E PILGRIM'S PROGRESS 
 TOCULTURE 
 
Glass .Lj C 3-1 
 
THE 
 
 PILGRIM'S PROGRESS 
 
 TO CULTURE 
 
 By PHILIP GIBBS 
 
 11 
 
 Edited by HELEN CRAMP 
 
 Philadelphia 
 
 THE JOHN C. WINSTON COMPANY 
 
 1915 
 

 z p 
 
TURNS IN THE PATH 
 
 PAGE 
 
 1. Wanted: A Guide 5 
 
 2. The Study of Biography 14 
 
 3. Books which Must be Read ... 24 
 
 4. The Reading of History 38 
 
 5. The Highway of English Litera- 
 
 ture 48 
 
 6. The Influence of Poetry .... 61 
 
 7. The Education of Art 70 
 
 8. The Charm of Music 80 
 
 9. Sermons in Stones 89 
 
 10. English Novels and Novelists. . 98 
 
 11. On the Study of Human Nature. 115 
 
 12. The Advantages of Travel . . . 123 
 
 13. The Art of Conversation .... 129 
 
 3 
 
FIRST TURN 
 
 Wanted: A Guide 
 
 There are many young men nowadays who 
 have a very sensible knowledge of their own 
 ignorance. They have had a certain amount 
 of schooling — the minimum required; and 
 now their education is supposed to be complete; 
 for they are wage-earners and business men, 
 with no more need to learn. And yet what 
 is the sum of their knowledge? Let us see. 
 They can do a bit of arithmetic, sufficient 
 anyway to carry them through the everyday 
 affairs of life. They also know a thing or two 
 about geography, at least of their own country. 
 As for history, they know the names of the 
 kings and queens of England and the presidents 
 of the United States — or most of them — and a 
 few old " chestnuts" such as Henry VIII having 
 six wives — or eight, was it? — and King John 
 losing the Crown Jewels in the Wash — probably 
 through the dishonesty of his washerwoman. 
 When they were at school they did a little 
 parsing, a little Euclid, a little algebra, a little 
 of sundry other things; but the memory of 
 them has passed with the schooldays. 
 
 5 
 
WANTED: A GUIDE 
 
 A Knowledge of Ignorance 
 
 So the clear-headed young man, who is 
 frank enough to admit his deficiencies, wakes 
 up one day and says, "How densely ignorant 
 I am!" Then he sighs and turns to the latest 
 sensational story in his newspaper. Deep 
 down in his heart he has a longing to know more 
 than he does. He knows at least that beyond 
 his own ken is a realm of knowledge, vast and 
 wonderful. Now and again he comes across 
 a man who seems to have traversed a part 
 at least of this knowledge-world — a man whose 
 mind seems filled with a great store of precious 
 facts, who has become intimate with the 
 thoughts of the Immortals, who considers the 
 problems of life with a wisdom learned from a 
 large experience of the literature of past and 
 present ages, and who is called by public 
 opinion a Cultured Man. 
 
 The young man, deploring his own ignorance, 
 is conscious of an immeasurable gulf between 
 himself and this cultured acquaintance. It is 
 not a gulf caused by wealth or social position, 
 but a superiority of mental attainments. Our 
 young friend knows that nowadays knowledge 
 is not the monopoly of the rich, nor even of the 
 so-called leisure classes, but is open, free from 
 barrier, to every individual soul. And so he 
 sighs, feeling that he ought, and wishing to 
 
 6 
 
WANTED : .A GUIDE 
 
 goodness he could, acquire some of that liberal 
 education which makes his cultured friend so 
 much better and stronger and broader a 
 personality than himself. 
 
 Where is the Guide? 
 
 But the fact is, he does not have the least 
 idea how to go to work, where to begin, or how 
 to begin, what direction to take, what goal to 
 aim at. He is like a traveler who sets out to find 
 a treasure, but has no map to tell him where to 
 go, and no guides to lead him. Before him is a 
 vast forest disclosing innumerable mazy paths. 
 There is no sign-post to point out the highway, 
 and if he ventures into one of the by-paths there 
 is every chance that he will go wandering about 
 in an unprofitable quest leading nowhere in 
 particular. So, rather than take the risk, he 
 makes up his mind that the treasure can go 
 hang, and turns back to his cottage to smoke 
 his pipe — sans treasure, sans trouble. 
 
 Exactly is it with regard to Culture. A 
 young man sees stretching before him in 
 imagination an infinitude of subjects, an 
 infinitude of books. Where shall he begin, 
 how make his choice, what aim for? He makes 
 one or two attempts, but is disheartened. He 
 goes to a public library and turns over the 
 pages of the catalogue, but stands appalled at 
 
 7 
 
WANTED: A GUIDE 
 
 the vista before him. "I take all knowledge 
 for my province," said Francis Bacon; but 
 the modern student shakes his head and wishes 
 he knew the trick of the thing. 
 
 You will see such a fellow wander round the 
 reading-room of a library, gazing wistfully 
 at the shelves, and eyeing the backs of the 
 volumes. At last he seems attracted by some 
 title, and takes out the book to dip into it, 
 but lays it down presently with a grimace. 
 He realizes the utter futility of plunging 
 haphazard into a study, having he knows not 
 how many offshoots, and leading he knows not 
 whither. So he turns his back on the library, 
 and goes to watch a baseball game or a moving- 
 picture show. 
 
 Now, there is wasted talent. There is an 
 ambition rotting for something to feed on. 
 There is a man resting in his dense ignorance, 
 who, if he had been put on the right track, 
 might have added to the store of the world's 
 knowledge, and would have certainly broadened 
 his own mind and heart by self-culture. There 
 are thousands of such fellows today. What 
 they want is a guide along the path to culture, 
 "a guide, philosopher, and friend/' who will 
 point out to them what goal to aim for, and how 
 to attain it without vain meanderings in wrong 
 directions. 
 
 8 
 
WANTED: A GUIDE 
 
 The Long Pilgrimage 
 
 In the following pages I propose, as far as 
 my own experience will extend, to act as a 
 guide along the Pilgrim's Way to Culture. I 
 want to gather round me all those young 
 men and women who start, as I started, as 
 ignorant as an ordinary school education 
 generally leaves one. I want to show what 
 subjects should be taken up first, and how 
 studied; which methods are best suited for 
 self-tuition, and which best to avoid. Those 
 who have read the Pilgrim's Progress by John 
 Bunyan will remember how Christian in his 
 journey to the Delectable Mountains fell into 
 the Slough of Despond, and afterwards encoun- 
 tered Giant Despair. Now, I want my 
 Pilgrims to avoid these stumbling-blocks, and 
 I shall show them how to avoid the snares and 
 pitfalls -on the way. I shall guide them 
 gradually farther and farther along the road, 
 showing how they may, by perseverance and 
 energy, become possessors of that priceless 
 treasure which may be gained by all who tread 
 the Pilgrim's Way. 
 
 What is the Goal? 
 
 For what is culture? It does not mean quite 
 the same thing as knowledge. A man may 
 have a vast deal of knowledge and yet little 
 
 9 
 
WANTED: A GUIDE 
 
 culture. Knowledge is the possession of facts; 
 but culture belongs to those who can estimate 
 facts at their right worth, and whose character 
 has been moulded by them. The man who 
 seeks mere knowledge may become hard and 
 narrow, a lumber-room for the accumulation 
 of intellectual stock, a miser hoarding up gold 
 that, without circulation, is as valueless as dust. 
 But the cultured man puts all his attainments 
 to their highest use; they not only broaden and 
 elevate his own mind, but they have a radiating 
 influence upon all about him. 
 
 The "practical man" who looks with 
 pessimism upon the outlook of the nation will 
 say, "Hang your culture! We don't want 
 cultured men, but specialists." True enough, 
 we do want specialists. I am one of those who 
 believe in specialists. I like a man who knows 
 his subject as well as it can be known, who has 
 explored it to its farthest boundary — whether 
 it be electricity or steam, bacteriology or 
 book-binding. But I am firmly of opinion 
 that in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred 
 the specialist can find time to be cultured. 
 It is a mistake to think that most people are 
 overworked. On the contrary, most people 
 have a fair share of leisure, and it depends on 
 themselves whether they spend it profitably 
 or otherwise. 
 
 10 
 
WANTED: A GUIDE 
 
 The Cultured Man 
 
 Our practical friend is wrong when he says 
 "Hang your culture!" We do want culture 
 very badly. It is the thing we want most in 
 life, and worth more than the invention of the 
 steam-engine or wireless telegraphy. The 
 object of mankind should be— the aspiration 
 of all wise, reforming men is— to raise the 
 standard of the race, to bring men a little 
 nearer to the angels, a little farther from the 
 brutes. Then let us get culture. Let us 
 develop every side of our nature broadly, 
 equably, not producing a race of specialists 
 each with some moral or mental bump abnor- 
 mally developed, nor handing down to the next 
 generation characteristics that will produce 
 such a state of things as foreshadowed in Mr. 
 H. G. Wells' Anticipations. The cultured man 
 is educated all around; his nature is well- 
 poised, melodious and whole. His soul is 
 receptive of all the refining influences of life, 
 responsive always to beauty of thought and 
 form, color and sound. The baser promptings 
 of his being have been crushed under heel by a 
 wisdom learned from intercourse with the 
 intellectuals of many an age and nation. He is 
 a considerate man because he can look at 
 questions from many points of view, a kindly 
 man because books have taught him sympathy 
 
 11 
 
WANTED: A GUIDE 
 
 for many sorts of character, a " clubbable 
 man" (as Doctor Johnson phrased it) because 
 he has in his brain a store of pleasant and 
 profitable knowledge which he gives out when 
 wanted for the benefit of others. 
 
 A Practical Guide 
 
 This is what I mean by culture, and it is in 
 the pursuit of such a character as this that I 
 want my friends to follow me along that road 
 I have called the Pilgrim's Way. My guidance, 
 such as it is, will be a practical one. I shall 
 not talk rhetorical flummery to tickle the ears 
 of my audience, but shall endeavor to put on 
 paper some advice that will help self-students to 
 avoid much stumbling and blundering. I shall 
 mention books that are reliable as well as 
 stimulating. This question of authorities 
 is most difficult. What vain hours have been 
 spent on the study of books that have proved 
 worthless! What praiseworthy efforts have 
 been led astray by the consultation of wrong 
 authorities! Of the making of books there is 
 no end, and of modern books more than half 
 are absolutely without merit. How difficult 
 it is, then, for students without a guide to 
 select the right books— not difficult, but next 
 to impossible. I propose, then, to act as a 
 guide, as far as I can, to self-taught students 
 
 12 
 
WANTED: A GUIDE 
 
 who will proceed with me along the Pilgrim's 
 Way. It happens that I have come into close 
 touch with all sorts and conditions of books, 
 some good and many bad. The knowledge 
 that I have is at the disposal of my readers. 
 
 13 
 
SECOND TURN 
 
 The Study of Biography 
 
 The World's Leadeks 
 
 I advise all young men and women, at the 
 outset of their career, to begin by studying the 
 biographies of some of the greatest characters 
 in the world's history. There is no other form 
 of literature which is so stimulating as biog- 
 raphy. I am ignorant? I am uncultured? 
 I have no guiding principles, no ambitions, no 
 philosophy? Very well, let me see what manner 
 of men and women were these people who did 
 big things in their time. What were the 
 motives which animated them? How did they 
 overcome the obstacles in their path? What 
 was their outlook upon life, and how far did 
 their force of character carve out their for- 
 tunes? How far was their character moulded 
 by their surroundings, by the circumstances 
 of their time and the accidents of fate? One 
 cannot read the biographies of remarkable 
 persons without acquiring some of their 
 philosophy and their ideals, and without, 
 perhaps unconsciously but none the less surely, 
 storing up some of their force. 
 
 U 
 
STUDY OF BIOGRAPHY 
 
 The Looking-glass of Life 
 
 Plutarch, who wrote biographies eighteen 
 centuries ago, prefaced one of them by the 
 following wise words, which are as true today 
 as then: — "It was," he said, "for the sake of 
 others that I first commenced writing biogra- 
 phies; but I find myself proceeding and 
 attaching myself to it for my own, the virtues 
 of these great men now serving me as a sort 
 of looking-glass in which I may see how to 
 adjust and adorn my own life. Indeed, it can 
 be compared to nothing but daily living and 
 associating together; we receive, as it were, in 
 our inquiry, and entertain each successive 
 guest, view 
 
 " 'Their stature and their qualities/ 
 
 and select from their action all that is noblest 
 and worthiest to know. 
 
 " 'Ah, what greater pleasure could we have' 
 
 or what more effective means to one's moral 
 improvement? Democritus tells us we ought 
 to pray that of the phantasms appearing in the 
 circumambient air, such may present them- 
 selves to us as are propitious, and that we may 
 rather meet with those that are agreeable* to 
 our natures, and are good, than the evil and 
 
 15 
 
STUDY OF BIOGRAPHY 
 
 the unfortunate; which is simply introducing 
 into philosophy a doctrine untrue in itself, 
 and leading to endless superstitions. My 
 method, on the contrary, is, by the study of 
 history and by the familiarity acquired in 
 writing, to habituate my memory to receive 
 and retain images of the best and worthiest 
 characters. I thus am enabled to free myself 
 from any ignoble, base, or vicious impressions, 
 contracted from the contagion of ill-company 
 that I may be unavoidably engaged in, by 
 the remedy of turning my thoughts in a 
 happy and calm temper to view these noble 
 examples." 
 
 When we read the life-stories of men and 
 women, we ourselves participate to some 
 extent in their own experiences. Insensibly 
 we place ourselves in the situations in which 
 they found themselves, and the problems which 
 confronted them seek their solution in our own 
 brains; their difficulties, their stumblings, 
 their triumphs become personal lessons, by 
 which we may get a wider experience of life 
 than comes to us in our ordinary vocations, 
 so that when the time comes when we are 
 called upon for some momentous decision, 
 or to pursue some special line of conduct, 
 we have a precedent to guide us to the right 
 course. 
 
