of flowers.'"
This made her laugh and say: "Here's a librarian getting a taste of his
own medicine. No, it gives a reference to page 117. Here it is: 'There
are but few hardy biennials. The important ones, which no garden should
be without, are: Digitalis, and Campanula Medium.' Why, I thought
Digitalis was something you put in your eye!"
"Did you look under 'periodicals'?" I retorted. "I could put something
in _her_ eye! Did you look under 'periodicals'?"
Jane referred again to the index.
"There isn't any such thing," she said presently; "don't you mean
perennials? Here's a lot about them. Oh, yes, and a list of them,
too. Now, let me see--Aquilegia, Dianthus barbatus, Dicentra
spectabilis--gracious! do you suppose any of those are sunflowers?"
I groaned.
"Would you mind getting me a rain-coat? I'm afraid these seeds will
sprout in my hand in a few minutes, if we don't get some information
soon."
Jane went into the house, but returned in about five minutes with an
umbrella.
"Your rain-coat isn't here," she said, "you left it at the library that
day that it cleared during the afternoon. I will send Amanda out with
this umbrella."
"Do so by all means," I replied, "as I have only two hands occupied
with the trowel and the sunflower seeds it will be a pleasure to
balance an umbrella as well."
But Jane did not notice the sarcasm, and presently Amanda tiptoed out
through the wet grass with the umbrella. I was left trying to hold
it, and wondering how Mrs. Bunkum acted in a crisis like this. But of
course she never got caught in one. She would know right off the bat
just how deep to put the seeds. At any rate, Jane's researches among
the Aquilegias had given me an idea.
"Look here," I called, "Mrs. Bunkum is so confounded classical or
scientific, or whatever it is, that I believe she scorns to use such a
vulgar word as sunflower. She's probably put it under its scientific
name."
Jane looked as though the last difficulty had been removed.
"What would the scientific name be?" she inquired.
"I am trying to think, as well as I can, standing in this puddle." I
was sparring for time. "It would be _helio_ something, I suppose," I
added.
"Heliotrope, of course!" exclaimed Jane, with a glad chortle. "Here
they are; all about them!"
"No! no! no!" I shouted, "I do wish you wouldn't jump at conclusions
so. Heliotrope means a flower that turns around to follow the sun."
"Well," she said, "I thought sunflowers did that."
"So they do," I told her, "but heliotropes are little blue things, as
you very well know--or ought to. Now, you go to the telephone, and call
up the library, and ask for Miss Fairfax. She is in the reference room
now, or ought to be."
There was a pause, while I could hear Jane at the telephone.
"North, double six three, please. No, double six three. Yes. Hello!
Hello! Is this the library? Yes, the library. Yes; is Miss Fairfax
there? Ask her to come to the 'phone, please. I said, ask her to
come to the 'phone. Is that Miss Fairfax? Oh, Miss Fairfax, this is
Mrs. Edwards. Mr. Edwards wants you to go as quickly as possible to
the reference room and look up the scientific name for sunflowers. He
says, look it up in Bailey. Do you understand? What? What? No, I said
the scientific name for sunflowers, you know, s-u-n-f-l-o-w-e-r-s. The
tall things with yellow petals and brown centers. _Sunflowers!!!_ What?
