P00fe£i IN BLACK OR RED By Edmund Lester Pearson ^ “For him was lefere have at his beddes hed Twenty bookes, clad in black or red.” 1 • ♦K ^ J \ *i X ^ . V > BOOKS IN BLACK OR RED OTHER BOOKS BY MR. PEARSON (Published by The Macmillan Company) The Believing Years. A book about boys. The Voyage of the Hoppergrass. A book of adventure. The Secret Book. About books and read- ing. Theodore Roosevelt. A brief biography. (Published elsewhere) The Old Librarian’s Almanack. The Library and the Librarian. The Librarian at Play. ^ 0 0 £i IN BLACK OR RED By EDMUND LESTER PEARSON **For him was lefere have at his beddes hed Twenty bookes, clad in black or red.’* NEW YORK Published by THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1923 All rights reserved PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA Copyright, 1920, 1921 and 1922, By the national WEEKLY CORPORATION Copyright, 1923, By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY Set up and electrotyped. Published February, 1923. Press of J. J. Little & Ives Company New York, U. S. A. “When Christmas comes about again, O, then I shall have money; I’ll hoard it up, and box it all. I’ll give it to my honey: I would it were ten thousand pound, I’d give it all to Sally; She is the darling of my heart. And she lives in our alley.” NOTE Half of these chapters are new. Of the other six, some parts have appeared elsewhere. My acknowledgments are therefore due the Editor of The Nation; while to Mr. Fuller, Editor of The Independent, and formerly of The Weekly Review, to Mr. Edgett, Literary Editor of The Boston Evening Transcript, and to Mr. Brander Matthews, either for permission to reprint, or for advice and information, I would like to add to my thanks an expression of warm personal regard. “An American Eccen- tric” is reprinted, with a few changes, from the Bulletin of The New York Public Library, by consent of its Editor, upon whose erudition and courtesy I need not enlarge. E. L. P. PREFACE “Why don’t you write a book about book-collecting?” said he. “Well, the reason may seem a poor one,” I replied, “but I know no more about it than I do about operations on Wall Street.” “But there must be a lot of poor birds,” he persisted, “who cannot buy rarities at hundreds of dollars apiece, but like to acquire books at seventy-five cents or a dollar or three. These fellows might like a book written ex- pressly for themselves.” “They might,” I admitted. CONTENTS CRAPTEK PACK I. The Literary Hoax, 1 3 II. The Literary Hoax, II 19 III. Book Shops 41 IV. Wizards and Enchanters 53 V. The Search for Curious Books, 1 69 VI. The Search for Curious Books, II 87 VII. The Bird 117 VIII. With, ho! Such Bugs and Goblins, . . . 129 IX. The Cary Girls 141 X. An American Eccentric 157 XL The Lost First Folio 177 XII. With Acknowledgments to Thomas De Quincey 191 ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE Chatterton’s Holiday-Afternoon 8 Forged Letter of Queen Mary 12 Prince Charles Commissions a Lieutenant 14 Fortsas Catalogue, Title Page 32 Fortsas Catalogue, Pages of Text 34 The Aristocrats Winding up the City 50 “A Tam o’ Shanter Dog” 52 Fairy Wishes Nowadays 54 The Rabbit Hunters: An Aztec Fragment 56 “They didn’t have a penny” 58 The Cockalorum, First Appearance of 60 ,The Cockalorum, Indisposition of 62 Seven Little Tigers 64 Boots for Horizontal Rain 66 The Learned Pan Chao 78 Pan Ku 80 Ou-yang Hsiu 82 Han Yu 84 Li Po . . 86 “The buffalo climbing up a tree” . . 88 The Girl’s Week-Day Book 92 Jolly Reading for Girls, or Tomb- View 94 XI ILLUSTRATIONS xii PAGE The Fate of Sabbath-Breakers 96 The Gambler Pirate ; or, Bessie, the Lady of the Lagoon . 130 The Frontier Angel 132 The Double Daggers, or Deadwood Dick’s Defiance . . 134 Texas Chick, the Southwest Detective; or, Tiger-Lily, the Vulture Queen 136 Double Dan the Dastard; or, The Pirates of the Pecot . 138 Bill, the Blizzard; or. Red Jack’s Double Crime . . . 140 The Most Noble Lord Timothy Dexter 164 The Dexter House 166 “A Pickle for the Knowing Ones”; Title Page . . . . 168 Dexter on Peace; Page from “A Pickle” 170 Page from “A Pickle” 172 Title Page of Mr. Wm. Shakespeare’s Plays, 1623 edition 182 THE LITERARY HOAX, I BOOKS IN BLACK OR RED CHAPTER I THE LITERARY HOAX, I P ersons who have burned their fingers would be glad to have the literary hoax forbidden by law. Adven- turing among books would be safer — and tamer. If it should be provided by statute that all books must follow their title-pages as exactly as a bottle of medicine must follow its label, our self-esteem would get fewer wounds, but our wits could be even duller. The traveller into the future, on H. G. Wells’s “Time Machine,” found men from whose lives all threats of danger, all but one, had been removed. Their life was safe, pleasant, and — mightily stupid. Easy will be the work of the writer of book-reviews, and of his learned brother, the literary critic, when a hoax is punishable by fine and imprisonment. No band of conspirators will dare to unite in celebrating the life and works of an imaginary Russian novelist; the invention of a fictitious school of poetry, with samples of its style, will be as illegal as printing counterfeit treasury notes; all accounts of voyages to the South Seas must be narra- tives of fact. And then the writer of book-reviews may go away fishing or golfing, and leave still more and more of his work to nis amanuensis. 3 4 BOOKS IN BLACK OR RED The writer of a review is supposed to approach a book, not necessarily with suspicion, but at least with a ques- tion. Is it what it appears to be, or is it parody, or satire? Has this author ever visited the curious place which he describes, or known the poet whose strange verses he quotes? If the writer of reviews believes every statement he finds in print, and passes them on to his own readers, sooner or later he will get bitten. And then he accepts with good humor the joke upon himself, or else (if his self-importance is greatly over-developed) becomes furi- ously angry with the author, and denounces him in words of fire and brimstone. “I have heard,” said a Churchman of some rank — I think he was a Dean or an Archdeacon, for I remember that he reminded me of Trollope — ‘‘I have heard that that book is really fictitious from beginning to end!” And he glared at me as if he intended to follow his remark with a medieval curse. I told him that I had heard the same thing and from good authority. “Well !” he said, pounding the table, “the man who would do that is a hound ! An absolute hound T* I could not understand his wrath; the author’s skill had aroused my admiration. But the Archdeacon’s sense of devotion had been outraged. The book was “The Life of John William Walshe,” by Montgomery Carmichael — one of the most inexplicable examples of the literary hoax. There are two outward signs of the biography as distinguished from the novel, as with many other books of fact compared with those of fiction: by some ancient convention it is supposed to be larger in size and higher in price. The Walshe book followed the latter of these THE LITERARY HOAX, I 5 requirements, unless I am mistaken, but not the former. Its size was that of a novel. It contained not one atom of satire, it was not a parody, and so far as I, at least, could have discovered by internal evidence, it was what it purported to be: a sober and reverent biography of an Englishman dwelling in Italy, a devout member of the Church of Rome, and in particular an enthusiastic student and pious follower of St. Francis of Assisi. But John William Walshe, his ancestors and his family, his extraordinary literary labors, the close parallel of his saintly life to that of his exemplar, St. Francis, and finally his death, in the odor of sanctity and under the Papal blessing, were all of them invented by Mr. Carmichael — a member of the British consular service in Italy, and the author of a number of volumes, mainly works of fact. Why my Archdeacon could not have re- joiced at the creation of an imaginary character, whose piety he so much admired, is hard to explain, except on the ground that his self-esteem had been hurt because he had been fooled. There is only the most distant relationship between the author of the literary hoax and the practical joker — that Eighteenth Century wag who thought it a devil of a fine trick to win a bet from his friends by some prank which inflicted physical pain or mental humiliation upon his victim. He was the spiritual grandchild of the me- dieval humorist. And he in turn, as he ran away with the miller’s wife, never thought the cup of joy was really full unless the miller, reduced to his shirt, was left stuck fast in a bog, or wildly waving his heels from a snow-bank into which he had been plunged head first. 6 BOOKS IN BLACK OR RED Theodore Hook was the type of the practical joker of a century ago, and the charming flights of his fancy may be appreciated by reading about his Berners Street Hoax, which is described, with similar triumphs, in Bram Stoker’s interesting book “Famous Impostors.” Undergraduate hoaxes, at their best, are on a higher level of wit; they are frequently aimed at pompous beings in superior station, and for that reason could by no means be spared. The classic example is the famous Oxford “rag,” when some students impersonating the “Crown Prince of Abyssinia” with his suite, were actually received on board H.M.S. Dreadnaught with proper salute of guns and all other ceremony. In fiction, the college hoax is often elaborate, and designed for the mystification or embarrassment of one man. Thus, in Mr. E. F. Benson’s story of Cambridge University, “The Babe, B.A.,” it is a collegian with a snobbish reverence for royalty who is made to suffer pangs of jealousy by the spectacle of Queen Victoria herself, accompanied by a Lady-in-Waiting, entering another collegian’s rooms to take tea. As the snob, fairly quiver- ing with ecstasy and envy, breathes the prayer “God Bless Her !” he is wholly ignorant of the fact that he is imploring Divine favor upon merely a gifted member of the college dramatic club. In one of Mr. C. Al. Flandrau’s uncollected stories, an undergraduate at Harvard, struggling under the bur- den of a sonnet which he has to write for a course in English composition, has wearied his classmates by his idea for an opening line. The tragic death of a great poet strikes him as a proper subject for his own first THE LITEIT\RY HOAX, I 7 attempt at poetry ; so he goes about asking everyone how the phrase “Shelley is dead!” would do as a beginning. He repeats the question so often that his friends take steps to inform him that they have heard enough about the lamentable event. His life, for weeks, is filled with reminders of the poet’s death, but at last he comes to feel that humor has reached its limits. He is sitting in the Hollis Street Theatre, when an usher comes up with an urgent message requiring him to drive at full speed to the Massachusetts General Hospital. A cab takes him there in a few minutes; he arrives full of apprehension lest someone he knows may have been the victim of an accident. But on giving his name, he is handed a note by an unsympathetic nurse — a note which contains only the words : “Shelley is dead !” “The Cobbler of Koepenick” should be added to Mr. Stoker’s gallery of illustrious impostors. Morally he was no better than a swindler; the object of his masquerade was to loot a town treasury. His method, however — the assumption of a Prussian captain’s uniform, which caused everybody to obey his orders — convulsed the whole world with laughter, and satirized German militarism as nothing else has ever succeeded in doing. Such personages, however, are but distantly related to the author of a literary hoax. It is well to distinguish between the imposture (an ugly word with the suggestion of fraud for purposes of gain), the literary forgery and 8 BOOKS IN BLACK OR RED the literary hoax. There is a severe and ancient type of moralist who would put them all together in one batch — he would also throw in the novel, as a book con- taining nothing but “lies.” I was shocked and amused, a few years ago, to find my name in the catalogue of the Boston Public Library, under the head: “Impostors — Literary.” While I was wondering if this was an attempt at self-expression on the part of some acidulated cataloguer, I noticed that I was for once, and by the only possible method, in the distinguished company of Thomas Chatterton, and decided that I was being com- plimented beyond all deserving. Time removes many fancied offences. Chatterton’s persistence that he was not the author of the inventions which he put forward as the work of a medieval monk is as hard to explain as ever. But nobody sympathizes with Walpole’s anger about it. Today Chatterton in- spires wonder and pity — these and a vague belief that he was a great poet, driven to suicide by cruelty and neglect. I say a vague belief, because Chatterton is one of those literary figures whose name and fate are known to every- one, his writings virtually to no one. As Senator Lodge says,* “there is a general conviction that he was a genius, although it is doubtful if anyone except his editor or biographer could be found who could quote a line of his works.” Except among professors of English literature, and not always with this exception, it would be perfectly safe to offer a reward to anyone who could offhand recite one stanza written by Chatterton. He began, when fourteen, with the forgery of an • In “Certain Accepted Heroes.” Chatterton’s Holiday-Afternoon, by W. R. Morris • THE LITERARY HOAX, I 9 armorial blazon and a genealogical table to prove that one Mr. Burgum, a pewterer of Bristol, was a descendant of the noble family of De Bergham. (How could a pewterer be anything but absurd?) This tickled Mr. Burgum so much that he rewarded Chatterton with five shillings; probably it did not completely demoralize him, as the news did John Durbeyfield, the father of Tess, when the antiquarian told him that he was a member of the ancient and knightly family of the D’Urbervilles! But Chatterton’s precocious talent and love of medie- valism needed no five-shilling tips. There were left to him less than four years of life, but these were enough for the production of a considerable body of acknowl- edged poetry (far above the ability of the usual school- boy) as well as the spurious works of “T. Rowlie,” the Fifteenth Century priest, which provoked the extensive “Rowley Controversy,” angered and confused some learned men, and fixed Chatterton’s name as one always to be