 16 
 
STUDY OF BIOGRAPHY 
 
 Plutarch's Lives 
 
 It is for this reason that I say to my Pilgrims, 
 who wish to progress, start by getting the 
 acquaintance of some of the world's heroes 
 and heroines. And for a beginning I advise 
 my friends to go to Plutarch, whose words I 
 have quoted above. His Lives have been a 
 source of inspiration to eighteen centuries of 
 the world's leaders. They are for all nations 
 and all ages. No writings of classical antiquity 
 have had more influence upon thinking men and 
 women from that time to ours; so that Plutarch 
 may be called the interpreter of Greece and 
 Rome to the modern world. It is not so much 
 for the historical material they contain, not for 
 the facts they narrate, but because the author's 
 aim was the accurate portraiture of character. 
 He touched but briefly upon the famous 
 actions which distinguish the careers of his 
 "heroes," believing that these do not show a 
 man's virtues or failings so much as some lightly 
 dropped phrase, some idiosyncrasy of char- 
 acter, some jest, repartee, or trifling incident. 
 As a French critic has truly said: "It is moral 
 truth, not historical truth, which he pursues; 
 the latter is for him but the means, the former 
 the object itself." 
 
 He took for his subjects the men who 
 founded the glory of ancient Greece and Rome, 
 
 17 
 
STUDY OF BIOGRAPHY 
 
 and he described them with some of that 
 intimacy that Boswell did Johnson; so that we 
 moderns may dine in company with such 
 heroes as Coriolanus, Cicero, Alexander and 
 Caesar; we may meet them on familiar terms, 
 listen to their private discourses in the hour 
 of unbending, walk with them in the market- 
 place, stand by their side in the Forum, and 
 study them in their days both of adversity and 
 triumph. When we read Plutarch's Lives, 
 we not only enter the company of the greatest 
 of Greece and Rome, but we are, as I have said, 
 receiving impressions that have moulded the 
 characters of great men and women through 
 eighteen centuries of history; if we be likewise 
 moulded who shall say what work, great or lit- 
 tle, we may not be able to accomplish with such 
 an influence? I, for one, will not set a limit. 
 
 A Panegyric of Great Men 
 
 Next to this immortal book I recommend 
 the reading of Carlyle's Heroes and Hero 
 Worship. It is a book inspired by more than a 
 spark of divine fire. It came red-hot from 
 the soul of a man who was himself something 
 of a hero, and who, therefore, had more than 
 an ordinary insight into the true meaning of 
 heroism, into what constitutes a great man. 
 A large topic, says Carlyle, is this subject of 
 
 18 
 
 
STUDY OF BIOGRAPHY 
 
 Heroes, wide as universal history itself, for 
 the history of what man has accomplished 
 in this world is, at the bottom, the history 
 of the great men who have worked here. 
 "They were the leaders of men, these great 
 ones; the modelers, patterns, and, in a wide 
 sense, creators of whatsoever the general mass 
 of men contrive to do or to attain; all things 
 that we see standing accomplished in the 
 world are properly the outer material result, 
 the practical realization and embodiment of 
 thoughts that dwelt in the great men sent into 
 the world; the soul of the whole world's history, 
 it may justly be considered, were the history 
 of these." Then, in a fine glow of enthusiasm, 
 Carlyle indites the panegyric of a Great Man. 
 "He is the living light-fountain, which it is 
 good and pleasant to be near; the light which 
 enlightens, which has enlightened the darkness 
 of the world, and this not as a kindled lamp 
 only, but rather as a natural luminary shining 
 by the gift of heaven; a flowing light-fountain, 
 as I say, of native original insight, of manhood 
 and heroic nobleness, in whose radiance all 
 souls feel that it is well with them." 
 
 Men Who Fought and Won 
 
 Next — to those who have not already done 
 so — I would say, read the biographies in Self- 
 
 19 
 
STUDY OF BIOGRAPHY 
 
 help by Samuel Smiles. Fifteen years ago 
 it would have been superfluous to have recom- 
 mended a book which had found a place in 
 every household, but there are fashions in 
 books as in most things, and what is read by 
 everyone today is often forgotten by nearly 
 everyone a decade later. Yet Selfhelp is a 
 work that has raised a good many men from 
 the bottom to the topmost rung of the ladder. 
 With Plutarch's Lives of the Ancient Heroes and 
 Smiles' Lives of Modern Heroes, a man may 
 look the world in the face without blinking, and 
 know the mission he has set his mind to fulfil. 
 To some of my readers no doubt Selfhelp will 
 appeal more closely than old Plutarch; and 
 certainly young men and women with more 
 ambitions than attainments, with a goal in 
 view but many obstacles in the way, will take 
 heart when they see how some of the noblest 
 work has been achieved in the face of stupen- 
 dous difficulty — how men, poor, uncultivated, 
 powerless at the start, have carved their way 
 through every barrier and snatched victory 
 from the grasp of every foe. 
 
 Men of Ideals 
 
 The lives of the Saints should be studied, 
 apart from any religious or doctrinal point of 
 view. Whether we believe in miracles or 
 
 20 
 
STUDY OF BIOGRAPHY 
 
 whether we don't, whether we call ourselves 
 Protestants, Catholics, or Jews, the life-stories 
 of the men and women who by their virtue, 
 courage, and enthusiasm upheld the Christian 
 faith and led people to higher and nobler aims, 
 who, for their ideal's sake, dared all things and 
 suffered all things, who made many blunders, 
 perhaps, and whose pure gold was mixed, 
 maybe, with not a little earthly dross, should 
 be read reverently and studied carefully by all 
 who would shape their souls into a noble and 
 heroic pattern. For the lives of such men as 
 Augustine, Bernard, Francis of Assisi, Francis 
 of Sales bring home to one the truth that out 
 of the commonest clay may be wrought the 
 noble and heroic, and that, in the circum- 
 stances of everyday life, "the common round, 
 the trivial task," may be found a field for the 
 exercise of every phase of character, from the 
 basest of the base to the highest of the high. 
 
 No little of the interest in both ancient and 
 modern history depends upon the pen pictures 
 of men and women which lighten and humanize 
 its pages. Who, for instance, can forget the 
 portrait of Queen Elizabeth in Green's History, 
 one of the most remarkable pieces of character 
 analysis in all published literature? And such 
 works as Holinshed's Chronicle, Clarendon's His- 
 tory of the Rebellion, Burnet's History of HisOwn 
 
 21 
 
STUDY OF BIOGRAPHY 
 
 Time, and Shakespeare's historical plays have 
 an interest due to the portraits of individuals 
 even more than to their historical facts. This 
 is also true of Macaulay's History, and to still 
 greater extent of Carlyle's French Revolution, 
 
 A Gkeat Ckitic 
 
 Macaulay's Essays, including the biogra- 
 phies of such great men as Chatham, Clive, and 
 Warren Hastings, are among the masterpieces 
 of biographical art, and will give to students 
 who have never before read any of Macaulay's 
 writings the "Macaulay enthusiasm," which 
 at one time or another is bound to be caught 
 by all lovers of literature. Johnson's Lives of 
 the Poets are worth reading, not so much for 
 his criticism of their poetry, as for his delinea- 
 tion of their characters. His biography of 
 Richard Savage is one of the finest efforts of 
 English prose. Dr. Johnson's own Life, by 
 Boswell, is a liberal education in itself; and 
 those who listen to the conversations on a 
 thousand problems of life, philosophy and 
 literature, as held by the Doctor and his 
 distinguished circle of friends, and chronicled 
 by the faithful Boswell, will find they have a 
 wider outlook upon the world of thought, and 
 that by keeping company with these wits and 
 philosophers they have gained some of the 
 
 22 
 
STUDY OF BIOGRAPHY 
 
 culture that comes from the society of learned, 
 noble, and eloquent men. 
 
 The field of biography in America, though 
 not so rich as that of England, is still a splendid 
 treasure-house for the student who would 
 read and, reading, learn to live. Biographies 
 of Washington, Lincoln, John Quincy Adams, 
 Henry Clay, Patrick Henry, Daniel Webster, 
 Thomas Jefferson, Grant, Lee, Longfellow, 
 Emerson, Thoreau, Phillips Brooks, and a host 
 of others lead the reader not only to a better 
 understanding of our national life but to a finer 
 conception of the fundamental problems of all 
 living and a closer grasp of the great realities 
 of his own life. 
 
 No form of biographical composition is of 
 more abiding interest than the autobiography, 
 in which a man unlocks the very doors of his 
 heart, and such books as St. Augustine's 
 Confessions, the spiritual history of a great 
 intellect, mastered and moulded by religion; 
 Cardinal Newman's Apologia, hardly less 
 valuable as a spiritual confession; De Quincey's 
 Confessions of an Opium Eater, one of the 
 strangest books in our language; and Goethe's 
 self-revealing Dichtung und Wahrheit are so 
 full of inspiration and stimulus that one who is 
 seeking culture rather than knowledge can 
 scarcely dare to pass them by. 
 
 23 
 
THIRD TURN 
 Books which Must be Read 
 
 The Greatest Books 
 
 In the world's literature there is a certain 
 number of books, which, since they first came 
 from the brains and hearts of their authors, 
 have been beacons of light to countless men 
 and women, whose characters have been 
 impregnated with their influence, and whose 
 life-work has been shaped accordingly. Of 
 such books there is not a multitude. They 
 may be set up in a row on a fair-sized book- 
 shelf. They are like the foundations of a huge 
 and lofty building, piled high upon a narrow 
 base. For a vast number of our modern 
 books owe their origin to these. From these 
 great sources of literature have flowed (if I 
 may change my metaphor) innumerable rivers 
 with innumerable tributaries, traversing so 
 many realms of knowledge that many a man 
 and woman is content with living a lifetime in 
 some backwater, never exploring, perhaps 
 never hearing of the great reservoirs from which 
 most of our modern wisdom has come. But 
 this is a watery simile, and lest I should damp 
 my readers I will leave it. 
 
 24 
 
WHICH MUST BE READ 
 
 What I want to maintain is, that the master- 
 minds of the world have all gone to a few pre- 
 eminently great books. Therefore, I think it 
 foolish for modern students, who desire to 
 cultivate their intellects and to form their 
 characters, to waste time upon a mass of 
 modern rubbish, or even upon modern " high- 
 class" literature, which after all owes its origin 
 to works a hundred times more efficacious in 
 producing the desired result. I do not mean to 
 say that all modern literature is worthless. On 
 the contrary, there are, and have been, hun- 
 dreds of cultured minds, hundreds of bright 
 intellects producing work that extends the 
 realm of thought to further regions, and has an 
 elevating influence upon the time. But when 
 a man or woman has not many advantages 
 of leisured education, when time is limited and 
 ambition great, why not begin at the beginning 
 instead of at the end; why not study first those 
 parent-works from which these modern books 
 are mostly offshoots? 
 
 The Noblest Literature 
 
 Here, therefore, I will name a few of those 
 works which, in my opinion, have had most 
 influence upon the world's thinkers. And I 
 hope that my readers will now understand the 
 scope of the present series sufficiently to 
 
 25 
 
WHICH MUST BE READ 
 
 appreciate the motive of my suggestions, that 
 is, that I am dealing with books formative of 
 culture in the highest sense, and not of mere 
 knowledge. They must also bear in mind that 
 other articles will follow dealing with other 
 phases of culture, and that therefore my present 
 list has its well-defined limitations. 
 
 Foremost I name the Bible, and I here 
 recommend it purely as literature. It is too 
 little regarded in this light, yet the Old and 
 New Testaments contain the most splendid 
 body of national literature that mankind has 
 yet produced. For its literature alone, that 
 is to say, for the beauty of its language, for the 
 sublimity of its poetry, for its grandeur of 
 thought, apart altogether from its religion, 
 many books of the Bible should be read and 
 re-read, and learned by heart, so that they 
 sink deep into the soul. Apart again from its 
 religion, it is full of practical wisdom, and the 
 philosophy of life. The characters portrayed 
 in its pages are living types of men and women, 
 and though they existed when the world was 
 young, their hearts were very much as ours are 
 today— their temptations, frailties, struggles, 
 sin, heroism, and hopes but prototypes of our 
 own. We of English speech have a priceless 
 heritage in the translation of the writings to our 
 own tongue, for Bible English is most pure, 
 
 26 
 
WHICH MUST BE READ 
 
 most practical, most grand, and if a man would 
 clothe his thoughts in noble words, if he would 
 tune his ear to stately rhythm, let him read and 
 learn the Psalms of David, the Book of Isaiah, 
 the Canticles of Solomon. 
 
 An Imperial Philosopher 
 
 I will now mention a wonderful book by one 
 of the noblest of pagans — The Meditations of 
 Marcus Aurelius. This man was an emperor 
 of Rome when there was but one great empire 
 in the world. A man of vast power, a man 
 beset with the cares of a worldly ruler, he yet 
 was simple and humble, and beneath the 
 Imperial purple, too often covering a prodigy 
 of cruelty, lust and pride, beat a pagan heart 
 so pure, so full of charity, so free from any 
 baseness, that we can point to few Christian 
 rulers worthy to rank beside him. His reign 
 was a troubled one; he had to defend the 
 boundaries of his empire from hordes of 
 barbaric invaders, his throne from usurpers 
 of his own household, but in the council 
 chamber and in the camp he kept a mind at 
 peace with itself. His meditations were 
 written on the fields of war. They were 
 probably not intended for publication, and are 
 simply the Emperor's commonplace book 
 wherein he entered his reflections, disconnected 
 
 27 
 
WHICH MUST BE READ 
 
 and fragmentary, on the problems of life and 
 eternity. They breathe a spirit of wisdom. 
 We see here the naked soul of a man set in the 
 highest place of the earth, but realizing his own 
 infinite insignificance, acknowledging humbly 
 that his imperial dignity was but tinsel in the 
 eyes of the All-wise, and that he was but a man 
 who must live his little life and die. Read this 
 " commonplace book" so full of practical 
 philosophy. It might have been written 
 yesterday, so fresh is its teaching, for there is 
 some knowledge that is always young. I am 
 tempted to quote some of its splendid counsel, 
 but I have only space for a few grains of his 
 wisdom. 
 
 Scattered Thoughts 
 
 "It is the custom of people to go to unfre- 
 quented places and country places, and the 
 seashore and the mountains for retirement; 
 and this you often earnestly desired. But, 
 after all, this is but a vulgar fancy, for it is in 
 your power to withdraw into yourself whenever 
 you desire. Now, one's mind is a place the 
 most free from crowd and noise in the world, 
 if a man's thoughts are such as to ensure him 
 perfect tranquillity within, and this tranquil- 
 lity consists in the good ordering of the mind. 
 Your way is therefore to make frequent use 
 
 28 
 
WHICH MUST BE READ 
 
 of this retirement, and refresh your virtue 
 in it." 
 
 "Now, a social temper was that for which 
 man was principally designed." 
 
 "That which is not for the interest of the 
 whole swarm is not for the interest of a single 
 bee." 
 
 "It is a royal thing to be ill-spoken of for 
 good deeds." 
 