Who is this talking? Is this Miss Fairfax? What, isn't this the Public
Library? What? Well, where is it, then? Henderson's glue factory? Oh,
pardon me! I thought it was the Public Library. Central gave me the
wrong number.... Hello, is this central? Well, you gave me the wrong
number; you gave me North double six two. I want North double six
three--the Public Library. Yes, please. Hello, is this the Public
Library? Yes; who is this speaking, please? Oh, Miss Anderson? Is that
you? This is Mrs. Edwards, yes. What are you staying so late for? You
are? Well, I shall speak to Mr. Edwards about it. It is perfectly
ridiculous to have you working overtime night after night, and all for
that foolish exhibition, too. I know these librarians; if they would
have the courage not to try to do so much when the city is so stingy
about giving them assistants! Well, you go right home now and get your
dinner. The idea! What? You have accessioned two hundred books this
afternoon? If Mr. Edwards doesn't stop that, I shall, that's all. Oh,
you have saved me out a copy of 'The Chaperone.' How nice of you! No,
I certainly do not. I didn't like 'Cora Kirby' very much, and 'The
Players' was horrid! But I did want to see what this was like--it
has been very favorably criticised. What? Oh, give it to Mr. Edwards
to-morrow night, put it in his bag, at the bottom; he'll never notice
it. I hope there are not any more of you there! Oh, Miss Tyler and Miss
Hancock, out at the desk, of course, and who? Miss Fairfax? Dear me,
that reminds me. Mr. Edwards wants Miss Fairfax to look up something
for him. Goodness, I forgot all about it! He is standing out there in
all this rain with an umbrella in one hand, a trowel in the other, and
a package of sunflower seeds in the other. He'll be furious! Do go and
get Miss Fairfax to come to the 'phone right away. Yes, to come to the
'phone.... What's that? Is that central? No, please hold the line; I
haven't finished yet.... Is that you, Miss Fairfax? What? Oh, Miss
Anderson? What? Miss Fairfax has gone to her supper? What on earth
shall I do? Who is in the reference room? David? Who's he? Oh, that new
page.... David, Mr. Edwards wants you to look up the scientific name
for sunflowers; look it up in Bailey, David. What? Bailey who? I don't
know. Ask some of them there.... Oh, well, wait a minute. Hold the
line....
"Sam!" And she came out to the veranda again. "Sam, what Bailey is it
they are to look it up in?"
"Liberty Hyde," I yelled. "Cyclopædia of American Horticulture! But any
dictionary will probably do. And, for the love of Mike, get a move on!
I'm drowned, paralyzed! I'll have rheumatism for a week!"
But she was already back at the telephone.
"David, are you there? Mr. Edwards says it's Liberty Hyde Bailey's
Cyclopædia of Horticulture. And you are to hurry, hurry! What is that?
You don't know where it is? Well, look it up in the catalogue.... Oh,
ask Miss Anderson to come back.... Is that you, Miss Anderson? Will you
look it up, please? Yes, the scientific name for sunflowers. In Freedom
Bailey's Cyclopædia of Agriculture, or any dictionary.... Did you find
it? Yes? What? Spell it. Oh, _Helianthus_. Thank you so much! Good-by!
And don't forget to send 'The Chaperone' home by Mr. Edwards to-morrow
night. Thank you for keeping me a copy. Good-by...."
She came back to the veranda.
"I've got it at last, Sam. It's _Helianthus_. Where's Mrs. Bunkum?
Oh, I left her in the study. Just wait a minute, now.... Yes, here
it is, Helianthus, sure enough. How silly! Why doesn't she call 'em
sunflowers? There, page 189. This is what Mrs. Bunkum says: 'The
Helianthus Grandiflora, or common sunflower, is one of the most
attractive and satisfactory of the perennials. Nothing is so suitable
to place against a wall, or to employ to cover a shed or any other
unattractive feature of the landscape. The stalks grow sometimes as
high as eight to ten feet and bloom from July to September. It is well
not to plant Delphiniums too near the Helianthus, as the shade from
the former is too intense and it would not do to risk spoiling the
lovely blossoms of the Delphinium. The latter ... why!" broke out Jane,
"she goes on about Delphiniums now, and doesn't tell any more about
sunflowers!"
"Do you mean to say," I asked--and there was a hard, steely ring in my
voice, "do you mean to say that Mrs. Bunkum does not tell how deep I
am to plant these cussed seeds?"
Jane was about to laugh or to cry--I am not sure which.
"Not a word more than what I read," she answered.
"Jane," I said solemnly and firmly, "go into the house. What is going
to happen is not a fit sight for your eyes. Praise be, that book is
mine, and not the library's, and I can deal with it justly. Give it
here. And if you have any affection for Martha Matilda Bunkum, kiss her
good-by. I do not know how deep these seeds go, but I know how deep she
goes." And I began to dig a suitable hole.