included in a history of English literature. Good critics find many passages of beauty and power in the Rowley poems; to me they are unreadable, and I am consoled to note that Palgrave omits Chatterton alto- gether from his “Golden Treasury.” In more inclusive anthologies, however, the custom seems to be to give one example of his verse; this is the treatment accorded in such recent collections as Sir Henry Newbolt’s “English Anthology,” and in Mr. Le Gallienne’s “Book of Eng- lish Verse.” Before he was eighteen years old, hungry and in despair, Chatterton poisoned himself with arsenic — and died that most distressing death. His spirit came back, 10 BOOKS IN BLACK OR RED more than a century later, and stood beside another poet, Francis Thompson, and saved him from self-destruction. Thompson’s reference to this may be found in Wilfrid Blunt’s “My Diaries.” No form of literary hoax seems to leave a permanent legacy of anger or annoyance. No one thinks that Hawthorne was a fraud because he wrote, in the preface to his greatest novel, that he had discovered documents relating to Hester Prjmne, together with the Scarlet Letter itself, in the attic of the Salem Custom House. Poe’s ballpon hoax is not counted against him today — it is little remembered — although it doubtless ruffled some readers of the New York S>un in April, 1844. They were avenged, by the way, more than sixty years later, when the Sun itself devoted more than a column of its editorial page to serious discussion of a literary hoax. Such writers as the ones I have mentioned, together with some lesser men referred to in the next chapter, perpe- trated in various forms, the literary hoax. Their purpose was not to deceive anyone to his harm, nor were they seeking unfair gain for themselves. Next come the literary forgers, — a different crew. These folk produce, say, some spurious manuscripts, sup- posed to be in the handwriting of a genuine literary man or historical personage. These they sell, under misrepre- sentation, to a wealthy collector. The victims may have recourse to law, but often they have to get along without sympathy. The most grievous case was that of the eminent French mathematician, M. Michel Chasles, who between 1861 and 1870 bought more than twenty-seven thousand forgeries, and paid out 150,000 francs for them. THE LITERARY HOAX, I ii A man with a meagre education, colossal assurance, and a strong right arm concocted these forgeries, and he must have worked at an average rate of about eight a day over a long period of years. His name was Vrain-Denis Lucas. The documents and letters included letters from Pascal (by the hundred), from Shakespeare (twenty-seven of them), hundreds from Rabelais, and others from Newton, from Louis XIV, from the Cid, from Galileo. But these were only the less remarkable items of the collection ; the gems included letters from Sappho, Virgil, Julius Caesar, St. Luke, Plato, Pliny, Alexander the Great, and Pom- pey! There was a letter from Cleopatra to Caesar, dis- cussing their son Cesarion; a note from Lazarus to St. Peter; and a chatty little epistle from Mary Magdalene to the King of the Burgundians. Why did he neglect to include the first A.L.S. recorded in history — the letter from David to Joab, which he sent by the hand of Uriah? Consider that these were all written on the same kind of paper, not on parchment, and that all of them, even those from Biblical personages, were written in French. Re- member that they were eagerly purchased and their authenticity warmly defended, by one of the leading geometricians of his time, and then believe, if you can, that development of the mathematical faculty has any- thing to do with the reasoning power, or even with com- mon sense. In recent years, there flourished in Scotland one “Antique” Smith, who specialized in Scotch literary and historical manuscripts. A gentleman has told me that he remembers helping, with great care and reverence, to convey for the owner a portfolio of Smith’s forgeries for 12 BOOKS IN BLACK OR RED inspection by another connoisseur and collector. For one of Smith’s victims was a most worthy and benevolent gentleman, president of a famous American library. Not long afterwards, the imposture was discovered, and the villain went to his punishment — as you may read in “The Riddle of the Ruthvens,” by William Roughead, a vol- ume of fascinating essays on various kinds of rascality. You will thank me for telling you about it, even if you have to be at pains to secure it. To obtain some books requires a little more trouble than a telephone call to the nearest department-store. Though I shall have no objec- tion if you can get this one of mine with no more effort than that. As you and I do not belong to the class of young literary gentlemen (some of them are fifty-five!) who profess diabolism, and deny violently that they have any morals whatever, we are at liberty to shake our heads over the literary forgers, and pronounce them to be wicked men. Yet Andrew Lang, in his “Books and Bookmen,” writes of them with some toleration. They had to be clever, he admits. How young many of them were; how venerable and learned were the men they tricked ! Lang thinks that the motives of the literary forger are curiously mixed, but that they are either piety, greed, “push,” or love of fun. At first, literary forgeries were pious frauds in the interest of a church, a priesthood, or a dogma. Then came the greedy forgers, who were out merely for gain (Vrain Lucas?). Next the forgers who were inspired by what he calls “push”; they “hope to get a reading for poems, which if put forth as new, would be neglected.” A forgery by “Antique” Smith ; Mary, Queen of Scots, to an Edinburgh Printer THE LITERARY HOAX, I 13 There is some reason for this belief; always there are readers who think more highly of a dull thing written three centuries ago than of any much more interesting but modern production. Some antiquarians, and prob- ably more than a few book-collectors and experts on various bibliographical topics, belong, by the way, to this class. Never in their lives have they formed an opinion of their own about the merits of any book; literature is for them purely a matter of tradition, of other men’s judgments. They can repeat the ancient catchwords, such as “old books are best,” they can talk of “the safe judgment of time,” and the “ephemeral character of present-day literature.” As a matter of fact, they are merely lacking in taste and in courage; and are too dull ever to have an opinion by themselves. They care little for literature as a creative art, but are concerned solely with its mechanics. Discussing for hours a misplaced signature in a quarto “Hamlet,” their faces become blank if someone mentions Osric. If the mistake is made of telling them who Osric is, their contempt for the man who is interested in such things is actually funny. They are embarrassed and frightened in the presence of creative work, but their intellects will grind and churn forever over the humdrum routine of some ancient printing house. Finally, in Lang’s classification, there are the forgers who are merely playful, or at least playful at the be- ginning. He places William Henry Ireland’s Shake- spearean forgeries (of which the best known is the tragedy of “Vortigem”) in this class; while the Shakespearean forgeries of Payne Collier are more difficult to explain. 14 BOOKS IN BLACK OR RED and seem to have been the result of motives too mixed to be comprehensible. Sir Sidney Lee, it may be added, in his comments upon this subject, does not seem to have been impressed by the “playful” character of Ireland’s and Collier’s forgeries.* Readers who look into Mr. J. A. Farrer’s “Literary Forgeries” will find it an extensive treatment of this sub- ject. Especially interesting is the chapter on George Psalmanazar, “the famous Formosan,” who forged his name, the place of his nativity, and even the piety which so impressed Dr. Johnson. In Andrew Lang’s introduc- tion to Mr. Farrer’s book there is an amusing recipe for those who wish to forge a Border Ballad, as well as a confession of the difficulties which he got into from his own minor and playful forgeries in writing his historical novel, “The Monk of Fife.” He “forged” certain old records, he writes, with the result that the book confused a learned medievalist, who “could not make out whether he had a modern novel or a Fifteenth Century document in his hands, while the novel-reading public exclaimed, ‘Oh, this is a horrid real history!’ ” Even a forgery may be denounced with a severity out of all proportion to the harm which has been done. Sir Walter Scott was himself deceived by one of the numer- ous forgers of old ballads. But had he been undeceived, says Mr. Farrer, he would only have laughed. Sir Walter is quoted in Mr. Farrer’s book as writing: “There is no small degree of cant in the violent invectives with which * Mr. Lucas’s book-dealer, Mr. Bemerton, in “Over Benaerton’s,” col- lected literary forgeries, and had actually read “Vortigern.” ^ ' • I 'h.itul /t-'"- J /iM.'f- Acunf-f'-Ut"-. L.-, Jr.U.t .uja.. iau Hc<(nn(x li/inotnp \( iti> h-nJlyuiui j JlJ.fct.ltd * i (h nftifnuj afucioi /ru/( (uid hvjunul ' ,!,{„■ L-iu >'.<(,( fuui lya(ly\t,c{ '-'c ncult (,vt /Ai%4 { < iLiOnanf.-dnu Ifk,cffur7ncc/ n, tU, Aa;i„uu( | , / i-itui ft ) iv-'C/M//.- ;. / /. in th< Uuntftx) Inef (tmt i auuhy‘>uUl,in,,AA,, 'I . n. . .y " •/ -^aff L->ricua,td Zn /M rn ^ ran r < ’ . ^nVa,.^ ■Uni.J n ranirlint : / . /(u]{ a, /it<^/ fcra a liinrlio, 1*; lo aonl IlUO, a oiu<* lieiiros ilu inalin, en reludfi rl par lo ininislorp do M.’’ Monitor, Nolaire, rue dc I'Ksfliso, n.“ 9. VTS'VVJljdPJJJJ \\> Prix • SO Contitne* TBE LITERARY HOAX, II 33 “Temptation of Friar Gonsol.” There were titles in French, Latin, English, Dutch. There were works which were supposed to have been totally destroyed, there were books throwing light upon obscure and mysterious histori- cal events, there was an “infamous” satire against the Grand Monarch, there were “association” copies with autograph notes of famous men, there was a scandalous autobiography of an eminent prince, a ''catalogue plus gue curieux des bonnes fortunes du Prince’’ bound in “green chagrin, with a lock of silver gilt,” which a horri- fied granddaughter frantically tried to bid in. The Prin- cess de Ligne, having no desire that the exploits of her ancestor should be published, or that the reputations of some of the ladies of the noblest families should suffer, wrote to M. Voisin to buy item 48 at any cost: "Achetez, je vous en conjure^ a tout prix^ les sottises de notre pol- lison de grandpere.” It is not clear from the catalogue that the Prince de Ligne. was intended by number 48; there must have been reasons why, the cap seemed to fit. There were other volumes of “piquant revelations” and “gallant adventures” which evidently caused uneasiness in various quarters. During July, 1840, the bids began to come in to M. Hoyois, the printer and publisher of the catalogue. The letters which accompanied the bids are amusing; most of the writers swallowed the bait and ran away with it. There were a few sceptics. And there were a few cautious inquirers; they were partly credulous but would not say so; partly suspicious, but disliked to admit it. They would not commit themselves to anything; they hoped to remain neutral in thought and word. They did not BOOKS IN BLACK OR RED 34 know what was going to happen, but intended to be able to say “I told you so!” under any and all circumstances. These odd fish are always left high and dry, gasping on the bank, whenever a literary hoax is perpetrated. Some of them asked questions here and there, and received assurance that the Count’s books were genuine, from experts who really knew as little as they. Some persons said that the books were not all unique; one gentleman asserted that he owned copies of several of them! Mr. Arnold Lethwidge, writing about twenty years ago in the Literary Collector^ gives a humorous account of the scenes in Binche on August lo, 1840, the day of the sale. Groups of strangers gathered in the streets, each carrying a copy of the little pamphlet. There were visitors from Brussels and Paris, from Amsterdam and London. They all wished to see “M. Mourlon, Notaire, rue de I’figlise, No. 9.” They snooped about, trying to avoid each other. When one book-collector met an acquaintance he mut- tered something to the effect that he was merely passing through, on his way to Brussels. They gathered at the inn, and bewildered the irm-keeper and natives by their persistent inquiries about M. Mourlon. The stage from Paris arrived, bringing a dozen more visitors. The great French bibliographer. Brunet, was there, so was Nodier, and the Baron de Reiffenberg, director of the Royal Library of Belgium. He had asked for a special appropriation to enable him to buy some of the treasures, omitting from his list, however, certain items, as “too free for a public library.” Eager buyers had come from England; the Roxburghe Club had sent a representative. 