 "The best way of revenge is not to imitate 
 the injury." 
 
 Here is a noble view of true charity: 
 
 "Some men, when they do you a kindness, 
 at once demand the payment of gratitude from 
 you; others are more modest than this. 
 However, they remember the favor and look 
 upon you as their debtor in this. A third sort 
 shall scarce know what they have done. These 
 are much like a vine, which is satisfied by 
 being fruitful in its kind, and bears a bunch 
 of grapes without expecting any thanks for it. 
 A fleet horse and greyhound do not make a 
 noise when they have done well, neither a bee 
 when she has made a little honey. . . . Now 
 we should imitate these who are so obliging 
 as hardly to reflect on their beneficence." 
 
 Here is a fine satire on the affectation of 
 virtue : 
 
 "How fulsome and hollow does that man 
 29 
 
WHICH MUST BE READ 
 
 look who cries — 'I am resolved to deal straight- 
 forwardly with you.' Hark you, friend, what 
 need of all this flourish? Let your actions 
 speak; your face ought to vouch for your 
 speech. I would have virtue look out of the 
 eye, no less apparently than love does in the 
 sight of the beloved. I would have honesty 
 and sincerity so incorporated with the consti- 
 tution, that it should be discoverable by the 
 senses." 
 
 The Glomes of Gkeece and Rome 
 
 Next on my list I give the name of Homer. 
 How extraordinary is it that so few people 
 nowadays, outside the schools and universities, 
 dream of reading that most glorious of epic 
 poems, the Iliad, and its sequel the Odyssey I 
 Here is the fount of poetry. Here is a poem 
 that has stirred the hearts of heroes to action 
 since the world was young. Homer was the 
 bard of the Greeks (or rather of the Achaians) 
 in the time of all their freshness, when their 
 civilization was in its youth, bound by the 
 rites of a religion which was the most beautiful 
 form of nature-worship, when personal heroism 
 was most lofty, and when man's primeval 
 passions, appetites, and conduct were governed 
 by a healthiness of body and soul and a simple 
 code of moral laws that constituted the state 
 
 30 
 
WHICH MUST BE READ 
 
 into a nursery of noble manhood. Homer 
 was probably unconscious of his own powers. 
 Like Shakespeare, he had that simplicity which 
 comes from highest genius. He did not 
 criticize his age, standing apart from it. He 
 was his age; and all its ideals, its grace of 
 thought, its imaginative religion, its love of 
 beauty and bravery were summed up in him. 
 His poem is a mirror of that old state in which 
 men's manners were not fettered by convention, 
 but in naked freedom. Nature was very much 
 with them. The earth and its fruits, the sky 
 and its mysteries, the air and its terrors spoke 
 to them more nearly than to modern mankind 
 with its artificiality. And men's hearts were 
 more bared to one another, so that the char- 
 acters of Homer are, like those of the Bible, 
 types of man's nature stripped of its outer 
 husk. 
 
 Greatest of Latin, as Homer is greatest of 
 Greek poets — Virgil has deathless renown. 
 His Mneidj though not so dramatic as the 
 Iliad, has a beauty and a charm all its own. It 
 is the charm of exquisite art rather than the 
 cry of nature, of poetry serene, harmonious, 
 and haunting. It has been well said of him 
 by a modern critic (J. W. Mackail): "What 
 Virgil has in a degree that no other poet has 
 ever equalled, is pity; the sense of 'tears in 
 
 31 
 
WHICH MUST BE READ 
 
 things/ to which in the most famous of his 
 single verses (iEneid I, 1462) he has given 
 imperishable expression, and which fills with 
 strange insight and profound emotion those 
 lonely words and pathetic half-lines where he 
 has sounded the depths of beauty and sorrow, 
 of patience and magnanimity, of honor in life 
 and hope beyond death." 
 
 Popular Philosophy 
 
 I will now name a book of far different 
 character and scope, but one full of homely wit 
 and wisdom, that is, iEsop's Fables. Msop 
 lived some six hundred years b. c, but he is 
 another proof that man's nature is very much 
 now as it was long years ago. This Phrygian 
 slave, as he is said to have been, was at home 
 in the animal world. He saw that the beasts 
 of the field possess many of the characteristics 
 of human beings, and in the spirit of satire he 
 let his imagination have free rein, and narrated 
 a number of witty tales in which the lower 
 animals talk and act in much the same way as 
 the lords of creation. Among them are the 
 crafty ones, the simple, the greedy, the treach- 
 erous, the vain-glorious, the miserly and the 
 prodigal; and beneath his animal allegories 
 friend iEsop has many a hard hit at the vices 
 and frailties of human nature. For centuries 
 
 32 
 
 
WHICH MUST BE READ 
 
 the Greeks made the name of iEsop a peg on 
 which to hang any of these popular fables, and 
 what are now included under his name owe their 
 authorship to many sources and ages. They 
 contain the philosophy of the people — shrewd, 
 practical, and broadly humorous. For centu- 
 ries men have laughed at them, quoted them, 
 acted by them. The world without Msop 
 would be very different, and both his humor 
 and his wisdom are as fresh today as on many 
 yesterdays ago. 
 
 The First Essayist 
 
 Michael, Lord of Montaigne, is a more 
 modern worthy, whose work has been the 
 favorite companion of great minds since 
 William Shakespeare conned its pages and Ben 
 Jonson read it with delight. His Essays are 
 the first of their kind, and perhaps the best. 
 They contain the self-revelation of their 
 author. "All the world," he wrote, "may 
 know me by my book, and my book by me." 
 He held, as Pope says, that the noblest study 
 of mankind is man, and this being so, he 
 thought the best way to study man was to 
 study himself. "I dare," he says, "not only 
 speak of myself, but speak alone of myself." 
 And again, "Never man handled subject that 
 he understood better than I mine." "So it is, 
 
 33 
 
WHICH MUST BE READ 
 
 that if any man shall look into these memorials, 
 he will find that I have said all, or indicated 
 all. What I cannot express, the same I point 
 at with my finger; I leave nothing to be 
 desired or divined of me." "A pleasant 
 fantasy this is of mine. Many things I would 
 be loth to tell a particular man, I utter to the 
 whole world; and concerning my most secret 
 thoughts and inward knowledge, I send my 
 dearest friends to a stationer's shop." He is 
 absolutely frank, hiding nothing, exaggerating 
 nothing, telling his virtues and his vices with 
 the same impartial pen. Having leisure, and 
 being taken with the itch of scribbling, he 
 found himself "wholly unprovided of subject; 
 and, void of other matter, I have presented 
 myself unto myself for a subject to write and 
 argument to descant upon. It is the only 
 book in the world of this kind and of a wild 
 extravagant design." The book, however, is 
 much more than an autobiography, and his 
 Essays deal with so many subjects of philosophy, 
 art, and literature, his quaint imaginings 
 explore so many realms of thought, his mind 
 is busied with so many points and problems 
 of life, that his work may be read and re-read 
 with ever fresh delight, and with some mental 
 and moral profit always to be got. His 
 writings were "done into English" by John 
 
 34 
 
WHICH MUST BE READ 
 
 Florio in the reign of Elizabeth, and it is this 
 translation which is most full of homely vigor 
 and the grace of simple speech. 
 
 Elizabethan Genius 
 
 Bacon had not that flashing, brilliant wit of 
 Montaigne. He did not skim lightly over 
 many subjects, suggesting a thought, revealing 
 an inspiration, exploring beyond the boundaries 
 of mere reason, and leading his reader a will- 
 o'-the-wisp dance through the thought-world; 
 but Bacon had a profound genius, with little 
 humor, but a piercing vision for the truth of 
 things. His Essays led men's thoughts into 
 new regions, and the modern world owes not a 
 little of its civilization to his wise and pregnant 
 utterances. His English, too, is stately and 
 sober, simple but severe, clear and concise, 
 so that those who wish to speak and write 
 with grace should study his eloquent periods. 
 
 On the Pilgrim's Way to Culture there must 
 be a long halt when we come to Shakespeare's 
 hospitable gifts. For he has been, and must 
 always be, the one to whom all thinking minds 
 turn for inspiration, for knowledge, and 
 enchantment. Not to know his characters 
 is to be ignorant of much in human nature, 
 not to have heard his glorious verse is to be 
 deaf to the beauty of language, for he was the 
 
 35 
 
WHICH MUST BE READ 
 
 master-mind who revealed the hidden secrets 
 of the human heart, the poet who crystallized 
 our language into its noblest form and moulded 
 it to the expression of the sublimest thought. 
 
 Remarkable Works 
 
 I must not linger too long on this topic, and 
 as in my next article I want to start from a new 
 sign-post along the Pilgrim's Way, I will 
 conclude with a brief mention of other books 
 of vast influence upon mankind. 
 
 The Imitation of Christ, by Thomas a Kempis, 
 is a wonderful picture of the perfect Christian 
 life. It is an ideal which no doubt has never 
 been reached by mortal man, but an ideal 
 which points the way to a higher and nobler 
 life than the ordinary slipshod course 'twixt 
 birth and death. Thousands have obtained 
 the deepest solace from the work, thousands 
 have endeavored to base their conduct upon 
 its teaching. Therefore, whether or not we 
 disagree with its doctrine, its writings should 
 be studied with reverence. 
 
 Dante's Divine Comedy breathes out the 
 spirit of medieval idealism, yet today, in this 
 modern world, there are men whose heart- 
 strings are vibrated by the deathless song of the 
 thirteenth century bard as by no other writer 
 of any age or nation. Dante himself is a 
 
 36 
 
WHICH MUST BE READ 
 
 character who stands out of the surrounding 
 blackness of his age with a certain dazzling 
 glamour. But, apart from this, his poem is 
 profoundly impressive to the imagination; 
 and though the lovely melody of the Italian 
 tongue is largely lost in our harder English, 
 in such a translation as Longfellow's (not the 
 most accurate, but the most poetical) the 
 Divine Comedy may be read with infinite 
 delight and with that wondering and reveren- 
 tial awe which is the key-note of its effect. 
 
 The Arabian Nights lifts the curtain to a new 
 realm of imagination, and casts a spell upon 
 the reader, who, once having reveled in the 
 Eastern glow of its pages, never loses the 
 memory of its enchantment, nor quite escapes 
 the haunting glamour of its adventures. Bun- 
 yan's Pilgrim's Progress is another work that 
 will not die. The English people would not be 
 the same had it never been written, and to many 
 a man and woman, since the tinker dreamed his 
 dream, the wonderful allegory has been a solace 
 in the hour of grief and despair, a warning in the 
 hour of temptation, and a guide along the 
 Pilgrim's Way to a Better Land. There is 
 much in the book that is bigoted and anti- 
 quated, but as a whole it still remains a monu- 
 ment of genius. 
 
 37 
 
FOURTH TURN 
 
 The Reading of History 
 
 The Value of Histoky 
 
 The student with any pretension towards 
 self-culture must set apart a fair amount of 
 time to the study of history. Now, there are 
 many young men and women who think there 
 is a good deal of nonsense about this. They 
 don't understand how it can profit them to 
 grub up facts about old kings and queens, 
 statesmen and soldiers, to say nothing of the 
 people who are as dead as door nails (or, as 
 Dickens said, "as dead as coffin nails"), with 
 whom the modern world has no concern. 
 Nevertheless, history must be studied by all 
 who want to be " up-to-date." For what does 
 that rather absurd but much beloved phrase 
 mean? I take it that a person who has the 
 good or bad fortune to live in this present 
 year of grace is only worthy of his age if he 
 realizes in more than a vague manner that he 
 has nineteen centuries of the Christian era 
 behind him, and, still farther back,- countless 
 other eras. If a man does not know something 
 of the lessons painfully worked out during the 
 
 38 
 
READING OF HISTORY 
 
 world's length of life, if he is so ignorant of 
 history that instead of being able to draw upon 
 the accumulated experience of the centuries, 
 he has to blunder through from the beginning 
 with no other experience than his own poor, 
 petty life affords, then he is in no way "up-to- 
 date," in no way a twentieth-century indi- 
 vidual, but must date his existence from the 
 Year 1. 
 
 This I think is the true value of history. 
 It enables us to regard modern problems with 
 eyes that look backward as well as forward. 
 This is how many would-be reformers and so- 
 called politicians go hopelessly wrong. They 
 don't know their history. They launch out into 
 schemes, build up fine theories, institute far- 
 reaching measures, which, had they but 
 studied the annals of other ages, they would 
 know to be futile or dangerous, because they 
 run counter to human nature, to the laws of 
 economic history, or to a nation's inherited 
 character. 
 
 This is not all that is to be got from the study 
 of history. It is a great source of strength in 
 the building of character, and not only strength, 
 but breadth and refinement. A man is so 
 hopelessly narrow if he is ignorant of history! 
 He is like a horse in blinkers, looking only 
 straight forward and seeing neither to right 
 
 39 
 
READING OF HISTORY 
 
 nor left. He is like a country bumpkin, be- 
 fore the reign of newspapers, who with his back 
 to the town pump laid down the law upon 
 life in general and the town in particular. 
 
 History is the interpreter of many phases of 
 modern life that otherwise are hidden and have 
 no meaning. It gives interest to much that 
 would otherwise be dull, and throws a glamour 
 of romance over much that would be common- 
 place. The student of history has his eyes 
 opened to a thousand little details of everyday 
 life which go unnoticed by the uninitiated, but 
 each of which to him suggests a delightful train 
 of thought, stretching from now backward to 
 past ages. The name of a street furnishes 
 him with a text for a mental sermon, for it 
 tells him perhaps that here (as at Giltspur 
 Street, London) rode knights to the tourney 
 in the smooth field (or Smithfield) in the age of 
 chivalry. The names over the shop-doors 
 remind him perhaps (as the French names at 
 Canterbury) that here was a colony of thriving, 
 skilful Huguenots, whom a silly king drove 
 out of his country by a silly edict that sent his 
 best men to a foreign foe. Walking over a 
 field that is called Athelney he remembers that 
 a certain king came to hide here during the 
 dark days of his reign, and made it a strong- 
 hold, from which he issued at length to defeat 
 
 40 
 
READING OF HISTORY 
 
 his country's enemies. A paragraph in a 
 newspaper, telling how a bailiff seized all a 
 debtor's goods but his tools, brings his mind 
 back to a certain clause in Magna Charta 
 which says that a man shall not be deprived 
 of his means of livelihood nor of his implements 
 of husbandry. 
 