* * * * *
I rejoined my wife at dinner after a bath and certain life-saving
remedies.
"Milton uttered curses on him who destroyed a good book, but what do
you think will come up in ground fertilized by Mrs. Bunkum?" I asked.
Jane giggled.
"I do not know," she said, "but if you erect a tombstone to her, I can
suggest an epitaph."
"What is it?" I questioned.
"The Gardeners Guyed," said Jane.
VANISHING FAVORITES
VANISHING FAVORITES
It is nearly twelve months since anyone has lamented the disappearance
of our old favorite characters of fiction. While these expressions of
sorrow are undoubtedly sincere, they are seldom practical. No one, for
instance, has ever suggested any method for the perpetuation of the
heroes and villains of the old plays and romances. No one has urged
that when the government subsidizes authors, and pensions poets, a
sum shall be set aside for such writers as will agree to stick to the
old-fashioned characters. Yet it would prove effective.
Of its desirability nothing need be said.
It is no answer to those who regret the passing of their old friends
to say that they can still be found in the old books. That is like
sending to a museum to view dried bones, some person who yearns to
behold the ichthyosaurus splashing among the waves, or the pterodactyl
soaring overhead. Indeed, the cases are similar for more than one
reason. How greatly would the joy of life increase if we only had a few
extinct animals left! The African hunter returns with an assortment
of hippopotamuses, elephants, and jubjub birds. It would be more
delightful if he could also fetch the mighty glyptodon, the terrible
dinotherium, and the stately bandersnatch.
There are few of the old characters of fiction more generally missed
than the retired colonel, home from India. He was usually rather
portly in figure, though sometimes tall and thin. Always his face was
the color of a boiled lobster, and his white moustache and eyebrows
bristled furiously. For forty years he had lived exclusively on
curries, chutney, and brandy and soda, so his liver was not all it
should be.
His temper had not sweetened. He was what you might call irritable.
During forty years he had been lord and master over a regiment of
soldiers, and a village of natives, and he had the habit of command.
His favorite remark was: "Br-r-r-r!!"
That is as near as it can be reproduced in print, but from the manner
in which his lips rolled when he delivered it, and the explosive force
with which it ended, you could see that he had learned it from a Bengal
tiger. His was an imposing presence, but his speaking part was not
large. In fact, his only contributions to social intercourse were the
exclamation which has been quoted, and one other.
This sounded like "Yah!" but it was delivered with a rasping snarl
which must be heard to be appreciated. Such was his manner toward his
equals; toward servants and underlings he was not so agreeable. On the
whole, there was reason to think that he was somehow related to the
celebrated personage who "eats 'em alive," or to that other individual
called Gritchfang, who "guzzled hot blood, and blew up with a bang."
The colonel was a genial and interesting old "party," and we lament his
disappearance.
There was a turtle-dove to coo, however, in the same stories where the
colonel roared. This was the dying maiden. She has not altogether left
us--her final struggles are protracted. Her dissolution is expected at
almost any moment now.
Her specialty was being wan.
Come what might, at any hour of the day or night, under all
circumstances, she was very, very wan. You could never catch her
forgetting it. She reminded you of Bunthorne's injunction to the twenty
lovesick maidens--she made you think of faint lilies.
Usually she lay on a couch in the drawing-room, but she could, with
assistance, make her way to the window to wave her handkerchief to
Cousin Harry departing to the war. She was in love with Cousin Harry,
but knew that he cared most for proud, red-cheeked Sister Gladys. So
she suffered in silence, and when Cousin Harry forged a few checks,
she bought them up, and arranged a happy marriage between Harry and
Gladys--who was in love with someone else.
This was so that she could be a martyr. She loved being a martyr, and
was willing to make everyone else intensely uncomfortable in order
to accomplish her object. She was very gentle and sweet, and even the
Colonel would cease to bellow and snort in her presence.
The really learned heroine has gone for good. She is as rare as the
megatherium. Her successors--the women who can discuss a little
politics, or who know something about literature--are only collateral
descendants. There is some doubt about even that degree of kinship.