9 t S w §|| 6 « I t 5 S ? I S M s c 8 = s |4x S • ft X iii; Hi S' t £ n S T ; fli < i 1 1 * / From the Fortsas Catalogue •'-j^* - : > '^1»W ■ ■ *■ P4 . r- : tt tf • I ’ »v • r I*** a • 3 ^ ‘- 5 * m > fv. |^‘*' ,. ' X: ■.S'"** THE LITERARY HOAX, II 35 These strangers and their curious behavior began to make the people of Binche uneasy. The police were worried; it was a time of unrest in Europe, and the authorities were always suspecting outbreaks and revolu- tions. Were these odd-looking men, with their stooped shoulders, and their little pam.phlets, dangerous char- acters in disguise? Might they not be planning an emeute? No little town ever thinks of itself as anything but the centre of the world — was the peace of Europe about to be shattered again, and had Binche been selected as the place to touch off the explosion? They all talked, did the strangers, of M. Mourlon, the notary, of the Rue de rfiglise, and the Comte de Fortsas. There was no Rue de I’figlise, and no notary named Mourlon; the citi- zens knew nothing of a Comte de Fortsas. The day wore on, and still the bibliomaniacs raged in the streets. A quiet gentleman who had come in on one of the earlier stages followed the book-collectors about, and listened to their talk in the inn. When the evening stage arrived from Brussels, he wandered over and took from it one of the newspapers which it brought. Then he sprang a surprise. He read aloud an announcement. The town of Binche, moved by local pride, had bought the entire collection of the Comte de Fortsas, to be pre- served entire, and to be kept there. So there would be no sale. At this, the excitement broke out; arguments, expostulations, complaints, and still further enquiries addressed to the town officers. Why had they not been notified? Why had they been allowed to come so far for nothing? It was infamous! But, Messieurs, per- sisted all the folk of Binche, we have bought no rare BOOKS IN BLACK OR RED 36 books, we do not own any books ; there is no M. Mourlon, there is no Comte de Fortsas; we have never heard of such persons. “It is all a hoax, then!” suggested somebody. And someone else wondered if the quiet man who had read the notice in the Brussels paper could tell them anything more about it. They looked for him, but he had dis- appeared. They never found him again. He was M. Renier Chalon, an antiquarian and a writer of books on numismatics. He had invented the Comte de Fortsas and his library, had written the catalogue out of his own imagination, knowledge of books, and of the weaknesses of his fellow collectors, and had taken his pay in riding to Binche with the bibliomaniacs, watching their man- euvers to outwit each other, listening to their discussion of these imaginary works, and hearing one or two of them claim that they also owned copies of some of the best items in the Count’s library! “It was,” says Mr. Lethwidge, “an admirable jest, perfectly carried out, causing discomfiture to many, dis- tress to none.” After the famous tenth of August had gone by a cloud seems to settle upon the whole affair. Collectors who were present did not widely advertise the fact. The wise ones who had claimed to own some of the Count’s books, suddenly became silent about them. The cautious probably boasted that they had been suspicious all the time. They are alike in all ages! Some literary journals referred to the “mystification.” The whole truth seems not to have come out for nearly sixteen years, when M. Hoyois, the printer of the catalogue, published an extensive account of the matter, giving the letters which THE LITERARY HOAX, II 37 he had received. This act cost him the friendship of M. Chalon. A copy of the catalogue of Count de Fortsas’ library was bought at the Poor sale in New York for $40. It was Baron de Reiffenberg’s copy with his annotations. There are reprints of the catalogue which turn up for sale now and then. They are pleasant reminders of the most successful and ingenious literary hoax of all time. Others have deceived or amazed a certain number of persons, and have had amusing results. This alone was dynamic. One still delights to picture the dusty streets of the Belgian town on that far-off day in August; the bewil- dered townsfolk; the book-collectors from the cities in their long-skirted coats and top hats, all of them eager but sly, furtive, puzzled, but above all greedy to lay their hands upon the treasures collected by M. le Comte de Fortsas. I, ; BOOK-SHOPS CHAPTER III BOOK-SHOPS T he proper sort of book-shop,” began B., “Is a second-hand book-shop,” interrupted F. “Oh, I’m tired of all you sentimentalists talking about old book-shops! If you really want to get a book, and to get it today, you go to the biggest book-store in town. And that’s usually a shop devoted to new books. If you are looking for something to write about, like all these fellows who are bent on being so whimsical and charm- ing, of course a second-hand book-shop is your place.” “I am thinking,” F. returned, “about buying books as an art rather than as a science; about pleasure versus business. The hunt is what makes the fun, as in every- thing. If eating two or three skinny trout were all a man got out of going fishing, who would take the trouble? It’s like getting married : which do you sympathize with — the man who takes care that his income is all right, and then coolly looks about for a suitable person, and maybe advertises for her; or with the poor, sentimental fish who meets someone quite unexpectedly, finds that life is intolerable without her, and so rushes ahead into marriage? You may call it sentimentalizing, but there is some sport if you wander into a book-shop, merely to moon about, and perhaps stumble upon something good. If you dash in to get a particular book, and instantly have it wrapped up, you may as well be buying a turnip.” 41 BOOKS IN BLACK OR RED 42 He paused ; but the rest of us did not feel controversial, so he filled his coffee-cup again and continued. “If you expose yourself to the contagion of books, the results may be interesting. That was a satisfactory book- shop in ‘Over Bemerton’s.’ ” “What was it like?” “I forget. But somebody lived above it — which must have been handy. And he bought of Mr. Bemerton a copy of Giles’s ‘Chinese Biographical Dictionary.’ That alone would make any book-shop memorable.” “The right kind of a book-shop,” began R., this time. “Your idea,” interrupted B., “is one full of first edi- tions of Lafcadio Hearn, Anatole France, and George Moore, lying in a tray marked: ‘Take Your Pick, 35 cents.’ The book-seller would be old, partly blind, and hopelessly crippled.” “That is, in the main, correct,” R. agreed; “except that they would be marked 5 cents instead of 35.” “But where is the joy of pursuit, of hunting down the prize — where is even the mercenary joy of bargaining with the dealer.” “Nowhere,” returned R. “I would forego these things. I would be out for plunder. For the pleasure of possessing these treasures; showing the books to my friends, and hearing them (to quote Eugene Field) wail to know I got them cheap.” The proper sort of book-shop is on a side street. It has to be; rents elsewhere are too high for the modest book- seller. The great whales of his profession, those who min- ister to the criminally rich, may exist on the main streets. The streets which you remember with affection, the BOOK-SHOPS 43 streets which attract when first you discover them and linger pleasantly in your mind, are always side streets. The Kalverstraat, in Amsterdam, is the great type — and you can shake hands across it, from sidewalk to sidewalk. Are there any book-shops on it*? I forgot to look. Some- body tells me that there is a narrow street near the Mitre in Oxford, and that it is equipped with a book-shop. The proper sort of book-shop is in an old building; it is old and dingy itself. Dingy, but not dirty nor dusty. It is not necessary to have your shop in such a condition that your customer, after four minutes’ poking about, has to go to a Turkish bath. There is a shop in New York, of which the proprietor has a patriarchal Old Testament name, where they are devotees of the dirt theory. They must bring it in on shovels, and sprinkle it over the books. And their prices are no lower than elsewhere. I came out from under a heap of books one day, looking like a sweep, only to learn that the principal pirate was going to charge me — but this is not a recital of atrocities. The shop ought to be high and rambling, though it need not be large. There are not so many interesting books in the world. Big book-shops are full of plugs. But it should be packed with books, up to the high ceiling, and there should be dim corners in it, and unexpected turnings and out-of-the-way shelves, so that there may be surprises, and arcana, and mysteries. You must not be able to comb the place at your first visit. You should leave with the intention of coming back, and having another squint at the top shelves, or at some recess which the light did not reach on the rainy day when you first came. 44 BOOKS IN BLACK OR RED There should be one or two (one is best) unobtrusive clerks, — or better, the dealer himself, as he has the right to reduce prices — and a few (a very few) well-behaved customers, who keep out of your way. Smoking should be permitted. It is, in most shops. There is, also in New York, a shop on Vesey Street, with a large sign forbid- ding smoking! I would say that this is a bad shop — except for the fact that I got a clean copy of Anstey’s “Salted Almonds” there for fifty cents. By virtue of being on a top shelf it had escaped notice amid a mass of commonplace novels. A dim recollection comes to me of a shop in London, near St. Paul’s, which had room for exactly one customer at a time. It was a little gem of a shop, not much larger than a sentry-box, but with its w'alls lined with books to eight feet above the floor. I was a little embarrassed, however, by the presence of the First Lord of the Treas- ury, or at least the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs. Such, from his dress, his dignified countenance, and his deportment, I imagined the frock-coated gentleman to be. He remained seated, and in the half-light I stumbled over his feet. After courteously acknowledging my apol- ogies, he inquired if he could serve me. He was the proprietor ! The embarrassment was all on my side when, a few moments later, I placed eighteen-pence in his palm in return for a small book. He bowed with complete gravity, but I felt like the man who absent-mindedly tipped the Papal Nuncio. For its physical characteristics, there is in New York no shop which lives up to my specifications better than BOOK-SHOPS ■45 one on — but I had best not give advertisements. I will say, for the literary detective, that the name of the street is that of one of England’s queens, that the street number is the title of a novel by Booth Tarkington, and the pro- prietor’s name is rich in romantic suggestion of old Span- ish Jewry. I cannot imagine a better name for a book- seller — for I am under no delusions about business deal- ings with the descendants of Abraham and Isaac. I will entrust myself to their mercy as quick as to Yankee or Briton, and be fleeced as often by one as by the other. And not often by any of them. Except a few extortion- ers — and these, I think, among the great Napoleons of the tribe, who despoil the plutocrat, or sell limited edi- tions to the parvenue, book-sellers are as honest as any other men. It may be rash, but I’ll risk the asser- tion. This shop, in appearance, is all that may be desired. And the best restaurant in the lower part of the city is on the same narrow street. You may go in there and sit and eat until gorged to repletion, then come forth, cross the street, and fumble about the dark and attractive shelves of the shop whose name and address are alike romantic. When I found in it a good, early edition of “Sylvie and Bruno,” which became my property for seventy-five cents, I thought I had discovered the place of my dreams. But nothing so agreeable to my whims has appeared there since. Another shop, whose lure is wholly on the outside, is in a neighborhood once associated with Mr. John Mase- field, and still the murmurous haunt of poets, playwrights and novelists. On warm summer evenings the clicking 46 BOOKS IN BLACK OR RED of their typewriters rises in chorus to the stars. It is said that the poet tried this shop and liked it not. Its signs always make me stop. Here is one of them : BOOKS ON ALL SUBJECTS Rare and Curious Books Wit Humor Proverbs Funny Limerick Jokes All the poets from "Homer” & “Virgil” to “Kipling” Apocryphal old & New Testaments Prayer Books Bibles Renan’s Life of Jesus Face on the Bar Room Floor Oriental Religion & Scotch Clans and Tartans How to become a Citizen Oscar Wilde G B Shaw Gilbert’s Bab Ballads Theosophy Spiritualism Psychology Mythology New Thought Plato Vest Pocket Editions Ruskin Sea Yarns Irish Scotch and other Toasts Fortune Telling Cards Rhyming Dictionaries Roger’s Thesaurus "Albertus Magnus” Magic Birthday Horoscopes Gold Fountain pens l.oo Irish Scotch and old Songs Brann’s “Iconoclast” Schopenhauer’s Essays Freemasonry Oddfellowship Dream Books Sexology Tell your Friends BOOK-SHOPS 47 A second sign informs you that the shop has a million books on all subjects” and the shop is iio feet deep. Still another announces IRISH BOOKS OF ALL KINDS Kickham’s “Knocknagow” The Koran 1.50 The Talmud 1.50 Fortune Telling Cards & Books Pepys’ & Evelyn’s Diaries The Chef’s Reminder How to save Your Child’s Life l.oo 6th & 7th Book of Moses Chesterfield’s Letters Typewriting Moody’s and other Sermons Josephus Confucius Astrology Palmistry Care of Dogs Birds and Pets Tom Paine Ingersoll Sinking of the Titanic After Dinner Stories Law How to be Beautiful How to be a Detective Wild Flowers Trees Birds Old Magazines Bridge Dress Making Millinery But when you enter the illusion is broken. If you know exactly what you want, all is well. But whoever does know exactly what he wants in a second-hand book store? They are not made for such definite people. And if you wish to look about, you raise suspicion in the breasts of the proprietors. It must have happened, one day, that somebody in the deepest recesses of that no foot shop, tried to fill his pockets with some of the half million books, and creep nefariously forth. At any rate, customers are under a thick cloud of distrust. BOOKS IN BLACK OR RED 48 There once was a place on Fourth Avenue, where you could descend into an evil hole, warmed by the flames of the pit, — all atmosphere was unknown save the asphyxiating fumes of an oil stove. Here gathered certain crapulous old men to claw over the European novels. Very different is Mr. ’s shop near Fifth Avenue. It is swept and garnished: it contains many fine books, and Mr. with the graciousness of an Ambassador, will sell you a good honest copy of a book, for, say, five dollars. True it is that some other dealer, a few blocks away, will sell you one exactly as good for two dollars and a half. But atmosphere is certainly something, and so is tradition, and the feeling that no vulgar purchase, but a diplomatic causerie, is forward. Experimenting with them all, and not ignoring the attractions of the one with the romantic address, I am left with a strong prejudice in favor of a small shop I came upon by accident. Following my custom, I will disguise the avenue on which it stands by saying that it has the name of a town where minute-men once gathered on the green, one April morning, to begin a great war. And although the proprietor has called his shop after some bird — robin or wren — his own name will remain darkly hidden if I say that one of this patronymic wrote the “Elegy on the Death of a Mad Dog.” A little dog is one of the inmates of the shop, which is remarkable for a small but choice collection of books. The proprietor is one of those unusual beings who reads, and yet has not an exaggerated idea of the value of books. Many of the dealers seem to be bitten with the “first edition” craze — they talk about first editions of this writer and that, till BOOK-SHOPS 49 one may expect to hear of first editions of Harold Bell Wright. Buying second-hand books is as interesting a game as poker; not as exciting, but never so expensive. It has the fascinations of discovery and exploration. You are always about to happen on something that you greatly desired. Beyond the horizon is the prize — and it is a horizon that fades forever and forever as you move. The pot of gold is at the rainbow’s end, and you never catch up with it. But you keep finding pieces of gold which have fallen out. You do not go after any book in par- ticular — if you play the right game — but you have vague recollections of forgotten books which you would gladly see again. Or you discover fascinating things which are totally new to you. The rivalries and enmities of the dealers are quaint, and the eccentricities of collectors as merry as the cantrips of unicorns on a grassy plain. WIZARDS AND ENCHANTERS 1 1 ^’ ' J ' 4 c - K^'-' ’•■■ • ■• T - '•:* '^^ryv- t' AS -.k;'-- ■". ■ ■ ■ . is*- - • •'’ '^Sl VS9L ^ 4 ;; f>- ■' 'j ■ y^-‘. " ■ **j • V . • '^•?vT«4-*‘i ^ V ly*.