 The Education of Patriotism 
 
 History is the best cultivator of true patriot- 
 ism, for if we read of the long struggles by which 
 the people had to establish their rights, when 
 we realize that the liberties we now enjoy, and 
 perhaps prize so lightly, cost the life's-blood of 
 heroes and martyrs; when we remember the 
 brave deeds done on American soil, the great 
 hearts that have beat in our country's cause, 
 the noble men and women who have lived and 
 worked to make the nation sure — we feel a 
 pride of race that has no meanness; and, if 
 we have a spark of native fire, we make a secret 
 resolution, not to let that name be dragged in 
 the dirt of infamy. 
 
 And history will temper this patriotism with 
 a restraining influence, bidding us reverence 
 the traditions of other nations, teaching us that 
 patriotism should not be narrowing, and provin- 
 cial, but should go hand in hand with the 
 world-wide fellowship of common charity, not 
 
 dl 
 
READING OF HISTORY 
 
 judging every nation by our own standard, nor 
 thinking that because a thing is American it is 
 right, because it is foreign it is wrong, but 
 rather giving us the desire to learn and profit 
 from all that is best among other people in 
 other lands, and to stamp out all that compares 
 unfavorably in our owri national character. 
 
 Apart from all this there is in history a 
 source of immeasurable pleasure, of pure 
 enjoyment, which none will realize but those 
 who have delved into the annals of the past, 
 who have let their imaginations roam in a 
 certain period of history, who have become 
 familiar with old-time characters, and lingered 
 longingly over old-time speech, who, for no 
 purely practical purpose, have built up in their 
 minds a complete picture of the age, and taken 
 fresh delight in hunting up every fact that will 
 add a new detail to their knowledge. This 
 kind of study, of course, may only be for those 
 who have the leisure to pursue it; and for those 
 who cannot linger over details, but must cover 
 a wide ground speedily, I will now give a few 
 general hints. 
 
 American History 
 
 Of course a student should begin by getting a 
 knowledge of his own country's history, and 
 there are many interesting volumes to draw 
 
 42 
 
READING OF HISTORY 
 
 upon, from Washington Irving's fanciful His- 
 tory of New York to the serious works of 
 Prescott, Motley, Bancroft, Parkman, Fiske, 
 John Bach McMaster and Woodrow Wilson. 
 It is a good plan for the student to take up 
 certain epochs and phases of history and to 
 study them separately, but he must never lose 
 sight of the fact that there is an unbroken 
 continuity of history and that no one may say 
 here began and there ended a certain historical 
 period. 
 
 English History 
 
 American history naturally leads back into 
 English history, and as an elementary book, 
 but one nevertheless which shows the glamour 
 of history and teaches the intimate connection 
 which the modern world has with the past, I 
 recommend H. O. Arnold-Foster's History of 
 England. John Richard Green's Short History 
 of the English People is a work that should be 
 read very early in one's historical course. It 
 gets rid of that pernicious idea that history 
 merely deals with kings and battles, with the 
 bang of the big drum, and the record of glorious 
 victories mingled with a few distressing defeats. 
 Green traces the development of the people, 
 and their gradual emancipation from barbarism 
 to feudalism, from feudalism to freedom, telling 
 
 43 
 
READING OF HISTORY 
 
 in vivid chapters that have all the glow of 
 romance the story of great movements, such as 
 the struggle between Church and Crown, the 
 rise of Parliament, and the growth of commerce. 
 Macaulay and Froude are historians who wrote 
 with a pen dipped in glowing colors, and for 
 this reason they must be read with caution, the 
 student keeping his judgment in check, nor 
 allowing it to be carried away by the prejudice 
 of the writers. Nevertheless, these two I have 
 named, by their fire, their enthusiasm, their 
 wonderful style, bring forth that infinite charm 
 of history which throws a spell over the mind 
 and leads one on to further study. 
 
 Woeld-wide History 
 
 Too much time should not be given to the 
 history of the United States and Britain, the 
 object of the student being to get a broad and 
 comprehensive survey of every country and 
 every age. It is necessary to get away from 
 the habit of regarding one's country as the 
 center of the universe, by studying the rise of 
 new nations with new ideals and new-born 
 energy. The student should take the history of 
 the world on broad lines, tracing the rise and fall 
 of empires, the intermingling of races and their 
 division into nations, the great invasions from 
 east to west, the gradual emergence from 
 
 44 
 
READING OF HISTORY 
 
 barbarism to civilization, the great centers of 
 the world's trades, the early republics and 
 commonwealths, thestory of ancient Greece and 
 Rome, of medieval Venice, of modern Europe, 
 of the old-world East and the new-world West. 
 
 The Old Chronicleks 
 
 I always advocate that students of history 
 should do some reading of original authorities. 
 For instance, the brief and terse narrative of 
 the Saxon Chronicles is deeply interesting as 
 being the actual contemporary record of the 
 events occurring during the reigns of the 
 Saxon kings. The Chronicle of Ingulph, 
 though partly discredited, contains much that 
 is authentic and valuable, and narrates in a 
 graphic and detailed manner one of the most 
 splendid though almost forgotten episodes of 
 early English history, the last stand of Earl 
 Algar and a band of Saxon nobles against the 
 overwhelming hordes of Danes. Walsingham 
 is the best authority for the period of the Black 
 Death and Peasants' War and the Chronicles 
 of Holinshed (compiled by various writers) were 
 the source from which Shakespeare learned 
 all his history and the authorities he followed 
 with absolute fidelity in his great historical 
 plays, from King John to Henry VIII. Frois- 
 sart, too, is worth reading diligently, and to 
 
 45 
 
READING OF HISTORY 
 
 study his writings is pure enjoyment, for he was, 
 par excellence, the chronicler of chivalry, and 
 his pages are aglow with daring deeds, of 
 gallant tourneys, of hard-fought skirmishes and 
 long-resisted sieges, of sorties and encounters 
 in which the flowers of knighthood displayed 
 their prowess, when such sturdy war-dogs as 
 Chandos and Talbot on the one side faced 
 such doughty champions as Du Guesclin and 
 Montmorency on the other. 
 
 Economic History 
 
 If students have time to devote to this 
 subject, there is a valuable and fascinating 
 field of study to be pursued in economic 
 history. It was Thorold Rogers who first 
 directed historians to this important branch 
 of their science. His great work, The History 
 of Agriculture and Prices, and his Economic 
 Interpretation of History, paved the way for a 
 new method of investigation which would 
 throw much light upon the most interesting 
 periods of history. Economic history deals 
 with subjects which to some may appear at 
 first sight unworthy of attention from histori- 
 ans, the laws relating to food and material 
 welfare, the fluctuations of national resources, 
 and the supply and demand of national commod- 
 ities. Yet such investigation is most valuable 
 
 46 
 
READING OF HISTORY 
 
 in the interpretation of the forces underlying 
 great epochs or incidents of history; and in the 
 development or decline of agriculture and 
 industry, one may realize most clearly the 
 absolute continuity of history and the causes 
 which contribute to the power or weakness, the 
 prosperity or downfall of nations. 
 
 Finally, I would say that to stimulate the 
 imagination and to appreciate to the full the 
 delight of getting in touch with the past, 
 frequent visits to museums and libraries are 
 very necessary, so that one may actually see 
 with one's own eyes the arms and armor, the 
 domestic utensils and ornaments, the coins, 
 dresses, and documents which were handled 
 by the men and women of long ago. In the 
 same way visits to historic buildings and places 
 impress upon one's mind the actuality of the 
 things about which one has been reading, and 
 build up in one's imagination a true picture 
 of the past. Helpful also to a high degree are 
 the collections of portraits in our great galler- 
 ies, where one may study the " living images" 
 of the men and women who played big parts 
 in our country's history. To the student who 
 studies history in such a way, using his intelli- 
 gence, his imagination and his judgment, it is 
 a subject of life-long charm and of immeasur- 
 able value in the direction of true culture. 
 
 47 
 
FIFTH TURN 
 The Highway of English Literature 
 
 The wayfarer who sets out on the journey 
 to culture must realize that it is a long road, 
 and not to be traversed at post haste. But 
 I warrant there are few ways so pleasant, or so 
 fragrant with choice flowers, as the Highway 
 of English Literature. And those who walk 
 there shall meet companions who will become 
 life-long friends, men and women of golden 
 speech, and thoughts that like the morning 
 sun reveal the beauty of nature, and pierce the 
 mists that conceal the wonders and the glories 
 of God and man. 
 
 English literature should be studied not in 
 parts, disconnected, fragmentary, but as one 
 great whole, having its beginnings in the first 
 minstrel notes of Saxon singers, getting strength 
 and volume as the ages pass, one generation 
 inspired by its forerunner, and itself inspiring 
 that which follows; embodying the spirit of 
 the time, and passing from one phase of 
 thought to another phase evolved from it — 
 the sober, staid Saxon merging into the more 
 
 48 
 
ENGLISH LITERATURE 
 
 flexible, nervous English; and crystallizing 
 into imperishable language the wisdom learned 
 by a nation's lessons in life, by a nation's 
 groping into the mysteries of life, purged and 
 transfused through the travailing of soul of the 
 nation's singers and writers. 
 
 The Earliest Writers 
 
 Let us start with Cadmon, the first Saxon 
 singer, whose songs have come down to us 
 through Time — he, the farm-hand of Whitby, 
 who was shamed before his fellows because at 
 the board, when the harp was handed round, 
 alone of all the company he knew no songs of 
 Thor and Wodin, those old pagan gods who 
 still kept their places in the hearts of his 
 countrymen, though they professed the faith 
 of Christ. In the stable that night, where he 
 kept watch, his thoughts turned to the glory 
 of the true God, and in his heart the thought 
 came to him that he perhaps could sing a song 
 of praise to the Creator of all things. So, 
 saying no word to anyone, he put into verse 
 those Bible stories told him by the Abbess 
 Hilda and her students; and when at length, 
 half-ashamed and wholly doubting, he recited 
 his poem of the "Creation of the World," those 
 who heard him hailed him as a man who had 
 received a gift of song from God, and the 
 
 49 
 
ENGLISH LITERATURE 
 
 Abbess Hilda invited him to live in the religious 
 house, where his time might be well spent in 
 singing still further of the Bible story. Very- 
 grand and stately is Csedmon's poem, and 
 though few may understand it in its old Saxon, 
 there are plain English renderings which all 
 may read and enjoy. After Caedmon came 
 Bede, called the Venerable, who spent his life 
 in the Monastery of Jarrow, and there acquired 
 a great fame as a teacher, so that from all parts 
 of the kingdom came scholars to sit at his feet, 
 eager to learn about the laws of Nature and 
 the history of the world. Bede delved deep 
 into Latin literature, which was then the key to 
 knowledge, and he added to his learning a keen 
 observation of the world as he found it. He 
 it was who compiled the first English text-book 
 of natural science; but the greatest of his 
 works was his Ecclesiastical History of the 
 English People, which was in reality the first 
 History of England. This great writer was 
 followed by Aldhelm, who wrote sacred songs, 
 and sang them to his harping on bridges and in 
 public ways, so that the people should stop to 
 listen and get "health to their minds." Greater 
 than he was Alfred, who translated many 
 Latin books into the English (or Saxon) tongue, 
 among others being the work of Boethius, The 
 Consolations of Philosophy. 
 
 50 
 
ENGLISH LITERATURE 
 
 The Age of Chaucer 
 
 Geoffrey Chaucer was one of the first writers 
 of English after it had emerged from the rugged 
 but virile Saxon, and had taken to itself a new 
 vocabulary and a new grace from the Norman 
 French. Chaucer was a type of all that was 
 best in the England of that day, an open-eyed, 
 hearty, cheerful soul, with a hatred of sham 
 and cant, and a love of manliness, and of Dame 
 Nature who breeds such manliness. His quick 
 eyes took in all the foibles of the time, and if 
 we would know how our fourteenth-century 
 forefathers thought and talked and worked, 
 if we would roam in that medieval world where 
 romance jostled with coarse commonplace, 
 and high ideals rubbed shoulders with low 
 manners, when chivalry was next-door neigh- 
 bor to knavery, and when human nature was 
 much as it is now, save that there were less 
 checks upon the hand and tongue, and civiliza- 
 tion was nearer to semi-barbarism — then read 
 the Canterbury Tales, which reflect a true 
 image of the time in all its details. Chaucer, 
 though incomparable, was not the only poet 
 of his age; and William Langland, in his Vision 
 of Piers Plowman, upheld the honors of the 
 English tongue, and left a work of true and 
 pregnant genius. John Wyclif, who also 
 lived at this time, did for English prose what 
 
 51 
 
ENGLISH LITERATURE 
 
 Chaucer had done for English poetry, and 
 students would do well to read some of his 
 sober, stately writing, which is the precursor of 
 the wonderful grandeur of sound and rhythm, 
 known to all of us in the English Bible. Sir 
 John Mandeville is another great prose writer 
 of this time, and his famous volume of Travels, 
 which was the book best beloved by the readers 
 of those days, is an excellent example of old 
 English. 
 
 Sir Thomas More's beautiful dream of 
 Utopia is the best prose work of the early 
 sixteenth century, and it is a pleasant thing 
 to think that it is as popular today as when it 
 first delighted and astonished the reading 
 world. 
 
 The Elizabethan Period 
 
 The Elizabethan Period was the Golden Age 
 of English Literature. All students should 
 read Shakespeare's Predecessors, by J. A. 
 Symonds, in which one may learn how even 
 Shakespeare himself , great sun amidst attendant 
 stars, did not rise in solitary glory, but gained 
 inspiration, knowledge, method, from men who 
 had come before him, and left to him their 
 heritage of work. His work rises immeasurably 
 higher than the highest among a cluster of 
 contemporary giants, and there is no need for 
 
 52 
 
ENGLISH LITERATURE 
 
 me to add more words here. But there are 
 other splendid names, which glitter in a noble 
 galaxy — among them Spenser, whose Faerie 
 Queene is the most beautiful allegory in 
 medieval literature — men who made the Eng- 
 lish stage the school of thought, manners and 
 imagination, where the people went to see 
 popular foibles parodied, to see the nation's 
 history enacted on the narrow compass of a 
 stage, and the many phases of human nature 
 depicted for their entertainment and instruc- 
 tion. Here, too, the sonorous roll of blank verse 
 tuned their ears to the witchery of rhythm, and 
 art, improving on nature, lifted men's hearts to 
 higher ideals, and broadened them with wider 
 aims. 
 