They are not the real things.
Our old friend had stockings of cerulean blue--though she would have
died had she shown half an inch of one of them. Her idea of courtship
was to get the hero in a woodland bower and then say something like
this:
"Perhaps you have never realized, Mr. Montmorency, how profoundly the
philosophy of the Rosicrucians has affected modern thought in its
ultimate conception of ontology. The epistemological sciences exhibit
the effect of Thales' dictum concerning the fourth state of material
cosmogony."
And Mr. Montmorency liked it, too. He had a reply all ready. He
wondered if it really was Thales so much as Empedocles or Ctesias. She
showed him that his suspicions were groundless. Thales was the man.
He gave up all idea of holding her hand, and listened to a
fifteen-minute discourse on the Peripatetics.
After this kind of heroine, is it any wonder that we object to the
bridge-playing ladies with a passion for alcohol, who are served to us
by the novelist of to-day?
The learned heroine of the old books talked as no one can talk now,
except, possibly, a Radcliffe girl with a blue book in front of her,
the clock pointing to a quarter of twelve, and a realization that a
failure to get B minus in the exam. will make it impossible for her to
secure a degree in three years.
The saintly children of the old fiction are perhaps the offspring of
the learned heroine and Mr. Montmorency. Certainly such a marriage
would result in children of no commonplace type. These, however, tend
not so much to scholarship as to good behavior. They would get 98 in
all their studies, but 100 plus in deportment.
They are too good to be true. They have enough piety to fit out a
convocation of bishops, with a great deal left over. The little girls
among them are addicted to the death-bed habit. Only they carry the
matter further than the invalid heroine.
They actually die.
The one thing worth living for, in their estimation, is to gather
a group of weeping relatives and the minister about their beds on
a beautiful morning in June, and then pass serenely away, uttering
sentiments of such lofty morality that even the minister feels abashed.
The pet lamb, the hoop, the golden curls and the pantalettes, which
had been their accessories during seven years in the mortal vale, are
cheerfully left behind for the joy of this solemn moment.
There ought to be no dispute over the statement that one other
old-fashioned fictitious character is badly missed.
This is the family ghost.
The modern substitute for the real thing is like offering a seat in a
trolley car to someone who has been used to a sedan chair. The modern
ghost is a ready-made product of a psychological laboratory, and you
know that his Bertillon measurements are filed away in a card-catalogue
somewhere.
The old ghost used to groan and clank chains, and leave gouts of blood
(gouts always--never drops) all over the place.
Or, if it were a lady ghost, she sighed sweetly and slipped out of your
bedroom window to the moonlit balcony.
You could get along with ghosts like either of them. You knew what they
were up to.
But the ghost of contemporary fiction is as obscure as Henry James.
He is a kind of disembodied idea; he never groans, nor clanks chains;
and you cannot be sure whether he is a ghost, or a psychological
suggestion, or a slight attack of malarial fever. In nothing is the
degeneracy and effeminacy of our literature more apparent than in its
anæmic ghosts. Hashimura Togo says that "when a Negro janitor sees a
ghost, he are a superstition; but when a college professor sees one,
he are a scientific phenomenon." When that point has been reached with
real ghosts, what can be expected of the fictitious ones?
Along with the family ghost disappeared the faithful old family
servant. He was usually a man, and he looked like E. S. Willard as
Cyrus Blenkarn. He dressed in snuff-colored clothes, and he bent over,
swaying from side to side like a polar-bear in a cage. He rubbed his
hands. But he was very devoted to the young mistress.
Lor' bless yer, Sir, he knew her mother, he did, when she was only that
high. Carried her in his arms when she was a little babby. But he is
afraid something is going wrong with the old place. He doesn't like the
looks of things, nohow.
With the superhuman instinct granted to servants, but denied to their
superiors, he has become suspicious of the villain on sight. It is
lucky that no one believes the old servant, or they would pitch out the
villain then and there, and the story would come to an end at Chapter
II.