^ %'-K i** ,/- - \* . * «\ ^y ' 4 zy t %.-JbN rc. ■ -•'r-- -Jf f' ■imm *"*^^'*. ■ , 4T -1 "a* ' • .w JIT ■*'*' Jb* 1 ^ -# , 7 ^- “I I ' ^-'- 1 V ‘ .-'• 1 ■- •' --^ • • . . ^ A (, J- i. CHAPTER IV WIZARDS AND ENCHANTERS I n “African Game Trails” Mr. Roosevelt said that he was “in a bond of close intellectual sympathy” with the Doctor of the expedition, “ever since a chance allusion to ‘William Henry’s Letters to His Grandmother’ had disclosed the fact that each of us, ever since the days of his youth had preserved the bound volumes of Our Young Folks, and moreover firmly believed that there never had been its equal as a magazine, whether for old or young, even though the Plancus of our golden con- sulship was the not wholly happy Andrew Johnson.” It is true, as Mr. Roosevelt implies, that no agreement about books, not even in the vexed question of sea-stories, can make us look upon another man with so friendly an eye as the discovery that he belonged to our period, and shared our especial enthusiasms about reading, in the years that stretched between the sixth birthday and the sixteenth. There may be endless debate as to the best period, the best authors, and the best magazine. There was the age of Mayne Reid and Oliver Optic, of Castle- mon and Trowbridge, of Henty and the others who fol- lowed. The two African hunters, who happened to be young when Andrew Johnson was President, may insist on the superiority of Our Young Folks', men of later decades will be equally firm for St. Nicholas, for The Argosy, for Golden Days, for HarpeFs Young People 53 BOOKS IN BLACK OR RED 54 or for The Youth’s Cotn panion. The decades overlap; the really excellent authors do not go out of favor with the first generation; we read some of the books, at least, and sometimes the very copies, which our fathers enjoyed. And bound volumes of magazines descend to us, to our delight, from older brothers and sisters. But the magic time of children’s books is our own youth, and fortunately for children, it begins anew, — the golden years return. It must be enjoyed while it lasts, for it slips away from each generation in order to visit the next. But for those who have left the wonderful years behind, it re- turns no more. We shall never get that thrill again. I do not, customarily, nowadays, run half a mile down the street to meet the postman and relieve him of a mag- azine for which I have been feverishly waiting for a whole month; nor walk two miles to get the seventh chance at a book for which six others are also impatient. But I can recall a time when such proceedings seemed altogether natural and proper. I am afraid I shall never again find the books that will convulse me with laughter, or turn my spine into one long icicle, as once they could do. And there are folk who pride themselves on exactly this insensitiveness, this sophistication ! Although I know that the golden age of children’s books is repeated over and over again; and that the wonder bursts upon each generation, without regard to any group of writers, or any single children’s magazine, I find myself pitying the boys of today. Poor little devils — they haven’t the books I had. Those whose “golden consulship” is that of Wilson or Harding are out of luck, compared with us of the days of Cleveland and Harri- -Mil t AI k N W I S 1 1 F S, N « ) W A D A >* S . l6^ old shoes to such |»rrfcction th.it, after .ill, the pptch« were seared) seen, and once on,, and neatly laced, they looked si* well ih.tt, with a lighter heart. Tinkey s|ir.ing to his feet to complete his dressing. Fhe mirror hy the aid of which he arranged his colLir and neck-tic did not reflect his pants, and the pretty *lk tie was vcr>- liccoining. Actually, •••i wi»H mit’" I*r» xkkt rAia.] *1 TNB SMO«« TWKC AS MU”* creased sue. Twice as big! To the round e>cs ,:szing at them they looked as big .ts the bam, and if any little reader doubts n, let him measure tmee the length and breadth of his boot, and pul hu foot upon the nu-.i'>ure. Te.irs could no l-rnger be kept b.ick. Finkcy kicked the shoe into the corner of the room with a passionate sob. •• I wont go!” he cried. “I wont wc.ir m) old Uuusers .and shoes with a gn*ai p.iteh on them ! •• .\re y«»u never coming? “shouted Ikda from down-st.iir*. “I 'll walk oicr ! Don't wail for me ! ” Tinkey answere*d, .and could hear them alt laugh .is Fannie said: ■•'Finkey s prinking ! W ont he be line ! ” Should he go? Mrs. Davidson's .inniial party w.\> not to Ik- lightly « t .aside, and w.is one of the great |4e*.isures in Tinkey's i|uici c«untr>- life. Ferh.ips .iniong so man) his dress would not l>e mMiced. and he had not seen some of the bo> s since IHr |H.» t «|VH THAI »(.K> IN ;ESKHi«*” »1 hmke up. \'er> listh'sMv he to«ik blacking-hrush. and |Milishcd hi> Copyright by The Century Co. By A. B. Frost in St. Nicholas WIZARDS AND ENCHANTERS 55 son. And when I try to explain why this is so I find myself thinking constantly of one author and the title of one magazine: Frank Stockton and Sl Nicholas. The writings of Frank Stockton are, of course, available for children today, and read by them. But his name repre- sents, to me at least, a group of authors and artists who charmed the readers both young and old of 1880 to 1887, odd, humorous, gentle, creators as they were, of all kinds of fancies and conceits. They were masters of a clear narrative style, writers of good English. They did not have to depend upon the last up-to-the-minute topic, nor turn out to order, yarns about “Aeroplane Boys” and “Radio Boys.” And when a notable success is made to- day in writing books for children — as in Mr. Bowen’s “The Old Tobacco Shop” or Mr. Lofting’s “Story of Dr. Dolittle” — I notice that it is to Frank Stockton or to Charles E. Carryl, the other great name of that period, to whom we go for comparison by way of praise. We are breeding, among American authors today, any number of clever satirists, some of whose writings are a most wholesome medicine; we are also training a crew of little Russians, tiresome ninnies, to whom the sour stomach is prerequisite for great literature. There must be thousands of readers who do not wish the syrups of an absurd optimism, but who equally have no desire for the wormwood of an affected pessimism. They do not, in short, wish to be medicined at all when they open a book, but to be amused. At present, they are confronted by a chorus of terribly serious, humorless men, who are pounding on the table, and growling portentously: “You wish to be amused, do you? By Godfrey! you shall not BOOKS IN BLACK OR RED 56 be amused; we’re going to set your teeth on edge!” And such readers, remembering Frank Stockton’s stories and novels for adults, naturally wish for another like him. St. Nicholas goes on its way, as it used to do, amusing and pleasing children, and coming out each year in bound volumes with the morning-glories on the cover. For me, however, the great years are those of the i88o’s. Not long ago I acquired, from a noble book-seller, fifteen or twenty of the volumes, and on the day after their arrival — a Sunday — the strange spectacle could be observed of three or four doddering old men of forty or thereabouts, sitting on the floor at my home, lost to all sense of pro- priety, and totally neglectful of'such sane and decent topics of conversation as politics, business, or prohibition. For two hours or more nothing could be heard but: “Here’s the poem about the De Gustibus: On the edge of the wood A De Gustibus stood With a gentle expansible smile ” Or “Here’s the picture of the Aristocrats winding up the city, — by George! I haven’t seen that for thirty years!” Or “Here’s ‘Phaeton Rogers’ — I read that twelve times.” This was the period when Frank Stockton’s best tales were appearing: “The Floating Prince” and “How the Aristocrats Sailed Away” and “The Castle of Bim,” with its engaging character, the Ninkum, who liked to lie on his back, gaze up at the sky and expand his mind. These stories were illustrated, some by E. B. Bensell and some by Reginald Birch, and no one who read them has ever k C 1)0 t'. ^«ceo L Eacl» 1 luTitci*. witli Ills slron^l^ corded bow. Sero, s lo Sii^, 1 ll lul Uicil I’^.'ibbil . don't "you Know*.' it s possible ihcy will. If tlie creature '.s oiily slill Hut lA I^al)!>i ao ltcx!*)lc lu Copyright by The Century Co. From St. Nicholas WIZARDS AND ENCHANTERS 57 forgotten the pictures, — they are as familiar, as well- beloved, and as essential to the story as Sir John Ten- niel’s illustrations for the “Alice” books. The story of “The Griffin and the Minor Canon,” perhaps the nearest to perfection of them all, so impressed me with the dietary habits of Griffins — “I never eat between the equinoxes. At the vernal and at the autumnal equinox I take a good meal, and that lasts me half a year” — that never to this day do March 2i or September 2i come around, that I do not remember to beware of Griffins. Mr. Bensell was the illustrator of Carryl’s “Davy and the Goblin,” and drew the immortal picture of the Cockalorum. It was an age of excellent nonsense verse; not so much talk was made about it as at a later date, but more of it was written. The pages of St. Nicholas were full of it. There was “The Carnivoristicous Ounce” by Mrs. M. E. Blake, verses which the attractive young hero of Frank Norris’s “Blix” was fond of quoting: There once was a beast called an Ounce, Who went with a spring and a bounce; H is head was as flat As the head of a cat, This quadrupedantical Ounce ’Tical Ounce, This quadrupedantical Ounce. He sprang on his prey with a pounce. And gave it a jerk and a trounce ; Then crunched up its bones On the grass or the stones, This carnivoristicous Ounce, ’Ticous Ounce, This carnivoristicous Ounce ! 58 BOOKS IN BLACK OR RED There was the “Untaught Sea-Urchin” and also: There once was an Ichthyosaurus, Who lived when the earth was all porous, But he fainted with shame When he first heard his name. And departed a long time before us. Walking through Union Square one afternoon, a year or two ago, and talking with my companion about these St. Nicholas days, we spoke of J. G. Francis, his mar- vellous pictures of animals, and the rhymes and jokes which accompanied them. I tried to recall the one which always pleased me most, but could not remember it, ex- cept in bits. I wonder if I were not walking with the only man in New York that day who could have recited it, instantly and correctly? It was Arthur Guiterman, and he quoted : A Tam o’ Shanter Dog And a plaintive piping Frog, With a Cat whose one extravagance was clothes, Went to see a Bounding Bug Dance a jig upon a rug While a Beetle balanced bottles on his nose. Not Guiterman, no, and not Swinburne, ever composed a line more delicious than that last one about the Beetle, although either of them would have shied at the rhyme of nose and clothes. It used to vibrate in my ears like sweet music and it does still. Mr. Francis’ cats, rabbits, sheep, and best of all, his ducks and geese, are not denied to children today, for his “Book of Cheerful Cats” is issued in edition after edition. The same artist also made By J. G. Francis, in St. Nicholas 1 . 2 ?.* V i-f.” i V iL^ y^' » ^-* ' i-u'** "- ,.* ' •'■ ./ ■ V V J*i -• I I MW _v f'lS^L % '* / ■ K -- ■. ~.m < .•^5 -r* <- ’^1 ,..v, ^ 3 ,'■ ". *1 H|||! SSST' ' 'Vi ' ’ " Vl ; .-;''> vi / /■>- '■.. ■ >' y,j ’>* KL •'!'' ' ><■ > ' i' r ■*•' • .i ^r- : •*► • ■■ *17 Jr . '^ 'fc i .- 1 V#»»MA • *‘ >r ;- i ' '#v> • ^ \ '---■^"^'1 ■ ■ 7 sx * ua?PH -- ^ C :*^ >•*'» •* ■ 4 . ■_ ^.*L' r i ^-: - V! WIZARDS AND ENCHANTERS 63 Roosevelt refers to her verses about the Whale, "with a feather in his tail, who lived in the Greenland sea” and also to what he calls "the delightfully light-hearted ‘Young Man from New Mexico, Who lost his Grand- mother out in the snow,’ ” My book did not contain these. It is called “Sketches and Scraps” and I notice that it was given me at Christmas, 1884. The colored pictures are by Henry Richards, and few works of art are so familiar to me as every detail of these, from the heavily dyed beard on the servitor of Bobbily Boo, the king so free,* to the monocle in the eye of the Fourth Turk, who is coming out to battle with Ponsonby Perks. t But the longer ballads are the chief joys of Mrs. Richards’ book. There is "The Seven Little Tigers and their Aged Cook.” Seven little Tigers they sat them in a row, Their seven little dinners for to eat, And each of the troop had a little plate of soup, The effect of which was singularly neat. The Tigers at their well ordered table, the blue china on the dresser, the portrait of the ancestor, and the ar- morial crests in the stained glass window, make up the picture which accompanies the opening stanza. The poem proceeds into deep shades of tragedy. • He used to drink the Mango Tea Mango Tea and Coffee too, He drank them both till his nose turned blue. t He fought with Turks, Performing many wonderful works. He killed over forty. High minded and haughty. And cut off their heads with smiles and smirks. 