 The Elizabethan Age was quick with life. 
 The veil had but shortly been lifted from the 
 New World, and the spirit of adventure, of 
 conquest and daring breathed fresh health into 
 the souls of men. England was in a lusty 
 young manhood. Her children had wandered 
 far into new seas, and brought back tales of 
 wondrous lands, of wealth and beauty past the 
 bounds of thought. Life's everyday world was 
 tinged with the glamour of romance, and hearts 
 beat high with great ambitions, while minds 
 were filled with bright fantastic dreams. All 
 this is reflected in the literature of the period. 
 
 53 
 
ENGLISH LITERATURE 
 
 In Raleigh's stirring prose and tuneful lyrics, 
 in Sydney's pastorals, in Wotton's love-songs, 
 in Wyatt's and Surrey's sonnets, in the plays of 
 the Elizabethan dramatists, in the stories of 
 Lodge and Lyly, in Bacon's new philosophy, 
 this spirit of the New World of romance and 
 fantasy and gallantry animates and pervades 
 all their work, and gives it an atmosphere of 
 its own to which no other period of English 
 literature may be likened. 
 
 Sttjakt and Hanover 
 
 In the following reigns of James and Charles 
 the glories of Elizabeth were not maintained, 
 though there are a few sweet singers, such as 
 pious George Herbert whose quaint and pure 
 thoughts are like some bubbling fountain in a 
 cloister garden. Robert Herrick, too, has left 
 us some ballads which have perennial charm 
 and sweetness, while gay and profligate Sedley 
 and Rochester have given us some gallant 
 love-songs that reveal perhaps more sentiment 
 than true passion. In the seventeenth century 
 one great name marks a new epoch in literature, 
 the name of John Milton, whose mighty verse 
 rolls sonorous and solemn like glorious organ 
 music, and whose sublime thoughts lift one a 
 little nearer to the heavens, a little farther 
 from the earth. His mind was steeped in 
 
 54 
 
ENGLISH LITERATURE 
 
 classic lore, and he first gave to the English 
 language the chaste and chiseled grace of 
 Latin verse. Nothing in our literature is more 
 beautiful than his elegiac poem of Lycidas, 
 nothing more sadly sweet than his II Penseroso, 
 nothing more joyous than L' Allegro, nothing 
 more sublime than his immortal epic Paradise 
 Lost. 
 
 Jeremy Taylor's Holy Living and Holy 
 Dying were great prose works that bring 
 English literature to the opening of the eight- 
 eenth century. During an almost barren 
 period Dryden was the one great poet, and 
 though he had not that divine afflatus which is 
 the spirit of high poetic genius, he had stately 
 polished grace, a classic culture, and restrained 
 fancy, which gives a worthy rank to his work 
 in the great body of our literature. In this 
 century was the rise of the English topical 
 essay, the forerunner of the novel. Steele and 
 Addison entered into a partnership that 
 brought delight into every cultured English 
 home, and among their bright, witty and 
 eloquent papers in The Spectator and The 
 Tatler there are many worthy of being learned 
 by heart for their purity of style and elegance 
 of thought. To this period belong Swift's 
 masterpiece of imagination and satire, Gulliver's 
 Travels, and Goldsmith's beautiful, wise, and 
 
 55 
 
ENGLISH LITERATURE 
 
 humorous prose drama of English home life, 
 The Vicar of Wakefield, as well as his delightful 
 poems and plays, The Deserted Village, The 
 Traveller, The Good-Natured Man, and the still 
 popular She Stoops to Conquer. Nor must I 
 forget to mention the world-famous Robinson 
 Crusoe of Daniel Defoe. 
 
 In the middle of the eighteenth century 
 Richardson wrote his novel Pamela, which, in 
 spite of its sickly sentiment, gave the reading 
 public a craving for fiction dealing with contem- 
 porary manners and life. Fielding eclipsed 
 Richardson by his Joseph Andrews and Tom 
 Jones, two of the greatest masterpieces of 
 literature, though tainted by the contemporary 
 coarseness of humor and freedom of speech. 
 Then Smollett came into the field with Roderick 
 Random and Peregrine Pickle, and these three 
 novelists were the originals from which Thack- 
 eray, Lytton, Dickens, and many authors of 
 lesser note drew their inspiration, and which 
 they made their models. 
 
 Alexander Pope 
 
 In poetry the early eighteenth century was a 
 period of stagnation, in which all freedom of 
 fancy and naturalness of language were 
 blighted by the artificial influence of the French 
 school. The man who led the way back to 
 
 56 
 
ENGLISH LITERATURE 
 
 nature was Alexander Pope, who learned his 
 vocation so soon that he said of himself — 
 
 "As yet a child, nor yet a fool to fame, 
 I lisped in numbers, for the numbers came." 
 
 Spenser's Faerie Queene was his constant 
 companion as a child, and while yet a boy he 
 made imitations of this and other early English 
 poets. In his great poem, the Essay on 
 Criticism, written in 1709, he attacked the 
 deadening influence of French conventionality, 
 declaring that Nature is the mistress of poetry 
 and that 
 
 "Life, force and beauty must to all impart 
 At once the source and end, and test of art." 
 
 Among his most famous works are the Essay on 
 Man and his translation of the Iliad and Odys- 
 sey of Homer. There are few poets who had a 
 greater genius for putting a pregnant thought 
 into terse and lucid language, and, as a conse- 
 quence, there are few from whom so many 
 quotations have grown into the language. 
 
 Burns, Johnson, and Later Writers 
 
 Towards the end of that century came Robert 
 Burns, who, like Shakespeare, "warbled his 
 native wood notes wild," and whose songs 
 breathe forth the very spirit of nature. Wil- 
 
 57 
 
ENGLISH LITERATURE 
 
 Ham Cowper also has an honorable niche in the 
 "poet's corner" as author (among other good 
 works) of that dear soul John Gilpin, who, as 
 Johnson said of Garrick, added to the gaiety 
 of nations. 
 
 Dr. Johnson, who wielded a profound 
 influence upon his time, is notable nowadays 
 not so much for his own writings, which though 
 sonorous, eloquent, and learned, have not 
 much living interest, but for his conversations 
 as recorded by Boswell, his faithful friend and 
 scribe. 
 
 In the nineteenth century we reach another 
 Golden Age of poetry, so rich in melodious 
 singers that to enumerate their names would 
 fill many lines, and among whom I will now only 
 mention Sir Walter Scott, Samuel Coleridge, 
 William Wordsworth, Thomas Campbell, 
 Thomas Moore, Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe 
 Shelley, John Keats, Thomas Hood, Robert 
 Browning and his wife, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, 
 and Alfred Tennyson. 
 
 To this period belongs also the luxuriance 
 of the English novel, which I am taking as a 
 special subject later on in this book. 
 
 LITERATURE IN AMERICA 
 
 The eighteenth century in America saw the 
 works of Jonathan Edwards, the Journal of 
 
 58 
 
ENGLISH LITERATURE 
 
 the Quaker, John Woolman, which delighted 
 Charles Lamb, and the Autobiography of 
 Benjamin Franklin, a better representative 
 of the prevalent temper of the colonies, filled 
 with shrewd wisdom. 
 
 Early in the nineteenth century appeared 
 the first works of Washington Irving, who has 
 been called the " Father of American Litera- 
 ture," and who was the first American writer 
 to receive serious recognition abroad. To 
 those who enjoy a finished style and lambent, 
 genial humor, Irving is still one of the most 
 delightful of all essayists. The Spy, first of the 
 novels of James Fenimore Cooper, was pub- 
 lished in 1821. It laid the foundation for a 
 new literature for the new country by showing 
 the romance which attaches to the pioneer and 
 to the Indian. Cooper, however, belonged 
 in spirit more to the eighteenth century than 
 to the nineteenth, and it was not until about 
 1838 that American literature came into its 
 own. Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, Poe, 
 Longfellow, Lowell and Holmes all belong 
 to this brilliant period, while the latter half of 
 the nineteenth century saw the work of the 
 masterful poet of democracy, Walt Whitman, 
 and of at least two world-famous novelists — 
 Henry James and William Dean Howells. 
 Samuel L. Clemens (Mark Twain) holds a 
 
 59 
 
ENGLISH LITERATURE 
 
 unique and unquestioned place as a humorist, 
 and there are many others worthy to appear 
 on the bookshelves of him who would know 
 and love the best in literature. 
 
 60 
 
SIXTH TURN 
 
 The Influence of Poetry 
 
 I am afraid that the love of poetry is losing 
 its grip of people's hearts, and that the ten- 
 dency nowadays is to look upon our great 
 heritage of national verse as something quite 
 suitable for school misses and young curates, 
 but wholly unprofitable and trifling for men and 
 women who take life seriously. There are, of 
 course, a certain number of quiet souls who go 
 to poetry for recreation and consolation; there 
 are also a number of literary persons who study 
 the poets in a professional way; but I think it 
 is a fact, at least so far as my own observation 
 goes, that among the great bulk of people there 
 are few who read, and less who learn by heart, 
 the lovely thoughts enshrined in lovely lan- 
 guage by the poets of our own and other 
 nations. 
 
 The Groves that the Muse Haunts 
 
 And yet now, above all times, it is fitting 
 that we should read poetry, and learn poetry. 
 For in the toil and stress of the modern world 
 men's thoughts and aspirations are apt to be 
 wholly sordid, or at least wholly material. 
 
 61 
 
INFLUENCE OF POETRY 
 
 The competition of the time is keen, and, in the 
 struggle, men and women have little opportun- 
 ity for cultivating the softer, more imaginative 
 side of nature. Then, again, life has become 
 more complicated — not with deeper problems, 
 but rather with a myriad trivialities of time- 
 filling and time-wasting. Nowadays, too, we 
 are more gregarious. The rush from the land 
 to the great cities — dense hives of human beings 
 brought into intimate contact by work and 
 pleasure — has taken away a good deal of the 
 souPs loneliness, and therefore a good deal of 
 its poetry. For true poetry is rarely found in 
 a crowd. The poet must retire apart to 
 commune with his own soul, to gaze from afar 
 at human strife. In the drawing-room filled 
 with the lightest of chatter, in the restaurant 
 with the loud banter of business men, in the 
 music-hall with the swish of ballet girls' skirts 
 and the snigger of light-headed fops, the Muse 
 of Poetry does not come, but enters only the 
 silent room where the solitary student sits 
 at his desk, or whispers in the ear of him who 
 paces the lonely path with but earth and sky 
 and wind beneath, above, and around him. 
 
 The Song and the Deed 
 
 The training of the modern world tends to 
 make us hard, practical, skeptical of all senti- 
 
 62 
 
INFLUENCE OF POETRY 
 
 ment, still more of sentiment bordering on 
 emotion. There has come a spirit of cynicism 
 over the world, something too of the old 
 stoicism, which prefers to shrug shoulders at 
 evil and virtue, to laugh at ideals, to jeer at 
 beauty of thought and phrase. "A fig for 
 beauty," says our friend the "man in the 
 street," "give me utility. We can't make the 
 nation pay on principles of poetry and such like 
 humbug." 
 
 And yet the man is wrong. It is precisely 
 on the principles of national poetry that great 
 nations have been built up. For the poets 
 have been the source of inspiration that has 
 filled the hearts of the people. Their words 
 have nerved the people's right arms to do the 
 work of civilization and nation-building. By 
 the enthusiasm kindled through their fiery 
 eloquence the people have pressed onward, by 
 the laws laid down in ballad and lyric the 
 people have moulded their characters, by the 
 sentiment sung by the nation's singers the 
 people have tuned their hearts. Poetry is 
 indeed the voice of the nation's heart. The 
 poetry of every age sums up the spirit of that 
 age. Here we find the wisdom, the philosophy, 
 and the prophecy of the time. In our national 
 poetry we find our national ideals. 
 
 Does not gay Richard Lovelace, in his love- 
 
 63 
 
INFLUENCE OF POETRY 
 
 song to Lucasta, give us the ideals of love and 
 honor which governed the chivalry of his age 
 and nation? 
 
 "Tell me not, sweet, I am unkind, 
 That from the nunnery 
 Of thy chaste breast and quiet mind 
 To war and arms I fly. 
 
 True, a new mistress now I chase — 
 
 The first foe in the field; 
 And with a stronger love embrace 
 
 A sword, a horse, a shield. 
 
 Yet this inconstancy is such 
 
 As you, too, shall adore: 
 I could not love thee, dear, so much, 
 
 Loved I not honor more." 
 
 There in those two lines is expressed the 
 ideal of an age when a knight had to tear 
 himself from love's embraces to the sterner 
 duties of the field. 
 
 Our National Heritage 
 
 So if we would know what animated our 
 forefathers, from what standpoint they looked 
 at life and the duties of life, we must go to the 
 poetry which they have left as a heritage. 
 Here is enshrined the wisdom of our race— a 
 wisdom learned through hard toil, hard 
 fighting, hard suffering; a wisdom worked out 
 
 64 
 
INFLUENCE OF POETRY 
 
 by a people's accumulated experience, passing 
 through the glowing heart of one ardent soul, 
 crystallized into language on the poet's lips. 
 
 More than mere worldly wisdom do we find 
 in poetry. The poets have been the inter- 
 preters between man and nature, between the 
 world visible and invisible. Nowadays most 
 people think they need no interpreter, that 
 life has no riddle, and that all is as plain as a 
 pikestaff. And yet it is because their eyes 
 are too dull to see more than the material 
 world around them, because they do not stop 
 to think of the secrets, the mysteries, the 
 eternal problems that confront us every day. 
 
 But to the poet everything in nature is a 
 cause of wonderment and study. Life itself 
 is a great secret which he must forever explore. 
 The human heart with all its passions is an 
 instrument on which he plays every chord; 
 with an ever-varying harmony he follows the 
 human brain as it soars into flights beyond the 
 realm of mere thought; and so, 
 
 "The poet's eye, in a fine frenzy rolling, 
 Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to 
 
 heaven: 
 And, as imagination bodies forth 
 The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen 
 Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing 
 A local habitation and a name." 
 
 65 
 
INFLUENCE OF POETRY 
 
 The Things that Matter 
 
 In poetry we find the broad, elemental 
 principles of life. The trivial, the artificial, the 
 conventional, the whole atmosphere of modern 
 shoddiness, vulgarity and superficiality, is 
 stripped off, and the naked soul remains 
 unfettered in the nature-world. For this 
 reason is it so necessary that we men and 
 women of today should drink deep at the 
 fount of poetry. For we must not fritter away 
 our souls upon things of no account. We must 
 get face to face with the problems of life, and 
 wrestle out their solution at all costs. We 
 must — unless we would descend in the scale — 
 find out the things that matter and the things 
 that don't matter. ^It does not matter, for 
 instance, if I gain the whole world, and lose 
 my own soul. It does not matter if I know 
 all the science of mathematics, and yet am 
 ignorant of my own heart. It does not matter 
 if I lead my nation to world supremacy, if it is 
 at the cost of its honor and moral sense. But 
 the things that do matter, these we learn in 
 poetry. We find the meaning of Life and 
 Death, of Truth and Love, of Hope and 
 Joy and Despair, of beauty in man and 
 nature, of all those whisperings of another 
 world which lead men on with courage and 
 hope through the fight of life to the crown 
 
 66 
 
INFLUENCE OF POETRY 
 
 of peace. All this have poets told, for they 
 are the Truth-tellers. 
 