The utter chaos into which villains have fallen has been a cause for
regretful comment for years past. Long ago it was pointed out that
villains no longer employ direct and honorable methods like murder
and assault. The sum of their criminal activities is a stock-market
operation that ruins the hero.
Things have gone from bad to worse.
Now you cannot tell which is the villain and which the hero. The old,
simple days when the villain, as Mr. J. K. Jerome said, was immediately
recognized by the fact that he smoked a cigarette, have long since
passed away. Now, the villain and hero in Chapter I. have usually
changed places two or three times by the end of the book.
Let no one think that this complaint is made because we regret losing
our admiration for the hero. We never had any. He was always such a
chuckle-headed ninny that you longed to throw rocks at him from the
start.
The lamentable thing is to see the villain falling steadily away from
the paths of vice and crime, and taking up with one virtuous practice
after another.
Meanwhile, the hero is making feeble efforts at villainy, which result,
of course, in complete failure. You cannot learn to be a villain at
Chapter XXIV. It is too late. Villains, like poets, are born, not made,
and in the older books the faithful servant could tell you that the
villain was bad from the cradle. Hereditary influence and unremitting
attention to business are as necessary in the villain trade as in any
other.
There is one other phase of the making of villains which deserves
consideration. That is, their nationality.
Once you had only to know that the man who appeared at Chapter III.,
twirling his moustache and making polite speeches, was a French count
or a Russian prince, to be sure that on him would fall the responsible
post of chief villain during the rest of the story.
If the novel were written in America, an English lord could be added
to the list. The titled foreigner, whatever he might be, was expected
to try to elope with the heroine, for the sake of her money. The
hero baffled him finally, and seized the opportunity, at the moment
of bafflement, to deliver a few patriotic sentences on the general
superiority of republican institutions.
This is all changed. We have had novels and plays with virtuous,
even admirable, English lords. Once or twice members of the French
nobility have appeared in another capacity than that of advance agent
of wickedness. It is time to call a halt, or the first thing we know
someone will write a book with a virtuous Russian prince in it.
The line must be drawn somewhere. The mission of Russia in English
literature is to furnish tall, smooth, diabolical persons, devoted to
vodka, absinthe, oppression of the peasantry, cultivation of a black
beard, and general cussedness. We foresee that the novelists will soon
have to draw upon Japan for their villains. Much ought to be made of a
small, oily, smiling Oriental, who is nursing horrid plots beneath a
courteous exterior.
At the time of the first performances of Mr. Moody's play "The Great
Divide," it was pleasant to see that a sense of fitness in the
nationality of villains had not entirely died out. It may be remembered
that the first act represents an American man joining with a Mexican
and a nondescript in an atrocious criminal enterprise. At least one
newspaper had the sturdy patriotism to call the dramatist to account
for insinuating that an American could possibly do such a thing.
"Furriners," perhaps, but Americans, never! Shame on you, Mr. Moody!
While so many of the chief characters of the old fiction have vanished,
there is a chorus of minor ones who have also moved away.
Where, for instance, is the village simpleton? He was a useful
personage, for he could be depended upon to make the necessary heroic
sacrifice in the last chapter but one. When the church steeple burst
into flames, or the dam broke and the flood descended on the town, or
the secondary villain was tying the heroine's mother to the railroad
track, the hero was holding the center of the stage and seeing that the
heroine escaped in safety.
But who was that slight figure climbing aloft in the lurid glare of
the burning belfry, or swimming across the raging torrent, or running
up to the bridge waving a red lantern? Who, indeed, but poor, despised
Benny Bilkins, the village idiot? He fell with a crash when the steeple
came down, or disappeared forever in the angry, swirling waters, or was
ground under the wheels of the locomotive--but then there was a grave
for the heroine to strew violets upon, in the last chapter.
The miser, too, has utterly disappeared. In facial characteristics he
resembled the faithful old family servant, except that he had deeper
lines on his brow. He liked to get out a table, and sit over it with a
bag of gold.
No banks for him.
He wanted his gold pieces near at hand, so that he could fetch them out
at any hour, clink them together and gloat over them.