64 BOOKS IN BLACK OR RED There was also the Frog, who lived in a bog, on the banks of Lake Okeefinokee, but the chef-d' ceuvre is prob- ably The tale of the little Cossack, Who lived by the river Don. He sat on a sea-green hassock, And his grandfather’s name was John. His grandfather’s name was John, my dears, And he lived upon bottled stout, And when he was found to be not at home, He was frequently found to be out. The tale of the little Cossack, He sat by the river side. And wept when he heard the people say That his hair was probably dyed. That his hair was probably dyed, my dears. And his teeth were undoubtedly sham, “If this be true,” quoth the little Cossack, What a poor little thing I am !” The tale of the little Cossack, He sat by the river’s brim. And he looked at the little fishes. And the fishes looked back at him. The fishes looked back at him, my dears, And winked at him, which was wuss, “If this be true, my friend,” they said, “You’d better come down to us.” *!*:**♦ * Other names of writers which return to me from these years are Mark Twain, whose two most famous stories, as well as that excellent, dramatic tale, “The Prince and the Pauper,” were then easily obtainable with all the THE SEVEN LITTLE TIGERS AND THE AGED COOK Seven little Tigers they sat them in a row, Their seven little dinners for to eat, And each of the. troop had a little plate of soup, 'I'he effect of which was singularly neat. Copyright by Estes & Lauriat WIZARDS AND ENCHANTERS 65 original illustrations; Jules Verne; Louisa Alcott, whose “Jack and Jill” has left a dim recollection as a book of peculiar charm, although I cannot recall what that charm was; and of course, Lewis Carroll. Of his two most famous books it would be repetitious to speak; but the thought of his curious two-volume work detains me. I mean “Sylvie and Bruno.” The illustrations by Harry Furniss are hardly less ingenious and interesting than the Tenniel pictures for the Alice books. Mr. Furniss’s own volume of recollections furnishes some odd sidelights upon Lewis Carroll. I have the first part of “Sylvie and Bruno”; for the second, I must go to dealers in first edi- tions, and to them I can only say, in the words of the Mad Hatter: “Fm a poor man, your Majesty.” It is noticeable that the Hatter went down on one knee, as he said it, and that he lost his bread-and-butter ^ — token of what happens if you frequent dealers in first editions. The publishers of “Sylvie and Bruno” issue it now only in a one volume edition; a condensed version for children. I would speak to them, harshly, about this, if it were not for {a) the fact that I have great respect for their taste in authors, and {b) it is possible that they know what they are about in this instance. Few would care for the complete work today; it is a strange mixture of juvenile fiction, religion for grown people, and a dozen other things. Yet, everything considered, a book to covet. In the shelf where many of these books stand, I notice one other, stained with paste and rain-drops, and earth. It tells how to make a hundred un-useful and delightful things: “The American Boy’s Handy Book,” by Dan Beard. I sometimes see the author on the street, and 66 BOOKS IN BLACK OR RED long to stop him and tell him how much string, and gun-powder, and glue, and buckshot, and how many fish-hooks and eels’ ears and other things I employed in trying to follow his recipes — and what a good time I had. Boots for Horizontal Rain. By Harry Furniss in “Sylvie and Bruno” THE SEARCH FOR CURIOUS BOOKS, I IT’ CHAPTER V THE SEARCH FOR CURIOUS BOOKS, I T O discover one curious book requires long search, and great patience. How long it takes, I do not know; I have been hunting for years, and never yet — unaided — have I found one. The term curious, especially in the form Curiosa, is in bad repute. In book-sellers’ catalogues it denotes a certain unchanging type of mild pornography, — just bad enough to invite a leer, and not actually bad enough to be prohibited. In short, bait for freshmen and sophomores. The most tiresome shelf in a book-shop is that row of red and white books which comprises the six or seven erotic classics of Italy and France. The most unimaginative type of book-seller is the one who always responds to a mention of Mark Twain by ofFering a copy of “1601.” There are two humbugs created by this class of book : the man who pretends never to read nor enjoy any of them; and the man who repeats hypocrisies about “style” and “artistic achievement” and gives every reason but his true one for reading them. Book-sellers recognize from afar the “student,” or “schol- arly” investigator, who is leading gradually up to a re- quest for some notorious book. Eugene Field, whose ex- cursions into this realm (in all shades, from pink to bright scarlet) are possibly not worth the whispering they have caused, wrote a good poem in the one called 69 70 BOOKS IN BLACK OR RED “Boccaccio.” Another honest reference to the subject is in Mr. Edwin Meade Robinson’s excellent novel, “Enter Jerry.” Best of all, in its frank and humorous admission of human weakness and natural curiosity about such writings, is John Hay’s letter about Mark Twain’s ex- periment in the vein of Rabelais. To pull a few proofs of the story, he writes in mock austerity, is highly attrac- tive and of course highly immoral, “but if you take these proofs in spite of my prohibition, save me one.” But I have been led astray while pointing out that this chapter is not about “Curiosa.” Instead, it is about those odd and unusual books which either deal with a strange subject, or which by their manner fall into a peculiar class of their own, — not infrequently the class of unintentional humor. Works on astrology or witch- craft, and the Seventeenth Century volumes on medicine, domestic remedies, and charms, are examples of the one kind; the Portuguese manual for conversation in our language, “English as She is Spoke,” is cme of the other kind. To discover such a book is as hard today as to find a new island. There is a legend in one of Stevenson’s stories about a party of wanderers who came upon a very old man shod with iron. He asked them whither they were going, and they answered: “To the Eternal City!” He looked upon them gravely. “I have sought it,” he said, “over the most part of the world. Three such pairs as I now carry on my feet have I worn out upon this pil- grimage, and now the fourth is growing slender under- neath my steps. And all this while I have not found the city.” THE SE.\RCH FOR CURIOUS BOOKS, I 71 I feel like this old man with the iron shoes. For foor or five or six presidentiads — as Walt Whitman woold sav, in his simple and xmamected style — I have stood gaping at book-shelves in libraries. On sr 2 zhiz hot eve- nings in summer I have wandered throegh those riass and steel furnaces called book-stacks, or stood upon my head to peer into dark comers on the lower shelves of older, dustier, libraries and bookshops. “And all the while I have not found the dry.” Xever have I scored oc my own bat; the best of my luck has been to make discoveries at second hand, to £nd in some other man’s book the record of what he had chanced upon. So, in a volume by Mr. Gosse. I rh V . k , I ca m e txzxxi his essay on Thomas .Vmory and was led thereby to read Tor to read «) .Amory's prepostercus feat of tmcccsdocs humor: “The Life and OpinicEs of John Bcncic. Esc.” This Ei^teenm Century novel b now so pocular a modem editioc has been printed; anybody may read it, and wonder if .Amory could have written in entire serioumess the adventures of his absurd hero who wan- dered about Fn.ri.~- d and Ireland, marrying cue afto’ another seven young ladies of matchless beauty and pro- found learning. No odder book, says !^lr. Gossc. was published in England throughout the long life of the author. “.Amcry was a fervid admirer of wrma nk md, and he favored a rate type, the learned lady who bears her leamZng lighri y and can discuss the cuadrariocs of curvilinear spaces’ witheut ceasing to be *a bcunctng; dear delightful girl’ and adroit in the prepararicn of toast and chocotare.” Jeon Bcncle. so unctuously named, mourned and married hb seven wives with such machine- 72 BOOKS IN BLACK OR RED like regularity that the holiness of matrimony seems to disappear under his observances of it more completely than wheri the ceremony is quite disregarded by a hero of the tribe of Don Juan. His learned heroines were the first, perhaps, of a long line. The modest and elegant female (is her name Edna Earle?) in “St. Elmo” could discuss abstruse philosophy as easily as the different Mrs. Buncles could soar off into the higher mathematics. The type recurs. Mr. Robert Chambers invented one young heroine who conversed with the hero in Latin; while Miss Edna Ferber recently tried to make her readers believe in a flapper of seventeen who could command the vo- cabulary of a Ph.D. of Berlin or Vienna. The shelf which holds the slang dictionaries is a happy hunting ground. The slang dictionary is, in one way of looking at it, a profanation, like a collection of dead butterflies. The life of these vivid words and phrases was on the lips of the people; it is terrible to have them pawed about by fussy lexicographers, to see them chloro- formed, pinned, and spread out for display in the even columns of a printed book. He must have given a nar- cotic to his sense of the ridiculous who can set down in ink: “Let 'er go^ Gallegher! An expression signifying a readiness to proceed.” Every slang dictionary is, of course, out of date before the printers can finish it ; many of them are full of the most absurd blunders and mis- conceptions. The most complete slang dictionary in THE SEARCH FOR CURIOUS BOOKS, I 73 English is “Slang and Its Analogues, Past and Present,” in which the original compiler, John S. Farmer, was joined after the second volume by W, E. Henley. This extraordinarily interesting work, which adds to the Eng- lish synonyms others in French, German and Italian, is made remarkable by its extracts and examples quoted from all contributions to English letters, from Chaucer and earlier writers down p the newspapers of 1904, the date of the final volume. As the compilers were thorough in their work, and as slang is the speech of the people, not the studied language of literature, some pages of the work are hardly for the ]eune fille. A copy which I have seen contains a manu- script note saying — I know not on what authority — that after the second volume was printed, the printer refused to proceed with the work, asserting that his com- positors’ modesty was outraged and that they objected to putting it into type ! This discovery of such squeamish printers recalls the peculiar crew of Captain Hook’s pirate-ship in “Peter Pan” — especially the pirate who used to work at a sewing-machine, and cry because he had no mother. Their evil geniuses constantly inspire Englishmen to write lexicons of American slang, or to include definitions of Americanisms in general works on slang. Francis Grose was probably the first to venture into these dan- gerous paths; his “Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue” appeared in 1785. He defined but few Ameri- canisms, but the day when I found one of them remains in my mind like that on which Cortez stood silent on his peak in Darien. This is it: 74 BOOKS IN BLACK OR RED To Gouge. To squeeze out a man’s eye with the thumb : a cruel practise used by the Bostonians in America, The gem of such definitions, of course, is the famous entry under “Jag” in John S. Farmer’s “Americanisms, — Old and New,” published in London in 1889. Mr. Farmer starts well: Jag. In New England a parcel; bundle; or load. An old English provincialism which held ground col- loquially across the Atlantic. Cleveland was forced up 7J/2 cents by the persistent bidding of one broker buying a heavy order. He occa- sionally caught a Jag of 2,000 or 3,000 shares, but kept on bidding as if Cleveland were the only thing dear to him on earth . . . Missouri Republican 1888. But he continues: Jag is also a slang term for an umbrella, possibly from that article being so constantly carried. And he proceeds to prove this by a quotation from the Albany Journal'. He came in very late (after an unsuccessful effort to unlock the front door with his umbrella) through an unfastened coal-hole in the sidewalk. Coming to him- self toward daylight, he found himself — spring over- coat, silk hat, Jag and all — stretched out in the bath-tub. In justice to Mr. Farmer it should be said that he learned as he proceeded. His “Slang and its Analogues,” of which the first volume was published in 1890, aban- dons the umbrella and defines “jag” briefly but correctly. This work shows a vast improvement in accuracy over THE SEARCH FOR CURIOUS BOOKS, I 75 the earlier one; I have not found in it any error in de- fining American slang. As late as 1909 Mr. J. Redding Ware, author of “Pass- ing English of the Victorian Era,” essayed the definition of much American slang. His success may be explained by supposing that he had attended a college said to exist in Great Britain for the purpose of teaching ignorance about things American. We have a branch of it in Amer- ica in which ignorance about England is inculcated. Mr. W. J. Ghent, in a review of the book, suggested that Mr. Ware lighted a lamp, retired into a closet, and evolved a meaning from his inner consciousness, — like the Ger- man scholar with the dromedary. How else, asked Mr. Ghent, could he have defined “stuck-up” as meaning “moneyless — very figurative expression derived from be- ing ‘stuck-up’ by highwaymen,” after which, this ety- mologist profoundly remarks, “You have no money left in your pocket.” Some other oddities of Mr. Ware’s book were men- tioned by Mr. Ghent. A chump (not exclusively an Americanism) is defined as “a youth (as a rule) who is in any way cheated of his money — especially by the so-called gentler sex.” “Snakes” is given, in Anglo- American slang, as meaning “danger” so “snakes alive” (wholly American) is “worse than snakes.” Naturally the latter is too horrible to consider. Why Mr. Ware should say that axe-grinders are “men who grumble, especially politically,” is hard to understand, since he has given, directly above, the correct definition of “axe to grind.” A few more misunderstandings, not mentioned by Mr. BOOKS IN BLACK OR RED 76 Ghent, occur in “Passing English.” For example, Mr. Ware evidently knows nothing of the command to “dry up!” He is content to say that the phrase means “to cease because effete” — from mountain torrents which dry up in summer. “Foxes,” he says, are “people of Maine — probably owing to the foxes which prevail there.” He heard of an American oath which he calls “Gaul darned.” (Obviously, a term applied to anything condemned in Gaul.) His book is strong on our oaths — “Jee,” he de- clares, is “an oath-like expression. First syllable of Jerusalem. ‘Jee! You don’t dare to do it!’” (Both “Jee” and “Gaul-darned” give evidence that Mr. Ware learned his American oaths by ear.) “Red peppers,” he suggests, is another American “form of swearing.” “Jag” is again a stumbling-block. Mr. Ware finds it to be a Spanish-American-English phrase to express a “desire to use a knife against somebody — to jag him.” “Wake- snakes” means “provoke to the uttermost.” And to “Whoop up” is an Americanism signifying “to tune a musical instrument.” “Bull-doze” is defined as “political bullying.” But the lexicographer is not content with this — he must quote an anecdote, “ ‘VVhat do they mean by bull-dozing?’ asked an inquisitive wife the other evening. ‘I suppose they mean a bull that is half asleep.’ And the injured one kept on with her sewing, but said nothing.” This, writes Mr. Ware, “will show that even in the U. S. A. themselves, this term is not fully understood.” “Dod- rottedest” is “an example of evasive swearing.” That is very true, but a little disappointing. He defines “Dime museum” none too accurately, and adds the gratuitous THE SEARCH FOR CURIOUS BOOKS, I 77 remark that a dime is “the eighth of a dollar.” But this is enough of Mr. Ware’s curious conjectures, especially since his book, so far as it concerns Americanisms, has again been flayed in a recent authoritative work by an American writer, Mr. Gilbert Tucker’s “American Eng- lish.” The odd or curious book may turn up in the course of your daily work. You may find fun even in an index or a table of contents. A readable index denotes a good book. And that sounds like a quotation from the book I am thinking about — “Kentucky Superstitions” by D. L. Thomas and Lucy B. Thomas. It has a delightful index. And its collection of signs, omens, and beliefs about lost articles, marriage, death and burial, sneezes, cures and preventives, fire, dreams, moon and signs of the zodiac, luck at cards, witches and hoodoos, and many other mat- ters, make it a handy book of reference in any family. Handy, that is, if the charms are good outside Kentucky. Some of them are a bit complicated — I am not sure that the reward is worth the trouble in this one: “After you have taken a newly made quilt from the frame, toss a cat into it to make the quilt puff out. The girl that the cat goes towards will be married first.” Is it an adequate repayment for walking twenty-one rails of a railroad track to find under the twenty-first a hair of the same color as that of your destined husband or wife? “Turkeys dance before rain,” says the book. I wonder if it is so; I would like to see them. “There will BOOKS IN BLACK OR RED 78 be rain if mice cry loudly at night.” Here is one with inter-state jurisdiction: “To kill a toad will cause rain.” I can vouch for that absolutely; it was true in Massa- chusetts as far back as 1888. Nobody ever killed a toad then without at least a shower, within a week or two. Tom Sawyer never knew this one: “If you are troubled by witches, it is a good plan to sleep with a meal sifter over the face. When the witches come to worry you, they are compelled to pass back and forth through every mesh. By this time you will have had sufficient sleep and can get up.” One of the greatest discoveries was when Mr. Lucas’s elderly hero walked into Bemerton’s book-shop and bought, on chance, the fifty-fifth book from the first shelf on the left, as high as his heart. It was a “fat volume in a yellow paper cover, for which I had to pay two solid English pounds.” There are thousands, millions of people — even book-dealers — who have never seen “A Chinese Biographical Dictionary” by Herbert A. Giles, published in Shanghai by Kelly & Walsh. Some folk have even been known to question its existence. In spite of them, however, it is a real and rather heavy book of over a thousand pages, containing biographical sketches of 2579 men and women who lived in China any time during the last three thousand years. The copy which I am fortunate enough to possess came with its yellow covers unspotted, wrapped in a Chinese newspaper, and smelling pleasantly of the aromatic and mysterious East. As it was printed in Holland, I suppose it has crossed two oceans. Mr. Lucas has quoted much from it, but the field is large, and the harvest so tempting that I can iV + c^ \r l^ay ^ ^ S ^ ^ ^4' ^>>V .^- The Learned Pan Chao (These Chinese portraits are from Wan Seaon Tang Hwa Chuen, published 1743) THE SEARCH FOR CURIOUS BOOKS, I 79 gather in some more, and still not exhaust the possibili- ties of the book for its readers. Its fascination is explained by a number of things. First, it is so long that you could not possibly read it through — even if you were silly enough to want to do so — in one, two, or three sittings. Like an immense jar of Canton preserved ginger, or a barrel of brown sugar in the pantry, there is always some there when you go back for more. Next, as you cannot, unless you are an erudite Sinologist, like the author, remember all these Chinese names, you are constantly forgetting your favor- ite characters, losing them for the time being, when you wish to read to your friends about them, and then having them turn up again, weeks later, when you are hunting for someone else — which is delicious. Third, Dr. Giles has put all together in one alphabet, the comic, tragic, pathetic, legendary, historical, mythical, comical-histori- cal-pastoral personages of that strange and great country, paying no more and no less respect to a Chinese states- man of our own time who negotiated a treaty with Russia in 1893, than to an old man four thousand years ago who offended the gods by slaying two of their pet dragons, and was transported to the moon and set hoeing millet there forever and forever. It is as if somebody should write a biographical dictionary of England and America and combine in one list King Alfred, Mr. Hoover, Robin Hood, Mr. Henry Ford, Nell Gwynne, Thomas Jefferson, the Bailiff’s Daughter of Islington, Jack Dempsey, Lord Beaconsfield, the Cheshire Cat, Mrs. Asquith, Babe Ruth, and the Old Man of Tarentum, who gnashed his false teeth till he bent ’em. 8o BOOKS IN BLACK OR RED There is a strangely modern sound about the deeds of some of these Chinese worthies. Take Ou-yang Hsiu, who, although he died as long ago as 1072, “used his in- fluence as Examiner to check the growing craze for eccen- tric writing and reasoning.” He was the author of an elaborate treatise on the peony, was fond of wine and company, and described himself as “the drunken Gov- ernor.” Liu Po-to, in the Third Century A.D., anticipated some of our contemporaries by being skilled in the prep- aration of a kind of whiskey. “It was so strong that a person who got drunk on it did not recover his senses for a month.” Another, a statesman named Sang Wei- han, who died in 946, was high in favor with the Emperors of the later Chin dynasty, until, daring to sug- gest a regency while the Emperor was suffering from delirium tremens, he was dismissed to a provincial post. He was tremendously ugly, short of stature, and with a long beard. The very sight of him made people sweat even in mid-winter. But he used to stand before a mirror and say: “One foot of face is worth seven of body.” Hsii Mo, who rose to be President of the Board of Works in 242, suffered from certain weaknesses — he was contemporary with Ts’ai Yung, whose fame as a wine-bibber, he rivalled, if not eclipsed. Evidently the Chinese government were trying experiments with pro- hibition, for “even when the use of liquor was altogether forbidden under the severest penalties, he was unable to resist the temptation of occasionally getting drunk.” In the end, however, we learn that he was canonized. A good literary style has always been appreciated in state papers — especially in times of great danger: Han Yu, Pan Ku, impeached for altering the national history THE SEARCH FOR CURIOUS BOOKS, I 8i who was born A.D. 768, found his neighborhood troubled by a huge crocodile, and the “denunciatory ultimatum” which he addressed to the monster and threw into the river, together with a pig and a goat, is still regarded as a model of Chinese composition. Chang Yen-shang was a magistrate, who, on the occa- sion of an important criminal case, refused successive bribes of 30,000 and 50,000 strings of cash, but his virtue succumbed to an offer of 100,000 strings. He said that 100,000 strings would tempt even the gods, who would resent the refusal of such a bribe by a mere mortal. He died at the age of 61, and was canonized. Chao Tun, of the Seventh Century B.C., was the minister of a stern tyrant, Duke Ling of Chin. The Duke amused himself by shooting at his passing subjects from the top of a tower; also he put his cook to death for serving some badly prepared bears’-paws. Chao Tun remonstrated, and fell into disfavor. Ch’en Ting fled from the offer of a cabinet position, and went with his wife into the coun- try, where they occupied themselves in watering plants. Stoicism was his long suit, for on one occasion he went without food until he could neither see nor hear. His principles were so lofty, not to say impossible, that Mencius declared that a man would have to be an earth- worm to carry them out. Wang Ch’iao had no chariot nor horses, but used to come to court riding on a pair of wild ducks. One day he suddenly announced that God had sent for him, and after duly bathing, he lay down in a jade coffin and died. A learned and virtuous lady was Ts’ai Luan of the Fourth Century A.D. She studied the black art under Hsiu 82 BOOKS IN BLACK OR RED Ying. She married a man named Wen Hsiao, and being very poor managed to earn money by making copies of a rhyming dictionary which she sold. I take it that her husband was a poor author and that she assisted him; their end was glorious, for after ten years they went up to Heaven together on a pair of white tigers. Li Chin was a handsome and amiable young prince of the Eighth Century A.D. A hard drinker, he was en- rolled as one of the Eight Immortals of the Wine Cup. (This was one of the two little groups founded by Li Po, the poet. The other was the Six Idlers of the Bam- boo Brook. As they would say at Yale, Li Chin was not tapped for the Bamboo Brook.) Li Chin would swallow three large stoups of liquor before going to court, and yet a cart of barm, met in the road, would make his mouth water for more. He had some imitation gold and silver fishes and tortoises which he used to swim in an artificial pool of wine. He called himself “Prince Fer- ment” and also “President of the Board of Barm.” Dr. Giles warns us that “his name has been wrongly given by some as Wang.” Contrast with this tippler the austere Yen Shu Tzu of the Fourth Century B.C. He was a man of the Lu State, who lived alone. One night a neighbor’s house was blown down, and a girl took refuge with him. Ac- cordingly he sat up until dawn, holding a lighted lamp in his hand! Chiang Shih, who lived in the First Century A.D., was one of the twenty-four examples of filial piety, and his wife was one of his rivals in this virtue. She, because her mother-in-law preferred river water, used to trudge sev- <1 'f' X- -Ji- iil- ” i -T^ 5^ /?.7 'H- -^i' {( V * ">‘1 ■K If ;i) H i^'r fi' at J-- iv^ fiV 1 '^, X! -^.i P ^ ^ :^- ^ 1» i>- ^►*/. 4.' <\\- )V^: 'f ,f' -'• :f Ji •f^y. -V' •’’^ Pf •47 '•O Ou-yang Hsiu, who opposed Modernism THE SEARCH FOR CURIOUS BOOKS, I 83 eral miles every day to fetch it. The old lady was also very fond of minced fish, and an effort was made to provide her with it; the outcome of it all was that a spring burst forth near their dwelling with a flavor like river water. Daily it cast out on the bank two fine carp. One is surprised that the carp did not proceed to mince each other for her benefit; these examples of filial piety seem to have dealt in fish extensively. There is another of them — the name of the hero escapes me — who went to procure his stepmother, or mother-in-law, the fish that she craved, and on finding the pond frozen over, lay down naked on the ice, thawed out a hole with the heat of his body, and was rewarded with the conventional “two fine carp” which seem to have been the perpetual requirement of mothers-in-law. Another fish incident, by the way, concerns Chiang Tzu-ya, who flourished about the Elev- enth Century B.C. He fished with a straight piece of iron instead of a hook, but the fish readily allowed them- selves to be caught in order to satisfy the needs of this wise and virtuous old man. Chu Hsi led an exemplary life — so remarkably that after death, to the embarrassment of his family, his coffin took up a position suspended in air, about three feet from the ground. Whereupon his son-in-law, falling upon his knees beside the bier, reminded the departed spirit of the great principles of which he had been such a bril- liant exponent in life — and the coffin descended gently to the ground. Li Ch’ung, of the Fourth Century A.D., used to attack with a sword anyone he foimd injuring the cypresses about his father’s grave. He was secretary to Prime BOOKS IN BLACK OR RED •84 Minister Wang Tao, and later to Ch’u P’ou, from whom he finally accepted a minor office, declaring that “a mon- key in difficulties carmot stop to choose his favorite tree.” The discovery of the elixir of life kept many of these personages busy; one of them poisoned himself and died from the effects of some of it. Liu An, however, actu- ally discovered the precious fluid, drank, and rose up to Heaven in broad daylight. He dropped the vessel which had contained it into his court-yard as he rose, his dogs and poultry sipped the dregs, and immediately sailed up to Heaven after him. There was a librarian named Wang Chi, of the Seventh Century A.D. He obtained a good post in the Imperial Library, but disliked the restraint and was always getting drunk. He retired, kept poultry, and grew millet — from which he produced an ardent spirit! He wrote a number of books on philosophy, many beautiful poems, and a short skit called “Note on Drunk-land.” The attractions of Tu I (of that prolific Fourth Cen- tury A.D.) are somewhat puzzling. He was, says Dr. Giles, a type of manly beauty. “He had a complexion like lard, and eyes like black lacquer.” ei i- ^ t ^ ^ 'ft' ^ & ii»; f ^ ^!- S 4^ •# ^ ■ 9 J ,«7 -- 3tL r, j -f- f q : -<_ ^ f. ^ ‘ -t^ ■V 5{l -■^ ^ 5^1- it T 1^ % 4h ^ ^ ^ .47 $;] £ Wl ^- <- .«7 ^ ^ -t- ^ .-5 S|:^l 1^' X ^ A Jt ^ ;!i #£ •<- .5; 2 >fS ^ J ":/- * ■ ■ 4 ^^5' * r!*' r ■ - • ■ _ ' i ■ '. *' ■'. *">• ' - ', rm*/" 5? t- •>• .'7V m ♦/ 4n> - •■55-3 - .j- ' t •fx:'’ ►/■S ’nl;' -■^ 4,‘ '-■ - • ■" ._!?® -;%■ :*5- ✓ * r‘. --V i /. ,v ''•-.*■ h»jt / -J.