 The Spirit of Poetry 
 
 Apart from the high philosophy which those 
 who know how may learn from poetry, we may 
 all get illimitable benefit from the reading of 
 the poets. Poetry gives the sweetness and 
 tenderness to one's character without which 
 one is hard and unsympathetic. It teaches 
 charity and simplicity, faith and honor, good 
 fellowship and friendliness, love of beauty in 
 form and sound and color, in character and 
 speech. From poetry we may learn to be 
 contented with little, to prefer a peaceful 
 mind to the uncertainty of wealth and fame. 
 What does old Sir Henry Wotton say? 
 
 "How happy is he born and taught 
 That serveth not another's will, 
 Whose armor is his honest thought 
 And simple truth his utmost skill! 
 
 Whose passions not his masters are, 
 Whose soul is still prepared for death, 
 
 Untied unto the world by care 
 Of public fame or private breath. 
 
 Who envies none that chance doth raise, 
 
 Nor vice hath ever understood; 
 How deepest wounds are given by praise, 
 
 Nor rules of state, but rules of God. 
 
 67 
 
INFLUENCE OF POETRY 
 
 Who hath his life from rumors freed, 
 Whose conscience is his strong retreat, 
 
 Whose state can neither flatterers feed 
 Nor ruin make oppressors great. 
 
 Who God doth late and early pray 
 More of His grace than gifts to lend, 
 
 Who entertains the harmless day 
 With a religious book or friend. 
 
 This man is freed from servile bonds 
 Of hope to rise or fear to fall; 
 
 Lord of himself though not of lands, 
 And having nothing, yet hath all." 
 
 After a day's work, perhaps in uncongenial 
 surroundings, perhaps among people of vulgar 
 thoughts and vulgar speech, busy with work 
 that has in it nothing nobler, purer, or more 
 elevating than that it is work, it is an excellent 
 thing to read a little poetry of an evening, and 
 to refresh one's jaded soul with the melody 
 of rhythmic language wedded to bright fancy. 
 The dust of the day falls from one's spirit, 
 cleansed in the pure stream of poetry; and all 
 things commonplace, sordid, trivial, ugly, are 
 left behind for the realm of thoughts ethereal, 
 ennobling, solacious. 
 
 68 
 
INFLUENCE OF POETRY 
 
 "Ever let the Fancy roam, 
 Pleasure never is at home. 
 At a touch sweet pleasure melteth 
 Like to bubbles when rain pelteth; 
 
 Then let wing&d Fancy wander, 
 
 Though the thought still spread beyond her. 
 
 Open wide the mind's cage-door, 
 
 She'll dart forth, and cloudward soar!" 
 
 69 
 
SEVENTH TURN 
 
 The Education of Art 
 
 The Origin of Art 
 
 Art is as necessary to mankind as social laws 
 or physical requirements. In the very earliest 
 stages of man's progress to civilization, in the 
 most primitive races now existing in the world, 
 art is to be found in its origin and elementary 
 state. It is in its simplest form the outward 
 expression of the soul's emotions. Painting, 
 sculpture, singing, music of every kind, dancing, 
 and even a certain kind of literature, first had 
 their use in relieving the pent-up feelings of 
 man, according as he was actuated by love, 
 joy, fear, or religious emotion. Love was the 
 greatest charm that led men to cultivate all 
 forms of what we call art. The desire to please 
 the women-folk was the spur that drove the 
 first artists onward in search of beauty of form 
 and sound and color. We have but to study 
 the habits of birds and beasts to see to what 
 purpose they exercise the art. We shall find 
 that the nightingale, king of carolers, pours 
 out its ecstasy of quivering song to woo the 
 timid listening female in the thicket. We shall 
 
 70 
 
EDUCATION OF ART 
 
 find that the fine plumage of cock-birds 
 exercises much the same influence upon the 
 female breasts of the feathered flirts as a 
 well-cut coat and immaculate trousers do 
 among the ladies of a higher creation, and with 
 more justification. So students of savage 
 tribes find that art is cultivated for the same 
 purpose; and the young chief adorns his black 
 body with artistic tattoo designs, learns the 
 music of the tom-tom, and practices intricate 
 dance-steps (all various kinds of art) in order 
 to win the graces of some dusky bride. Religious 
 emotion stimulates art in a similar and almost 
 as influential a way; the first rude sketches on 
 rocks, the first rough carvings in stone or 
 wood, the first paintings in crude color, being 
 to represent the wild man's conception of the 
 deity or deities, who in some dim way he feels 
 must control the wondrous workings of the 
 world around him. This is not a theory but a 
 scientific fact, and I need not carry the thought 
 further than to explain that as in the earliest 
 stages of humanity art is an expression of every 
 kind of emotion, so as mankind progresses in 
 knowledge and intellect, and refinement of 
 sensation, art also progresses, and, from 
 expressing the great primary and elemental 
 emotions, gives expression now to the highest 
 conceptions, the most delicate and subtle 
 
 71 
 
EDUCATION OF ART 
 
 forms of emotion, and the most various and 
 multitudinous phases of imagination (which is 
 an outcome of emotion) of which the human 
 civilized mind is capable. 
 
 The Influence of Emotion 
 
 Therefore, when this is admitted, it will at 
 once be seen what a powerful influence art 
 must have towards the highest forms of culture. 
 For one of the essential elements of true culture 
 is the education of the mind and the refinement 
 of the mind, so that it shall be in harmony with 
 and respond to the noblest emotions of noble 
 souls. Some people may object to the word 
 emotion, and say, "give me intellect, cold and 
 clear and practical, unbiased by such a false, 
 fickle thing as that." But this is to ignore the 
 attributes of human nature, to leave out of one's 
 calculation the fact that our emotional feelings 
 are the source of all imagination, and of many 
 of the most glorious ideals of beauty that are 
 the light and joy of an otherwise gloomy world. 
 
 The man, therefore, who wishes to gain a 
 broad culture must not by any means ignore 
 art. Fortunate is he if he lives in a town where 
 there is a good art gallery, and wise is he if 
 (unlike too many swine before whom pearls 
 are scattered) he avails himself of it to its full 
 extent. 
 
 72 
 
EDUCATION OF ART 
 
 Painting is, of course, one of the most 
 important branches of art, and the one which 
 requires least special training to appreciate 
 and to be influenced by. 
 
 The Art or North and South 
 
 I will not take up space over the earliest 
 forms of art — Assyrian, Egyptian, etc., which, 
 though interesting to students of archaeology, 
 need not occupy us now. Let us begin with 
 that period of the Middle Ages when painting 
 began to make glorious progress. In the 
 sixteenth century painting was broadly divided 
 into two schools or influences, the Northern 
 and the Southern — the Germans and Dutch 
 being the apostles of the first, and the Italians 
 of the second. From these two influences 
 modern art evolved, and their characteristics 
 were well defined and widely various. Broadly 
 speaking, it was all a question of light. In the 
 South, where the sun's rays always shine with 
 a genial constancy, bright light is an accepted 
 thing, and artists strove indeed to minimize 
 it, or ignored it by concentrating their endeav- 
 ors upon form and simple color schemes, and 
 they let their imagination rove into the realms 
 of fancy unhampered by the desire to vie with 
 the brilliancy of nature in the use of their 
 pigments. But in the North it was different. 
 
 73 
 
EDUCATION OF ART 
 
 There the gloomy skies and the preponderance 
 of indoor life induced the painters to put upon 
 their canvas the most glowing colors and the 
 most skilful effects of light, so that their 
 pictures might be like choice gems for the 
 decoration of the rooms. This was the chief 
 cause of the essentially different characteristics 
 between the Italian and the German and Dutch 
 schools. The Southerners were idealists, 
 expressing great conceptions and imaginative 
 visions ; the Northerners were content to lavish 
 their artistic skill upon reproductions of the 
 domestic scenes and of the homely nature 
 in which they lived. 
 
 The Fiest Oil Painters 
 
 The genius of the Italian painters was suited 
 to the process called fresco, a certain technical 
 manner of mural painting; and in this medium 
 the early masters, Cimabue, Giotto, and, later, 
 Michael Angelo, Raphael, and Leonardo da 
 Vinci produced many great works. It was to 
 two Northern painters that the honor is due 
 of discovering the process called oil-painting — 
 the brothers Hubert and John Van Eyck. They 
 proved how in every way it possessed great 
 advantages over the processes hitherto in 
 vogue, a greater depth, luminosity and variety 
 of color being obtainable, besides the 
 
 74 
 
EDUCATION OF ART 
 
 immensely valuable quality of allowing an 
 almost unlimited means of altering, retouching, 
 and perfecting, instead of the rapidity neces- 
 sary in such a process as fresco. From the two 
 Flemings the secret was carried to Flanders 
 and Italy, and during the first half of the 
 sixteenth century oil painting was firmly 
 established. Raphael adopted it, and his 
 genius showed the marvelous heights of beauty 
 and power which it might be made to express. 
 Bellini was less gifted, but handed down the 
 tradition to Titian, whose sublime genius still 
 lives in works which modern painters study 
 with loving admiration, copy with reverent 
 care, but cannot equal either in perfection of 
 color, in majesty of conception, or consummate 
 mastery of technique. Giorgione is another 
 great name that is one of the glories of the 
 Italian school. The Flemish painter Rubens 
 and the Spanish Velasquez, each in their 
 way, produced paintings of unrivaled power; 
 and the Dutch school, among whom are 
 the renowned names of Teniers, Matsys, 
 Maas, and Peter de Hooch (to mention 
 but a few), excelled in the production 
 of works of art in which mastery of tech- 
 nique was almost as admirable as the 
 soaring imagination of their Italian contem- 
 poraries. 
 
 75 
 
EDUCATION OF ART 
 
 The English School of Painting 
 
 There was practically no English school of 
 painting until the reign of Charles I who was 
 the most gifted royal patron, and who had the 
 good taste and the good sense to attract to 
 his country foreign painters of high repute to 
 be a source of inspiration to national artists. 
 Vandyck was the greatest among them, and 
 they were followed by the brilliant but less 
 worthy painter Sir Peter Lely. Hogarth was 
 the first great original English painter, and 
 he was largely influenced by the Dutch school 
 but worked out his own line and developed 
 his art in his own manner. Sir Joshua Reynolds 
 was a disciple of the Italian school, a painter 
 who believed in tradition and set himself the 
 task of importing and giving to his Englisn 
 models the grace and dignity and glamour that 
 are the characteristics of the school from which 
 he drew his inspiration. Gainsborough believed 
 less in tradition and more in studying direct 
 from nature. He was greater than Reynolds 
 because more truthful. He dki not strive 
 to embellish his portraits with his own fancy, 
 but to draw out from them all that was best, 
 beautiful, and sympathetic in themselves. 
 In the National Gallery of London there is a 
 group of pictures by Gainsborough that are 
 unsurpassed in charm and truthfulness. To 
 
 76 
 
EDUCATION OF ART 
 
 study them is to understand what art means 
 when genius is behind it, and one looks not 
 merely at the outer mask of his models, but into 
 the souls beaming from their eyes. Turner 
 cast aside all rules, all fetters of tradition and 
 conventionality. He was the first of impres- 
 sionists, and strove to put upon his canvas, 
 not the reproduction of things that are, but of 
 things as we see them, or at least, as he saw 
 them. He was not only a painter but a poet, 
 not a realist but an idealist. He could see 
 beauty where others would only see ugliness. 
 He put into his pictures the wonders of light 
 and atmosphere which pass by unnoticed by 
 those who look out of keen but unspiritual eyes. 
 Constable, on the contrary, was content with 
 nature as he found it, and as it was, without 
 putting into it his own spirituality. He loved 
 a homely English scene and painted it with 
 Dutch fidelity, but with a freshness and 
 originality all his own. He founded a school of 
 landscape painters which has had its following 
 of disciples stretching from his time to our own, 
 and the French painters drew their inspiration 
 from him for their own school of rustic art. 
 
 The Pre-Raphaelites 
 
 For a time France became the center of the 
 art world, and British painters went there for 
 
 77 
 
EDUCATION OF ART 
 
 their training. But the famous Pre-Raphaelite 
 Brotherhood, originated by Rossetti under the 
 influence of, though not in partnership with, 
 Ford Madox Brown, rescued British art from 
 a fatal tendency to mere prettiness and mere- 
 tricious flashiness. The Pre-Raphaelites en- 
 deavored to apply to modern painting the 
 principles of the early masters, that is, the 
 principles of truthfulness and fidelity to 
 nature. Madox Brown, Holman Hunt, Ros- 
 setti, Millais, and Burne-Jones, were founders 
 of this new school; and although at the time 
 of its origin they and their art were treated by 
 the most heated abuse from critics, painters, 
 and the public, they were soon joined by 
 numerous brilliant disciples, and exercised a 
 profound influence upon modern art in this 
 country and abroad. Millais himself came 
 to see that to adhere rigidly to all the tenets of 
 the "Brotherhood" was to impose voluntarily 
 limitations upon his genius, and to ignore the 
 lessons of time. He therefore emancipated 
 himself from its fetters, but maintained all 
 that was truest and best in its doctrine. He 
 was followed by other disciples of the " Brother- 
 hood"; but, in spite of its decline, the influence 
 of the Pre-Raphaelite school is still to be seen 
 in the works of many of the best English 
 painters. 
 
 78 
 
EDUCATION OF ART 
 
 Painting in America 
 
 American painting at the present day follows 
 no school, and is infinitely various in its motive 
 and treatment. Outside of the brilliant work 
 of Sargent and Whistler, however, it is in the 
 newer and wider fields of landscape painting 
 and mural decoration that we have done most. 
 Unfortunately we are not as a nation artistic, 
 and there are only a select few who care to 
 spend a leisure hour once or twice a week 
 in the study of pictures, even when a great 
 public gallery containing some of the world's 
 masterpieces stands in their way with open 
 doors. Foreigners come to gaze with awe at 
 the glorious works, while those who possess 
 them as a national heritage, pass by with care- 
 less indifference. 
 