He was a clinker and a gloater--he cared for nothing else.
We do not have any misers now. Or, if they exist, they go away to a
safety deposit vault, get their bonds and gloat over them. Half the fun
is gone, you see. You can gloat over bonds as much as you like, but
not a clink can you get out of them. That probably accounts for the
disappearance of misers.
We earnestly request some novelist to bring about a resurrection of
these characters. They would be welcome in the short stories, as well.
During the past fifteen years American fiction has gone through two
epochs--the Gadzooks school and the B'Gosh school.
It is now congealed in what may be called the Ten Below Zero School.
Any constant reader of the magazines has to keep on his ulster,
ear-tabs, mittens and gum-shoes, from one year's end to another. It
never thaws. Loggers, miners, trappers, explorers--any kind of persons
so long as they dwell in the frozen north--are what the magazine writer
adores.
One of Kipling's characters says that there's never a law of God or man
runs north of 53. The magazine editors seem to think there's never a
thing worth writing of, lives south of 85. Will not some of them dig up
one or two of the old characters we have been discussing, and see if
they cannot send the thermometer up a few degrees?
We are tired of stamping our feet, blowing on our hands, and rubbing
snow on our noses to keep them from falling off.
BY TELEPHONE
BY TELEPHONE
"On January 14th," so announced a circular issued last month by
the Ezra Beesly Free Public Library of Baxter, "we shall install a
telephone service at the library. Telephone your inquiries to the
library, and they will be answered over the wire."
Now, January 14th was last Saturday, and this is undoubtedly the first
account of the innovation at Baxter.
Miss Pansy Patterson, assistant reference librarian, took her seat
at the telephone promptly at nine o'clock, ready to answer all
questions. She had, near her, a small revolving bookcase containing
an encyclopædia, a dictionary, the Statesman's Year Book, Who's Who
in America, Mulhall's Dictionary of Statistics, The Old Librarian's
Almanack, the Catalogue of the Boston Athenæum, Baedeker's guide book
to the United States, Cruden's Concordance, and a few others of the
most valuable reference books, in daily use among librarians.
Should this stock fail her she could send the stenographer, Miss
Parkinson, on a hurry call to the reading-room, where Miss Bixby, the
head reference librarian, would be able to draw on a larger collection
of books to find the necessary information.
Mr. Amos Vanhoff, the new librarian of Baxter, stood over the
telephone, rubbing his hands in pleasant anticipation of the workings
of the new system which he had installed.
The bell rang almost immediately, and Miss Patterson took the receiver
from its hook.
"Is this the library?"
"Yes."
"This is Mrs. Humphrey Mayo. I understand that you answer inquiries by
telephone? Yes! Thank you. Have you any books about birds?"
"Oh, yes--a great many. Which--"
"Well; I am so much interested in a large bird that has been perching
on a syringa bush on our front lawn for the last half hour. It is
a very extraordinary-looking bird--I have never seen one like it.
I cannot make it out clearly through the opera glass, and I do not
dare to go nearer than the piazza for fear of startling it. I only
discovered it as I was eating breakfast, and I do not know how long
it has been there. None of the bird books I own seem to tell anything
about such a bird. Now, if I should describe it to you do you think you
could look it up in some of your books?"
"Why, I think so."
"Well, it's a very large bird--like an eagle or a large hawk. And it
is nearly all black; but its feathers are very much ruffled up. It has
a collar or ruff around its neck, and on its head there is a splash of
bright crimson or scarlet. I think it must be some tropical bird that
has lost its way. Perhaps it is hurt. Now, what do you suppose it is?"
"You see, I haven't any bird books right at hand--I'll send in to the
reading-room. Will you hold the line, please?"
Miss Patterson turned to the stenographer and repeated Mrs. Mayo's
description of the strange bird.
"Will you please ask Miss Bixby to look it up, and let me know as soon
as possible?"
During the interval that followed, the operator at central asked
three times: "Did you get them?" and three times Mrs. Mayo and Miss
Patterson chanted in unison: "Yes; hold the line, please!"