-: ■w'^-r > -rjtz: ^ -v- ' ’- -V ■ ;-r V-v- - ^ *. >j -w ^*1 ^ >1 ’5 r ’ ►: THE SEARCH FOR CURIOUS BOOKS, II I r I ^ ^ <1 : i^X )L ! a •n ^ !*# =w, %, * >'?- ^ T^>. II * vli Li Po, much patronized by modern American poets CHAPTER VI THE SEARCH FOR CURIOUS BOOKS, II B ook-collectors are divided into twelve or thirteen classes. There are also, in relation to books, certain sub-classes of human beings, who will some day be in- vestigated and explained. These include the families or individuals who admit into their dwellings no other books except the Six Well-Bound Volumes permitted by interior decorators as the literary ration of a home. These are precisely placed on a table, between a pair of hand- some “book-ends” (so called because it is an end to all normal use of books when you acquire them) and may be employed for pressing flowers, or as a place in which to conceal incriminating documents. Another mystic is the man or woman who never carries a book in the street unless it is wrapped in paper. Various explanations are given of this person’s mental process. It has been urged that she is safeguarding the book against inclement weather. This fails, however, since the custom is ob- served on fair days as well as foul. There is a theory that the practice is part of that scheme of gentility which forbids anything unwrapped ever to be carried in the street, — any more than afternoon clothes may be worn after a certain hour, umbrellas go unfolded when not in use, or the human hands be seen in disgraceful naked- ness outside the house. I think, however, that it is none 87 88 BOOKS IN BLACK OR RED of these. My belief is that the plan is to avoid the charge of being “literary,” which may be preferred against the open and shameless conveyer of an uncovered book. The book concealed in paper may pass for a box of poker- chips, a case of cosmetics, an opium lay-out, or anything else which carries no social stigma. It is well to remember the point of view. A recently married pair at Niagara Falls on their honeymoon, were dressing for dinner in their hotel room. The husband, whose preparations were finished, sat down near a table and picked up a magazine — a copy of “Snappy Stories” — which had been left by a former visitor. The bride tip-toed across to him, looked over his shoulder to see what he was doing, and exclaimed: “My God, I’ve married a literary man!” The book-collector is a man of wealth who assembles rare or unique books, early printed books, and first edi- tions. There is some danger of being suspected of in- verted snobbery, of the attitude of the fox toward the grapes, if you confess, as I do, that you regard his treas- ures calmly and without envy. His printed books of the Fifteenth Century are for the most part books which I cannot read; the perusal of medieval works of devotion is not one of my pleasures. As objects to be desired, for their own sake, without regard to reading, they excite me no more than old blue china. A Thackeray or Dickens novel in its “original parts,” may thrill a collector, as one of the rarer triangular Cape of Good Hope stamps could once have thrilled me. Otherwise it is about as convenient as an automobile in its original parts. There are books of which the first edition is, for one A ri.AlSim.K ^TOKV. r.a wliicli no mil' c;iii 1 1 - of wlio li:n» not Im^ ii in null tilinilioii jiinl felt tliiit at anv iiioinciit ilralli ioi;’lit i-oiiic. I*rv^riitly a tlioiiolit rujiiu into llin Imlfs ovi*. ] l^iiuw it ! ^ai•l I — if iiiy nerve fails now, 1 am lont. Sure ciioiio|i, it Ju>t ua I liail clrvatied, Lc started in to elimli tlie tree—'* ‘•Wliat, tlio bull'-’ “Of course — wlioeUl” “ lint a bull can’t climbatri'c.” “lit! can’t, can't lie ? Since Yon know so nincli alaiiit it, did yon ever wo a bull try “Xo! I never dreamt of Mieli a tllilio." •• W'.ll, tben, wliat is the use of your talkiiio lliat way, tlicn ( Ik'caiisc _\ on never haw a lliiiio iloiie, is that any reason wliy it can’t Ikj done?” !' ‘•Well, all r i o li I — on. bat did you do?’’ “ T b O bull »C»1JM.II. VS-EH.TIOSS. started u)>, and p>t nlonp well for alamt ten fis't, tlicn hli|iped and sliil Isvck. 1 breatbcvl easier, lie tried it apain — f?ot f’t "The buffalo climbing up the tree after Bemis, THE SEARCH FOR CURIOUS BOOKS, II 89 reason or another, highly desirable, and others of which it is not desirable at all. So long as I can acquire for a dollar a good, fairly early edition of “Alice in Wonder- land,” in which the plates are not worn, and the picture of Alice and the Mouse on page 26 is sharp, with Alice’s hair and the Mouse’s whiskers clear-cut, I am content. If somebody else, who can do so, and wishes to do so, spends $250 for a first edition of it (which is really the second edition) with its covers liberally spotted with bread and butter, — why, he is an amusing creature and so is entitled to our gratitude. But that he is far removed from the Queen, in Frank Stockton’s story, who collected button-holes, or Mark Twain’s collector who specialized in buying echoes, is something which I leave to book- dealers to maintain, if they like. To collect and worship beautiful book-bindings is to foster a charming art. It has much the same relation to books themselves as a collection of gems, or of specimens of carved jade. You will like your favorite modern authors in some “handsome” and “uniform” binding if you look upon books as part of your scheme of house- hold decoration. If the book in itself, in its associations with the days when you first loved it, in connection with what really made it a book — that is, the work of author and illustrator — if these things are important, you will prefer your old copy of “Roughing Itj” in its frayed, black cloth, and with the original pictures, especially the one of the buffalo climbing the tree after Bemis. And if somebody tells you that its market value is about a dollar and a quarter, you will not be troubled. There are men who talk as if authors were a kind of insect. 90 BOOKS IN BLACK OR RED allowed to exist only because they furnish those two great artists, the printer and the book-binder, material for their really important creations. A collection of first editions may be extremely fas- cinating. It is lack of discrimination in selecting them, and the attempt constantly to add to the number of col- lectible authors which makes them absurd. The reader of books will always resent it if books which he could appreciate are gobbled up by someone who owns them merely to boast about them. The wealthy collector who can himself enjoy his books, and he who sooner or later makes his books available for others — whether the circle be large or small — these have never aroused any reason- able man’s wrath. Now, whether I long for “the books which never can be mine,” or am sunk in indifference toward and igno- rance about incunables and Elzevirs (which, as Andrew Lang says, are always regarded by novelists as the great prize of the collector) there is some form of book-hunting open to me, no matter how slight my learning nor how slender my pocket-book. Follow your fancy! Dr. Frank O’Brien’s was for Beadle’s Dime Novels, and he found himself the owner of a collection, interesting in itself, and, incidentally, worth many dollars. Mr. Franklin P. Adams writes that he has a collection of “bad poetry,” which must be highly amusing, and moreover (to twang the financial string again) must have considerable value, THE SEARCH FOR CURIOUS BOOKS, II 91 if there are included the works of Mrs. Julia A. Moore, the Sweet Singer of Michigan. Rearranging and rummaging in my book-case, not long ago, I assembled and gathered together upon one shelf a dozen or fifteen books which have been coming into my possession, one or two at a time, for the past three or four years. A friend of mine thought that he could do no better for my moral and spiritual benefit, than to send them to me. He seems to have believed that I was in need of that special kind of sacred counsel which was imparted to the young in the first half of the Nineteenth Century. They make a fine show on my shelf, now that I have them all together. Some of them have stamped leather or cloth bindings like the cases which used to enclose daguerreotypes, — the kind with the little brass hasp, and the red plush interior. Some of them, and this is appropriate to their contents, look like the ornamenta- tion on a very swagger coffin. Here is “The Youth’s Keepsake for 1846: A Christmas and New Year’s Gift for Young People.” The title-page is adorned with this rhyme: “Take it — ’tis a gift of love, — That seeks thy good alone ; Keep it for the giver’s sake, And read it for thine own.” Among the others are: The Girl’s Week-Day Book. Published by The London Re- ligious Tract Society. New York, 1837. Sermons to Young Women. By James Fordyce, D.D. Bos- ton, 1796. Evenings’ Entertainments, or. The Country Visit. Embel- BOOKS IN BLACK OR RED 92 lished with Fourteen Engravings. Prepared for the Presby- terian Board of Publication. Philadelphia, 1844. An Analytical and Practical Grammar of the English Lan- guage. By Rev. Peter Bullions, D.D., Late Professor of Lan- guages in the Albany Academy. New York, 1853. Two Short Catechisms, Mutually Connected. By John Brown, Minister of the Gospel at Haddington, 1793. The Jewel, or Token of Friendship. 1837. The Ladies’ Lexicon, and Parlour Companion. By William Grimshaw. Philadelphia, 1835. The Pet Album. (For autographs.) Woman’s Worth; or Hints to Raise the Female Character. New York, 1854. The Little Orator, or Primary School Speaker. By Charles Northend, A.M. New York, i860. The Hare-Bell; a Token of Friendship. Edited by Rev. C. W. Everest. “This little flower, that loves the lea. May well my simple emblem be.” Hartford, 1844. I keep the Rev. Peter Bullions’s grammar in no spirit of derision. His name inspires awe, but his knowledge arouses my admiration and envy. Also, I observe that this was the twenty-third edition of his book. On the title-page of “The Girl’s Week-Day Book” is traced in faint penciling the words ‘'Mon Cher Julie” “The Pet Album” is mostly blank leaves, — rose colored or pale blue, or lemon, with a few engravings, “The Dead Bird,” or “The Lost One Found.” On one of the rose pages is written : Way over here. And out of sight, I write my name, Just out of spite. Your loving Cousin Lizzie. Orange, November 28, ’73. T .r*„T * Ulttt THE SEARCH FOR CURIOUS BOOKS, II 93 This jeu d' esprit impressed somebody named Annie so favorably that she repeated it on a blue page, on Sep- tember 9, 1876, and even did it still again, two days later, on the next leaf, — ruling her lines carefully with pencil. “The Hare-Bell” is the smallest and most chaste of them all. The gilded urn upon the cover, and the tiny mincing pages suggest pet lambs and pantalettes, forget- me-nots and maidenly reserve. The editor, the Rev. Mr. Everest, indulges his taste in an article from his own pen, called “The Old Man’s Grave,” which begins: “Buried in these painful reflections, I wandered on . . .” He soon comes to a cemetery, and says, what I can easily believe: “A churchyard seldom woos me in vain.” Soon he is among the tombs, having a jolly good time of it, full of gloomy moral izings, which he desires to impart to his young readers. The frontispiece shows him, clad in a manner which would be considered de- pressing in an undertaker, and licking his chops over a coming burial party. “Soon the funeral procession appeared in sight, with slow and measured tread. I leaned against a tombstone and waited its approach.” These were the books which you were supposed to give to a girl on her seventeenth birthday. “The Little Orator” contains poems which I had al- ways believed to be more or less mythical, like “I’ll Never Use Tobacco” — I’ll never use tobacco, no, It is a filthy weed: I’ll never put it in my mouth, Said little Robert Reid. 94 BOOKS IN BLACK OR RED Why, there was idle Jerry Jones, As dirty as a pig. Who smoked when only ten years old, And thought it made him big. and the one about the robin who sang the “Temperance Song” — Teetotal — O, that’s the first word of my lay: And then don’t you see how I twitter away? The Presbyteriart “Evenings’ Entertainments” tells about James and Thomas Jones, who as a reward for their obedience and diligence, were permitted to spend their summer holidays with their favorite Uncle John. Each evening they would gather on the veranda, where their uncle would deliver a twenty-page discourse upon the intelligence of ants, or the domestic virtues of the giraffe. Finally, on Sunday night they converse about keeping the Sabbath. Thomas relates an anecdote of his friend, Philip Oswald, who went sailing upon the Sabbath, and was drowned for his pains, while good Uncle John caps this by relating the untimely death of Philip’s father, who, he is happy to say, died in a fever, because of his failure to observe the Sabbath. In fact the book is like the young lady’s recitation in “Tom Sawyer” which wound up with “a sermon so destructive of all hope to non-Presbyterians that it took first prize.” Uplifting the youthful character, particularly the female character, which seems to be the conspicuous theme of this little collection, was assuredly the chief concern of the righteous authors of the 1830’s and 1840’s. Our grandmothers seem to have been docile girls! Did r — - s Uk.' iidirntl irmcctoimi In • w|l|> •low Mid hW4*uix*«l livtid.' I aK'Uiist n UHitb-tiuur. MiJ waltcvl lu Q|»|»ro«iclt." « L Jolly Reading for Girls THE SEARCH FOR CURIOUS BOOKS, II 95 they never revolt and wish for a less insistent harping upon female piety and meekness? Was there any relief for them if they did? It may be that there was: the ' writer of “Woman’s Worth,” hints darkly about “books of an opposite tendency, which, alas! are too much in vogue at the present day. ...” There are works “of an infidel character . . .” and those “of an immoral” de- scription. But he does not give their titles. This collec- tion contains enough pious advice to make a school full of flappers today go into “shrieks of laughter,” and then return to read books of a description which would make the hair of James Fordyce, D.D., the Rev. Peter Bul- lions, and the Rev. C. W. Everest curl with anguish. Yet, I do not know. If the writers of that day, in their picture of model maidenhood, as they would have it, were no nearer the truth than the novelists of 1922 in showing the flapper, as they wish us to think she is, we may revise our views. Look at Charley, in Miss Edna Berber’s “The Girls.” There are three Charlottes in the book, and the