 Pictures are not only a source of immense 
 enjoyment to those who, having eyes, see, but 
 they stimulate the imagination and lead the 
 soul to high realms of spiritual beauty, giving 
 one new ideals, new conceptions of nature, 
 lifting the veil from the mysteries of light and 
 atmosphere, and filling one with the most 
 delicate emotions that exquisite color and 
 divine form give to the man whose mind has 
 been trained to receive them and to respond to 
 them. 
 
 79 
 
EIGHTH TURN 
 
 The Charm of Music 
 
 We have it on the authority of Shakespeare, 
 through the mouth of his character Lorenzo, 
 that 
 
 "The man who hath no music in himself, 
 Nor is not mov'd with concord of sweet sounds, 
 Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils: 
 The motions of his spirit are dull as night, 
 And his affections dark as Erebus: 
 Let no such man be trusted." 
 
 This is no doubt an exaggerated view of the 
 influence of music upon men's character, and 
 I would not advocate, nor would Shakespeare 
 have advocated, in a strictly literal sense, that 
 a man without an ear for music should be tried 
 before a jury of twelve honorable citizens and 
 "taken to the place whence he came and there 
 hanged by the neck till he die." 
 
 Its Psychological Aspect 
 
 Nor can it be said even that music always 
 has an elevating effect upon the character, for 
 it is lamentably true that some of the finest 
 
 80 
 
CHARM OF MUSIC 
 
 musicians have been men and women wholly 
 lacking in moral strength. It must not be 
 thought that music, even of the grandest kind, 
 appeals only to man's intellect and soul. On 
 the contrary, music is primarily sensuous, and 
 stirs the emotions, and even the passions. It 
 satisfies a natural craving for rhythmical 
 sound. We hear it in its first elementary form 
 in the beating of a tom-tom, or the tattoo of a 
 drum, which has a stimulating effect upon the 
 martial ardor of its audience. We may also 
 recognize this inborn delight in rhythm in a 
 little child, who at the sound of a piano-organ, 
 or any instrument, will begin to kick up its 
 little legs in irrepressible sympathy with the 
 notes; and anyone who has lived near a 
 cavalry regiment will often have seen a horse 
 literally dance to the strains of the band. 
 
 It is a mistake to think, as many do, that 
 musicians, when they compose great pieces, 
 are filled with visions of nature in her varying 
 moods, or of triumphant processions, or angelic 
 hosts, and that they endeavor to interpret those 
 soul-inspiring visions by the medium of har- 
 mony. It is true that geniuses like Beethoven 
 and Mendelssohn occasionally used such themes 
 for their compositions, and reproduced some of 
 nature's great scenes; but, generally speaking, 
 when Beethoven composed one of his mag- 
 
 81 
 
CHARM OF MUSIC 
 
 nificent sonatas, or Mendelssohn one of his 
 graceful "songs without words/' he was not 
 rapt in ecstatic visions, but in an ecstasy of 
 sensuous sound, and his soul was moved not by 
 high aspirations and lofty conceptions of 
 righteousness, heroism, or duty, but throbbed 
 with a flood of glorious measured harmony, so 
 satisfying his psychological desire for rhythm, 
 and his material sensibility to sound, that it 
 may have seemed to him as if his soul were 
 lifted to celestial heights. 
 
 In saying this I do not wish to degrade the 
 power and influence of music. On the con- 
 trary, my intention in writing this article is to 
 sum up the sublime influence of music; but I 
 think everyone should realize that it appeals 
 primarily to the senses, and therefore should 
 not expect musicians to be more virtuous or 
 more etherealized than their fellow-men. 
 
 A Universal Harmony 
 
 But music has an infinite power as a means 
 of recreation for the weary mind, and is a 
 source of probably the keenest and purest 
 sensuous enjoyment of any that delights the 
 soul of man. From the bottom of my heart 
 I pity a man or woman whose ears are deaf to 
 music, for they lose one of the greatest means 
 by which one's life may be sweetened. One 
 
 82 
 
CHARM OF MUSIC 
 
 may turn in every mood to music and find 
 sympathy that soothes one or stimulates one 
 at his will. In time of sorrow, when the world 
 weighs heavily and a discord breaks the melody 
 of life, the man who can turn to some little 
 instrument and make it give expression to the 
 cry of pain which would otherwise remain 
 locked in a dumb inarticulate soul, will find 
 some such relief as the pain-racked physical 
 body soothed by a nerve-deadening opiate. 
 And so with joy, seeking expression for its 
 exuberance of emotion. Music will carry away 
 the spirit on a flood of rippling notes that 
 exhilarate the senses and harmonize with one's 
 emotions as nothing else can. But apart 
 from extremes of sorrow and joy, music is an 
 accompaniment to everyday life that mankind 
 could ill spare. The world is full of music, 
 which even though unskilled and inartistic, 
 yet in its spontaneity and in its power of 
 stirring one's sense of harmony, is a source of 
 enjoyment not less great, because for the most 
 part unconscious. The song of the birds, the 
 humming of the insects, the lowing of cattle, 
 the rippling of a brook, the wind through the 
 trees, is nature's music; and the universal 
 melody is increased by the light-hearted singing 
 of a maid at her work, the whistling of a 
 schoolboy, the chimes of a church-bell, the 
 
 83 
 
CHARM OF MUSIC 
 
 whirling notes of a piano-organ, and the 
 thousand and one strains without which life 
 would be deaf and dumb. It is true that such 
 melody may not be according to the highest 
 rules of art, but it may affect us as fully as the 
 greatest work of genius. A few notes hummed 
 in a light mood vibrate the chords within us, 
 and our imagination may idealize the melody 
 imperfectly rendered into most glorious har- 
 mony. 
 
 Music at Home 
 
 We in this country suffer from the imputa- 
 tion of being an unmusical race. In Italy, 
 that land of song, the peasants speak to one 
 another for the hour together in a melodious 
 sing-song that is very pleasant to the ear. 
 No doubt the climate is in their favor, and 
 they are born with deep musical voices that 
 invite them to carol like the birds. Yet the 
 Germans, a Northern race, take precedence in 
 the world of music. Still, I think we are 
 improving in this respect, and there are now 
 very few homes in which a piano at least 
 cannot be found. 
 
 I think that every child should, if possible, be 
 given an opportunity of learning some instru- 
 ment, and given a good musical education, 
 unless it is seen that he or she is hopelessly 
 
 84 
 
CHARM OF MUSIC 
 
 without an ear for music. It is a great source 
 of enjoyment and recreation in home life. 
 It is delightful to me to go into a family where 
 each member is proficient upon some instru- 
 ment, and see the mother, for instance, seated 
 at the piano with her sons and daughters 
 grouped around her, joining in a pleasant 
 discourse of sweet sounds. 
 
 Of course, of all the instruments, the human 
 voice is the most perfect, and the one that has 
 the greatest power over man's heart. A gifted 
 singer rendering some lovely song, in which the 
 words express some poetic thought to which 
 the notes are in sympathetic harmony, holds 
 his audience captive to his breath, thrilling 
 them with the emotions which he expresses, 
 stirring them with the passion of his own soul. 
 
 Shakespeare, a musician of most exquisite 
 ear, has explained in many lovely lines the 
 wonderful influence which music has upon 
 human nature. 
 
 To realize the magic influence of music to its 
 fullest extent one must hear it in an untram- 
 meled mood, not in the prosaic atmosphere 
 of a concert-room, but in nature's spacious halls. 
 
 "Soft Stillness and the Night" 
 
 I remember one summer's evening, a year 
 or two ago, I was lying upon a barge in a reach 
 
 85 
 
CHARM OF MUSIC 
 
 of the Thames near Gravesend. The sun 
 was setting in the west, flooding the water with 
 a golden light, and the red sails of a fleet of 
 barges, waiting idly for the turning tide, 
 seemed bathed in blood, while the sky was like 
 a placid sea, studded with golden islets. Not 
 a sound came along the river save the splash of 
 the ripples against the vessel's side. Then 
 suddenly floating across the water, from some 
 unknown source, came a melody which set my 
 heart vibrating with a weird emotion. It was 
 but a simple glee sung by some women's 
 voices, and, though the singers were nearly a 
 mile away, behind the bend of the river,. I could 
 hear every word distinctly: 
 
 "A boat, a boat, haste o'er the ferry, 
 And let's be gay, and let's be merry." 
 
 Never in my life have I been so stirred by any 
 strain of music, yet I could not tell why, save 
 that, as Lorenzo said in The Merchant of 
 Venice, 
 
 "Soft stillness and the night become the touches of 
 sweet harmony." 
 
 When the boat came into sight I saw it was 
 laden with *a merry party of holiday-makers — 
 two lads and four bouncing, bonny lassies. 
 
 86 
 
CHARM OF MUSIC 
 
 Commonplace and unethereal, yet in the 
 distance on that summer eve their clear voices 
 had sounded like a harmony from angelic 
 spheres. 
 
 The Pleasures of Mediocrity 
 
 There is a somewhat common tendency 
 among people who attend good concerts and 
 appreciate fine music, finely rendered, to 
 disparage any amateur performance which does 
 not reach a professional excellence, and to 
 discourage any effort to render simple music 
 in a simple manner. I have no sympathy with 
 these superfine critics. 
 
 I appreciate the performances of great 
 musicians as well as any, but that does not 
 spoil my enjoyment for the music of the home 
 circle. A piece from one of Sullivan's operas, 
 one of Handel's simple but majestic harmonies, 
 one of Chopin's easier valses, one of Grieg's 
 lullabies, any good piece of music performed by 
 someone who makes no pretence to vie with 
 Paderewski, but rendered with fair accuracy 
 and fair expression, is eminently pleasing to 
 me and to many another. And one of the 
 good old songs, or, for the matter of that, one 
 of the good new songs, may give immense 
 enjoyment to its hearers, though sung by a 
 voice that cannot boast an equality with Patti 
 
 87 
 
CHARM OF MUSIC 
 
 or Caruso. No one need sigh because they 
 cannot scale the topmost summit of perfection, 
 but should be satisfied with a pleasing medi- 
 ocrity. Life without music would be like a 
 world without sun, and if we cannot all be 
 great musicians, let us at least be moderate 
 ones. 
 
 88 
 
NINTH TURN 
 Sermons in Stones 
 
 The Spirit of the Past 
 
 Not long ago an intimate friend of mine 
 received a visit from a distinguished American 
 lady who had just arrived in England with an 
 introduction to him. Wishing to pay her some 
 civility, and thinking that his love and enthu- 
 siasm for one of England's greatest treasures 
 might enable him to give her a pleasant hour 
 or two, my friend took his visitor to West- 
 minster Abbey. The lady listened eagerly to 
 his description, punctuating it with intelligent 
 questions and remarks, but suddenly she left 
 his side and walked hurriedly into the cloisters. 
 Wondering at her behavior, my friend followed, 
 and, to his embarrassment, found the shrewd, 
 seemingly hard-headed American woman 
 bathed in tears. She could not explain her 
 emotion — "tears, idle tears, I know not why ye 
 flow" — but upon reflection the reason is clear. 
 A representative of the New World, a disciple 
 of modernity, had suddenly been taken into 
 the mausoleum of the Old World, full of the 
 ghosts of old centuries, full of silent witnesses 
 
 89 
 
SERMONS IN STONES 
 
 to the antiquity of the race from which this 
 Western woman had sprung, where yesterday 
 is merged into today, and today stretches back 
 to yesterday, and whose stones speak with a 
 voice that echoes through the ages of time. 
 
 But though to every man and woman great 
 cathedrals, churches, castles, and manors, 
 must teach lessons of no little worth, and 
 breathe out a spirit that must be elevating, it 
 is not everyone who has the knowledge requisite 
 for the full understanding of all that these 
 buildings can teach, nor for the full enjoyment 
 of their historical interest and their artistic 
 beauties. Those only who have studied at 
 least the principles of architecture can appre- 
 ciate to the full the immeasurable and wonder- 
 ful wealth of interest that historic buildings 
 afford. 
 
 The History of Building 
 
 Architecture is one of the most fascinating 
 of studies. It comes in contact with everyday 
 life in a very practical way, and yet carries 
 with it an infinity of art, science, poetry, 
 history, and romance . It gives to life a new 
 and extensive interest, and as there is hardly 
 a town or village in this country which does not 
 afford many examples of architectural styles, 
 so also there are few who would not find a 
 
 90 
 
SERMONS IN STONES 
 
 study of architecture lift them above the 
 commonplace and prosaic. 
 
 To ordinary uneducated eyes an old church 
 or cathedral is only regarded as a whole, and 
 only the general effect observed. But to the 
 trained eye there are a thousand details to be 
 studied, and a thousand points of interest 
 which are passed unnoticed by the majority. 
 Perhaps it is the delicate fan-tracery of the 
 vaulting of a Perpendicular church, or the 
 foliated moulding of an Early English capital, 
 some grotesque gargoyle, or a squint for the 
 convenience of lepers, a four-centered arch or 
 Norman doorway; no matter in what church 
 that has survived the hand of time, there are 
 always features of architectural interest to be 
 regarded. 
 
 One of the most interesting branches of the 
 subject is the historical evolution of the 
 Gothic style, which in Europe was in vogue 
 from the eleventh to the sixteenth century. 
 To anyone who has studied its principles it 
 is a matter of little difficulty to ascertain the 
 date of any church, or of any part of a church, 
 to within five years; and any students of 
 architecture will bear me out in saying that 
 some of their most delightful hours have been 
 spent in considering all the features of an 
 ancient building in order to arrive at a 
 
 91 
 
SERMONS IN STONES 
 
 well-founded conclusion as to its proximate 
 date. 
 
 Nor is it less delightful to trace this evolution 
 of medieval architecture through all its 
 transitions from the Norman to the Early 
 English, from the Early English to Decorated, 
 and from the Decorated to the Perpendicular 
 styles. There are many buildings in this 
 country which contain examples of every style 
 and of every transition, and there are also 
 many that are perfect examples of one style, 
 so that there is no difficulty for the student of 
 architecture to find specimens with which to 
 bear out his book-learning. 
 