Finally the messenger returned, remarking timidly: "He says it's a
crow."
"A crow!" exclaimed Miss Patterson.
"A crow!" echoed Mrs. Mayo, at the other end of the wire, "oh, that is
impossible. I know _crows_ when I see them. Why, this has a ruff, and a
magnificent red coloring about its head. Oh, it's no crow!"
"Whom did you see in there?" inquired Miss Patterson. "Miss Bixby?"
"No," replied the young and timid stenographer, "it was that young
man--I don't know his name."
She had entered the library service only the week before.
"Oh, Edgar! He doesn't know anything about anything. Miss Bixby
must have left the room for a moment, and I suppose he had brought
in a book for a reader. He is only a page--you mustn't ask him any
questions. Do go back and see if Miss Bixby isn't there now, and ask
her."
A long wait ensued, and as Mrs. Mayo's next-door neighbor insisted on
using the telephone to order her dinner from the marketmen, the line
had to be abandoned. In ten or fifteen minutes, however, the assistant
reference librarian was once more in communication with Mrs. Mayo.
"We think the bird might possibly be a California grebe--but we
cannot say for sure. It is either that or else Hawkins's giant
kingfisher--unless it has a tuft back of each ear. If it has the tufts,
it may be the white-legged hoopoo. But Mr. Reginald Kookle is in the
library, and we have asked him about it. You know of Mr. Kookle, of
course?"
"What, the author of 'Winged Warblers of Waltham' and 'Common or Garden
Birds'?"
"Yes; and of 'Birds I Have Seen Between Temple Place and Boylston
Street' and 'The Chickadee and His Children.'"
"Yes, indeed--I know his books very well. I own several of them. What
does he think?"
"He is not sure. But Miss Bixby described this bird to him, and he is
very much interested. He has started for your house already, because he
wants to see the bird."
"Oh, that will be perfectly lovely. Thank you so much. It will be fine
to have Mr. Kookle's opinion. Good-by."
"Good-by."
* * * * *
And the conference was ended. It may not be out of place to relate
that Mr. Kookle, the eminent bird author, arrived at Mrs. Mayo's a
few minutes later. As he heard that the mysterious stranger was on
the front lawn, he approached the house carefully from the rear, and
climbed over the back fence. He walked around the piazza to the front
door, where Mrs. Mayo awaited him.
Mr. Kookle was dressed in his famous brown suit, worn in order that he
might be in perfect harmony with the color of dead grass, and hence, as
nearly as possible, unseen on the snowless, winter landscape. He had
his field glasses already leveled on the syringa bush when Mrs. Mayo
greeted him. She carried an opera glass.
"Right there--do you see, Mr. Kookle?"
"Yes, I see him all right."
They both looked intently at the bird. The weather was a little
unfavorable for close observation, for, as it may be remembered,
Saturday morning was by turns foggy and rainy. A light mist hung over
the wet grass now, but the tropical visitor, or whatever he was, could
be descried without much difficulty.
He sat, or stood, either on the lower branches of the bush, or amongst
them, on the ground. His feathers were decidedly ruffled, and he turned
his back toward his observers. His shoulders were a little drawn up, in
the attitude usually ascribed by artists to Napoleon, looking out over
the ocean from St. Helena's rocky isle. But it was possible, even at
that distance, to see his magnificent crimson crest.
Mr. Kookle took a deep breath. "Yes," he said, "I suspected it."
"What?" inquired Mrs. Mayo, eagerly, "What is it?"
"Madam," returned the bird author, impressively, "you have my
sincerest congratulations. I envy you. You have the distinction of
having been the first observer, to the best of my knowledge, of the
only specimen of the Bulbus Claristicus Giganticus ever known to come
north of the fourteenth parallel of latitude."
Mrs. Mayo was moved nearly to tears. Never in all her career as a bird
enthusiast, not even when she addressed the Twenty Minute Culture Club
on "Sparrows I Have Known"--never had she felt the solemn joy that
filled her at this minute.
"Are you sure that is what it is?" she asked in hushed tones.