youngest, who represents the flapper — she is seventeen or eighteen, — is of course called Charley. “Charley,” says the book, “speaks freely on subjects of which great-aunt Charlotte has never even heard. Words obstetrical, psychoanalytical, political, metaphys- ical, and eugenic, trip from Charley’s tongue.” I wonder. I wonder if Miss Berber really knows any flapper who is like that, or does she have to put her in the book because she had become a stock character, with which to flutter the provincial pigeon-coops. Mr. Scott Fitzgerald invented her, and now no writer of novels or short stories sits down to his typewriter without fishing BOOKS IN BLACK OR RED 96 up one or two from the depths of imagination. Just as no artist can take a stroll in the forest, along the side of a crystal brook, without happening upon a nymph or naiad about to plunge in, so is the novelist sure to know these slim, vivid young things — fine athletes (cf. Charley in “The Girls”), yet rather better informed in current literature and science than a university instructor. And all at seventeen or eighteen ! Actually, the flapper of today could not even pro- nounce all those jaw-crackers in Miss Ferber’s second sentence. She is about as apt to turn red and uncomfort- able at “words obstetrical” as her mother was at her age. She knows that psychoanalysis is something about dreams. She is stumped about politics if you are mean enough to ask her suddenly who is Speaker of the House, or how Senators are elected. Metaphysics is — er — oh, I think we take that up next semester. And eugenics means better babies — no it doesn’t, it’s purifying the milk supply, or else vaccination for typhoid, she’s not sure which. With all respect to Miss Ferber’s novel, I think that these wonderful flappers who haunt the fiction of the period of 1922 are going to be as grotesque to us in 1950 as the profound heroine of “St. Elmo,” who at the age of sixteen discussed Stoic philosophy wdth the magnificent hero, or as the “dear, delightful, bouncing girls” who never flinched from conversing about the subtleties of astro- physics and Unitarianism, the while they prepared hot chocolate for John Buncle. And as for her rattling game of tennis (Charley “packed a mean, back-handed wallop”) there is invariably a cool woman of thirty-five in the same club who can make a The Fate of Sabbath-Breakers rr THE SEARCH FOR CURIOUS BOOKS, II 97 X monkey out of her for three straight sets. Even her short skirts were old stuff. Take down your “Martian” by George Du Maurier, and look (page 139) at his picture of “Three Little Maids from School in 1853.” States of mind cannot be dated. Not many months ago I read a speech by an English bishop about the man- ners of today. He said that he tried not to be an old- fashioned parent, and yet when his daughter said to him, “I say. Old Egg, got any cigarettes'?” he thought things had gone rather far. Yet at the same time, I doubt not, daughters could be found who spoke to their fathers in a style which would be approved by Dr. James Fordyce, whose “Sermons to Young Women” was published — my edition at least — in 1796. To show that old-fashioned manners have not alto- gether decayed, let me quote from a guide to the art of correspondence which I read with some attention two or three years ago. Its date was about 1912 and the dates of the letters, a few of which I copied, show that the author writes practically within our own time. Here, for example, is his model for that most interesting of all letters — “From a gentleman to a lady offering her his hand” : Fairbury, III., May 6, 1899. My Dear Miss Beane — It is now nearly a year and a half since I first had the great pleasure of being received at your home as a friend. During the greater part of that time there has been but one attraction, one strong hope, and that is your own personal attraction and the desire of winning your favor. Have I been successful? Has the deep faithful love that I felt for you met any response in your heart? I feel that my future happiness depends upon your answer. It is not the fleeting fancy of an hour, but BOOKS IN BLACK OR RED 98 the true abiding love that is founded upon respect and esteem, which has been for months my dearest life dream. Your own maidenly dignity has kept your heart so securely hidden that I scarcely venture to hope I have a place there. I feel that I cannot endure suspense any longer, so write to win or lose all. If you will be my wife, it will be my pride to shield you from all sorrow and give you all the happiness that a tender and loving husband can bestow upon the one he loves. Hoping to hear from you soon, I am. Devotedly yours, C. H. Rumley. Miss Alice Beane, Loda, 111. The gentle Alice kept Mr. Rumley on pins and needles for four days, and then from her maiden seclusion in Loda, 111., sent him a wild outburst of passion, which the author of the book calls a “Favorable reply to preceding letter.” Here it is: Loda, III., May 10 , 1899 . My Dear Mr. Rumley — Your kind and manly letter surprises me of the fact that what I believed to be only a friendship consists of a stronger feeling. I see it would be a pain to me to lose your visits and your presence, and I am sure that such a love as you promise your wife would make me very happy. You see I answer you frankly, deem- ing it wrong to trifle with such affection as you offer me. I have shown your letter to my parents and they say they will be pleased to have you visit us at your earliest convenience. Believe me to be. Yours most affectionately, Alice Beane. Mr. C. H. Rumley, Fairbury, 111. In order, however, that no maiden should be trapped into unfortunate marriages (or alliances, as the author ^ THE SEARCH FOR CURIOUS BOOKS, II 99 would probably prefer to say), the book also gives the form for an “unfavorable reply to preceding letter.” The author did not intend that the experiencce should be repeated of the American in France who was run away with by a horse, merely because he did not know the French for “Whoa!” Miss Beane is thoughtfully pro- vided with a declination, couched in the most elegant phrases. I will omit it out of regard for the amorous Mr. C. H. Rumley (think of a hero known only as “C. H.”!) and let his romance have a happy ending. Upon the lover in the next drama, we need have no such mercy. There is something about his letter which makes mt feel that he is planning by a second marriage to defraud his rightful heirs — the reference to his need of a “kindred spirit” is, I think, a sly dig at somebody. Be- sides, what can be said of a man who plans to ask a lady to forsake a place so beautifully named as Bellefontaine (even though local pronunciation degrades it into “Bell Fount’n”) in order to dwell in Wapakoneta? Finally, there is more than a suspicion that the recipient of the proposal is well off — her very name suggests not only ample physical proportions but a comfortable bank ac- count. Alfred is a giddy old rascal, and a fortune hunter into the bargain. Here is his letter, recommended by the author as the correct form, “to a widow from a widower” : W apakoneta, 0 ., Sept. 8, 1901. My Dear Madam — I take this opportunity to lay open to you the present state of my feelings, having been so convinced of your good sense, and amiable disposition, that I feel assured that you will deal candidly with me in your reply. Like yourself, I have been deprived of the partner of my earlier life, and as I approach the middle state of 100 BOOKS IN BLACK OR RED existence, I feel more and more the want of some kindred spirit to share with me whatever years are reserved to me by Providence. My fortune is such as to enable me to support a lady in the manner which I feel to be due to your accomplishments and position. I sincerely hope you will think carefully over my proposal. If you can make up your mind to share my fortune, I trust that no efforts will be wanting on my part to assure you of the happiness you so well deserve. I need scarcely say that an early answer on the matter so much connected with my future happiness will be a great favor to Your devoted admirer, Alfred Reinhardt. Mrs. Martha Caffey, Bellefontaine, O. There is, as I intimated, a favorable reply to this letter, signed “Martha.” But it does not ring true. Here is the genuine one. Note the stern reserve of the signature, not only the full name, but “Mrs.” besides ! Alfred is plainly told to keep his distance. Bellefontaine will see him no more, that is certain. “Unfavorable reply to preceding letter” : Bellefontaine, 0 ., Sept, lo, 1901. Dear Sir — You give me credit for a discernment I do not possess, for I declare to you I never suspected that there was anything beyond friendship in the sentiments you enter- tained toward me. I am sorry to find it otherwise, because it is out of my power to answer your question in the affirma- tive. I esteem you, but there I must pause. My heart is untouched. The probability is that I shall always remain a widow. Wishing you with all my heart a more favorable re- sponse from some worthier object, I continue Your sincere friend, Mrs. Martha Caffey. Mr. Alfred Reinhardt, Wapakoneta, O. I THE SEARCH FOR CURIOUS BOOKS, II loi The book has many other charming and useful models. Especially to be recommended is one “From a Gentleman Proposing the Day of Nuptials.” There is a reply to it, from his prospective “life’s partner.” Another, in a minor key, is “From a Lady Confessing a Change of Feelings.” There is also a brief note “To a Lady Complaining of Coldness” (doubtless from the janitor of her apartment house), while the “Letter to an Entire Stranger Seen at Church,” and the “Reply” thereto are the central jewels of the whole cluster. This is a convenient model, and the frigid chastity of the “Entire Stranger’s” reply makes Miss Felicia Hemans seem like burning Sappho by com- parison. The end is in gloom. Here is the correct letter to be sent “From a Gentleman to a Lady on Rejection of his Suit.” Why the author has ironically adopted the name of Dr. Weir Mitchell’s hero is hard to say. It should be observed that gentlemen suffering with rejection of the suit are not even allowed to use the formal and customary “Dear” or “My Dear” to precede the rejector’s name. “Miss Murney” (a name doubtless selected for its hollow and dismal sound) is to be used in all its brevity. However this may be but a sign of misery from one who is an isolated lonely wanderer in Harrisburg, Pa. The sad epistle follows : Harrisburg, Pa., Aug. 5, 190 1. Miss Murney — From the highest pinnacles of hope I have been sunk to the lowest depths of despair. Your rejec- tion to my love has filled me with misery and wretchedness. I now feel an isolated lonely wanderer on the face of the earth, without one friendly ray of light to guide my way. 102 BOOKS IN BLACK OR RED Still, whatever my fate or wherever I am, my one desire will be that you may be as happy as I have been made wretched. From your admirer, though miserable, Hugh Wynne. Miss Alberta Murney, Reading, Pa. The mock-refinement of the uncultivated, and the affected roughness of the over-cultured produce strange effects in literature. It is not the New England poets who occasionally lapse into effeminacy of expression, but Walt Whitman. The big prize-fighter and the heroes of professional baseball turn up missing when the coun- try goes to war, while the great prizes for gallantry go to a deacon of the church and to a studious, near-sighted lawyer. The “strong stuff” which has so occupied the writers of poetry and the drama for the last few years — is it loved by the people, or by a few under-nourished devotees? A teacher who had a small collection of books in her class room was surprised to see, one day, the tall and ungainly father of one of the pupils. He came in, said that he liked to read, and that he wished he might sit down and read for an hour or so. The pupils had gone, and there were various other persons in the room, which was sometimes used in place of a reading room. The man said that he liked “poetry,” and so the teacher knew exactly what to give him. He had been, all his life, a cattle-man and cow-boy on the great plains. The teacher had learned, from the critics and the literary reviews, what these great, strong virile men preferred, THE SEARCH FOR CURIOUS BOOKS, II 103 so, not finding any of Carl Sandburg’s poems, she gave him a volume of Whitman, and turned to the “Song of the Broad-Axe.” He did not seem to make much progress with it, and presently she saw him shuffling with the other books. Passing near him, as he sat reading, ten minutes later, she noticed that he had a copy of Tennyson. His head was bent low over the table, and he was perusing, appar- ently with the utmost delight, this: Airy, fairy Lilian, Flitting fairy Lilian, When I ask her if she love me, Claps her tiny hands above me. Laughing all she can ; She’ll not tell me if she love me, Cruel little Lilian. There is a certain amount of pose in books about the sea, and in comments about them. A clever writer goes down to the wharf and smells tar or indigo or tapioca, or whatever it is that any good reporter on an assignment can always smell to please his editor, and comes back stuffed full of more romance than he or anybody else would experience in fourteen trips around the world. Such is literature. That the sailor-man with a seeing eye does behold signs and wonders I have no manner of doubt. Mr. Frank Bullen saw an extraordinary spectacle — a fight between an octopus and a whale — in the middle of a moonlit night. He ran below to tell the captain, so that J 104 BOOKS IN BLACK OR RED that mariner might enjoy it too. But he was rewarded by having a boot thrown at his head. I have talked with sailors and sea-captains who have had marvellous experi- ences — one of them had been in a collision on a calm sea in the Indian ocean, and had also been captured by the Alabama. And with others who could, for the life of them, after thirty years at sea, remember nothing more entrancing to discuss than the comparative prices of “corned shoulder” in Singapore, Colon, and Halifax. In Captain Jacob Trent, master of the brig Flying Scud, you have a picture of a sea-captain. Stevenson has drawn it in “The Wrecker,” that first-rate novel of the sea, of which three-fourths of the action is on land. Trent opened a bottle of Cape wine for his guests and * discoursed of the one thing in his life which gave him pride : the pawn-shop, which, under the name of “bank,” he had kept in Cardiff. “He had been forty years at sea, had five times suffered shipwreck, was once n