 Norman Architecture 
 
 There are, for instance, a large number of 
 splendid examples of the pure Norman style 
 still existing in England, of which, to mention 
 but a few, I may cite the cathedrals of Canter- 
 bury, Peterborough, Durham, and parts of 
 Winchester and Lincoln; while all visitors 
 to the Tower of London will remember the 
 chapel of St. John on the second floor of the 
 White Tower, which is the earliest example of 
 pure Norman work in England, the great 
 Keep of the Tower having been erected by 
 William the Conqueror in 1078. In Scotland, 
 Kirkwall Cathedral is the finest example, and 
 
 92 
 
SERMONS IN STONES 
 
 this style may also be seen in the abbeys of 
 Dunfermline, Kelso, and Jedburgh. The 
 Norman style was originated by the Northmen 
 under Duke Rollo and his sons soon after their 
 conquest of the North of France, where, not 
 satisfied with the little churches then common 
 in that country, they wished to raise monu- 
 ments of a splendor that would be worthy of 
 their conquest. Some of their ideas they 
 obtained from the Germans, but they adopted 
 the plan of the Roman Basilica of central and 
 side aisles, and at the east end they always 
 placed a semi-circular apse. In England, 
 however, where the style was introduced at the 
 Conquest, instead of having a circular apse, 
 a square east end was usually preferred. 
 
 It is easy enough to distinguish the chief 
 characteristics of this style. It is notable for 
 massiveness and a grand simplicity. The 
 pillars dividing the aisles from the nave are 
 cubical and of large circumference. A square 
 tower is a feature generally introduced, and 
 the interior ornaments are simple but various 
 and effective, such as the zigzag, nail-head, 
 billet, etc. The capitals are, in the early 
 Norman style, of the cushion character. The 
 windows and doors have semi-circular arched 
 heads, and the roof of the nave is generally 
 wooden, the side aisles alone being vaulted. 
 
 93 
 
SERMONS IN STONES 
 
 The Early English Style 
 
 The transition from Norman to Early- 
 English came with the pointed arch, which was 
 found to be of far better use for vaulting than 
 the old semi-circular arch, which often had to 
 be supported by heavy buttresses. The 
 principles of Gothic pointed architecture, 
 known as Early English, were fully developed 
 in the^ twelfth century. Gothic was not the 
 invention of a single individual, but a gradual 
 and necessary development from structural 
 requirements. The alterations in structure 
 naturally brought with them alterations of 
 decoration and detail. We now have the 
 narrow lancet windows, high gables and roofs, 
 and simple pinnacles and spires. Instead of 
 the heavy Norman buttresses we have them 
 shallow, and the shafts of the piers, which were 
 formerly so massive, are now slender, either 
 simple or clustered. The capital, which is 
 bell-shaped, is now ornamented with foliage, 
 and the mouldings are well defined and give 
 strong light and shade. Salisbury Cathedral 
 is a perfect example of this style, and it may 
 also be seen in the nave and transepts of 
 Westminster Abbey, in the choir of Glasgow, 
 and the remains of Elgin Cathedral, to mention 
 but a few. This style commenced towards the 
 end of the twelfth century, and merged into a 
 
 94 
 
SERMONS IN STONES 
 
 transitional state at the end of the thirteenth. 
 This transition is noticeable in the window 
 tracery and ornamentation. 
 
 In the Decorated style which follows, the 
 windows are divided by a number of thin 
 "mullions," and the upper portions are filled 
 with tracery, which in the early condition of 
 the style were geometrical forms, such as 
 combinations of circles, trefoils and quatre- 
 foils. Later on the tracery departed from its 
 geometrical lines, and became more flowing 
 and intricate. In the same way conventional 
 ornaments were abandoned, and the sculptors 
 lavished their imaginative genius upon making 
 the stones alive with natural forms and figures. 
 From about 1270 to 1375 are the dates for this 
 most beautiful of Gothic styles, and among the 
 leading examples I may cite the nave of York 
 Cathedral and the choir of Lincoln. 
 
 The Perpendicular Style 
 
 We now come to the Perpendicular style, 
 which is easy enough to distinguish. Straight 
 lines are now prevalent, and the flowing 
 tracery of the windows gives way to perpen- 
 dicular divisions of the lights. The walls are 
 often decorated with rectilineal paneling, 
 and the doorways have square heads over 
 pointed arches. Here we sometimes find what 
 
 95 
 
SERMONS IN STONES 
 
 is known as the four-centered arch, but the 
 glory of the style is the exquisite fan-tracery 
 of the vaulting, such as that in Henry VII's 
 Chapel, Westminster. We also get the beauti- 
 ful ornamented open timber roofs, of which 
 Westminster Hall, built in the reign of Richard 
 II, is the largest and most perfect example. 
 This style prevailed from the end of the 
 fourteenth to the middle of the sixteenth 
 century, and its latter characteristics are some- 
 times denominated as Tudor. In France the 
 Gothic style was completed by the Flamboyant, 
 so called from the flame-like tracery of the 
 windows, etc.; but though this style is some- 
 times surprisingly effective, as a general rule 
 it is technical skill run riot, and more calculated 
 to show the cleverness of the mason than the 
 artistic sense of the architect. 
 
 Here, then, is the barest outline of the history 
 of Gothic architecture, sufficient perhaps to 
 give a glimpse of the fascination of the subject. 
 But the student of architecture may look 
 forward to years of pleasant study without 
 exhausting all that is to be learned. 
 
 American architects have produced some 
 meritorious work in recent years, the most 
 characteristic result being the sky-scrapers 
 which modern necessity has forced into certain 
 cities. The Woolworth Building, in New York 
 
 96 
 
SERMONS IN STONES 
 
 City, has been called a beautiful piece of archi- 
 tecture, and many American public buildings 
 and country houses are worthy of study. 
 
 97 
 
TENTH TURN 
 
 English Novels and Novelists 
 
 As I have said on a previous page, the nine- 
 teenth century was marked by the evolution 
 and luxuriance of the novel. It is a form of 
 literature to which everyone now turns, not 
 only for amusement and light reading, but for 
 education in modern philosophy, in scientific 
 theories, and the latest religion evolved from the 
 heated and imaginative brain of some modern 
 prophetess who issues her prophetic utterances 
 in a neatly-bound volume. The modern novel, 
 in fact, is as various in style and subject as the 
 whirling thoughts that pass through the brain 
 of man. Unfortunately modern novels are 
 not so rich in quality as in quantity. To put 
 it plainly, out of the abundant harvest that 
 the ever-recurring publishing seasons bring 
 forth, all but one in a hundred (or thereabouts) 
 are of no more worth than to while away a 
 leisure hour or two when the brain is fagged, 
 and wants mere recreation of an easy and agree- 
 able kind. There is plenty of talent nowadays — 
 never more so throughout the story of our 
 literature. But talent is not genius, and to 
 spend more than an hour or two a week on the 
 
 98 
 
NOVELS AND NOVELISTS 
 
 reading of talented trivialities, however pleasant 
 they may be, is to waste precious hours that 
 might be more profitably spent in deeper and 
 wiser reading. 
 
 Fortunately, however, there are many novels 
 of more than ephemeral interest, and to read 
 them, and re-read them, is to gain a broad 
 culture of heart and head. Being an omniv- 
 orous novel-reader myself, it is not for me to 
 decry their worth. On the contrary, my pen 
 runs willingly into a panegyric in their honor, 
 to tell of their soothing influence upon the 
 jangled nerves after a day of worry, to tell of 
 their wizard's spell which lifts the mind from 
 the ruck of everyday commonplace to new 
 realms of fancy and enchantment, to name the 
 characters who are more real in the mind than 
 many with whom we walk and talk, and friends 
 of fiction so dear that we would hardly change 
 them for beings in the flesh, to conjure up the 
 bright and pregnant thoughts with which they 
 have stocked our otherwise dull and barren 
 minds, to sum up the knowledge of human 
 nature and of the greater world that lies without 
 the circumscribed area of our own little sphere. 
 
 Jane Austen 
 
 Jane Austen is the name that comes first 
 among the great novelists of the nineteenth 
 
 '99 
 
NOVELS AND NOVELISTS 
 
 century, and it outshines many of those that 
 come after her. Her novels are among the first 
 examples of the English domestic story, and it 
 is doubtful whether they have ever been 
 equaled or surpassed within the rather narrow 
 limits of their class. She described human 
 nature as she found it, and trying no high 
 flight of fancy, portrayed with unerring insight, 
 impartial truth and bright humor, the charac- 
 ters of the men and women whom she met in 
 her quiet cultured life at Steventon, in Hamp- 
 shire, of which her father was the rector. So 
 precocious may genius be that by the time 
 she had reached her twenty-second year, before 
 the sweet charm of girlhood had quite ripened 
 into the fulness of womanhood, she had written 
 two of her best books, Sense and Sensibility 
 and Pride and Prejudice. She died when she 
 was only forty-two, by which time she had 
 written Mansfield Park and Emma, Northanger 
 Abbey and Persuasion, the last two being 
 published the year after her death, when, for 
 the first time, the authorship of the whole 
 series was known to the world at large. She was 
 modest of her own accomplishments, and 
 wrote of "the little bit (two inches wide) of 
 ivory on which I work with so fine a brush as 
 produces little effect after so much labor." 
 Yet so great an author as Sir Walter Scott 
 
 100 
 
 
NOVELS AND NOVELISTS 
 
 acknowledged his inferiority to her genius, 
 writing in his diary: "That young lady had a 
 talent for describing the involvements, feelings, 
 and characters of ordinary life, which is to me 
 the most wonderful I have ever met with. 
 The big bow-wow I can do myself like anyone 
 going, but the exquisite touch which renders 
 commonplace things and characters interesting 
 from the truth of the descriptions and the 
 sentiment is denied to me." 
 
 Sir Walter Scott 
 
 Scott's judgment is reinforced by the unani- 
 mous verdict of critics, except that, with regard 
 to his own "big bow-wow," we will not allow 
 such a phrase to describe the glories of the 
 Waverley novels. Scott himself was a painter 
 in glowing colors on a broad canvas. Better 
 than any romance writer before or since, he 
 could build up a great scene of medieval 
 pageantry. Better than any author since 
 Shakespeare, he could put upon his seen ethe 
 heroic or historic characters of past ages, and 
 make them act and speak with living reality, 
 so that the modern reader loses his twentieth 
 century and is back again in the days of old 
 renown. His history is not perfect (neither 
 was Shakespeare's), but his romance has the 
 very vital breath of chivalry. To those who 
 
 101 
 
NOVELS AND NOVELISTS 
 
 have read Ivanhoe, Kenilworth, The Talisman, 
 Quentin Durward, The Fair Maid of Perth, 
 and The Fortunes of Nigel, history itself has a 
 different meaning, and we are brought in 
 closer touch with the ways and deeds of our 
 forefathers. Though Sir Walter was no subtle 
 psychologist, and could not put his finger on the 
 pulse of the ordinary man or woman, whose 
 wild beating, in spite of outward calm, may 
 reveal the secret passions of the heart, he 
 knew human nature in its broad aspects, and 
 could portray it with strength as well as 
 humor. There are many fine portraits in his 
 long gallery, and I, for one, would not miss the 
 friends I have made in Waverley, Rob Roy, Guy 
 Mannering, Peveril of the Peak, The Bride of 
 Lammermoor, not to mention all the long list 
 of these splendid historical novels. 
 
 Charles Dickens 
 
 Dickens was a genius of another sort, less 
 trained and more luxuriant, a child of modern 
 city life, having in his own soul the ineffaceable 
 impression of its tragedies and of its pathos, as 
 well as of its comicality, which, often enough, 
 goes hand in hand with tragedy. He knew the 
 life of the city clerk, of the small shopkeeper, 
 of the lawyer's drudge, and of all the types of 
 what is called the lower-middle class, better 
 
 102 
 
NOVELS AND NOVELISTS 
 
 than any man living, for he had been brought 
 up in it, and his nature was like wax to receive 
 impressions, and cast-iron to retain them. He 
 had an amazing eye for all that is odd and 
 eccentric in human nature, those queer little 
 tricks of speech and manner and dress, which, 
 though seemingly superficial to the character, 
 betray something of its secrets. Above all, he 
 was an emotional man. As a child in London 
 the iron had entered into his soul, and his heart 
 always throbbed in revolt of the misery and 
 sordidness of the poorer classes of the great 
 city. He was stirred to indignation at the 
 tyranny of rich over poor, of strong over weak, 
 of vice over virtue. And he had a tender, 
 almost womanish heart, that loved to linger 
 over the domestic joys and sorrows of the 
 people. Best of all, perhaps, he had an exuber- 
 ant sense of humor which shed a golden glow 
 over the most commonplace and sordid scene, 
 and transfigured the veriest " counter- jumper" 
 or cockney into a being of irresistible drollery. 
 There are some who say that the fame of 
 Dickens is dying, and that his works will not 
 outlast this generation except as literary relics. 
 It would be a shame upon us if it were so; but 
 the publishers of his novels deny the statement 
 and say that, according to the sales, never have 
 his books been more widely read. I cannot 
 
 103 
 
NOVELS AND NOVELISTS 
 
 imagine the mind who can find no enjoyment 
 in Dickens. There must be something wrong 
 in it — some crank, or cross-grained humor, for 
 if there is such a thing as imagination, as 
 comedy, as pathos, then Dickens must be the 
 master to whom all must do honor. 
 
 W. M. Thackeray 
 
 Contemporary and equal in high rank with 
 Dickens was William Makepeace Thackeray. 
 The two novelists were very different in 
 temperament and literary style — Dickens 
 almost rioting in imagination, laying on his 
 colors thick; Thackeray more classic and 
 cultured, gaining his force by restraint rather 
 than exuberance; Dickens the scribe of the 
 lower classes, Thackeray of the upper classes; 
 Dickens the attacker of social evils, Thackeray 
 of society vices; Dickens the ruthless enemy 
 of middle-class tyranny and of lower-class 
 selfishness, Thackeray of upper-class snobbery 
 and of genteel villainy. Dickens revealed the 
 human heart by men's exterior mannerisms, 
 and by their action under stress of a master 
 passion. Thackeray delved deeper, and showed 
 the everyday workings of the human heart 
 itself beneath the mask presented to the world. 
 His imagination was less luxuriant, but his art 
 more subtle. Vanity Fair is a masterpiece of 
 
 104 
 
NOVELS AND NOVELISTS 
 
 satire, Esmond, and its sequel The Virginians, 
 less satirical but perfect in style, exquisite in 
 the delineation of character. Barry Lyndon 
 is probably the most powerful portrait of a 
 consummate villain in any literature of any 
 nation, and Pendennis and The Newcomes 
 are the finest pictures in prose of English life 
 in the early Victorian period. 
 
 George Eliot 
 
 Next on the list of great names comes George 
 Eliot, who struck out a new line of fiction. 
 She wrote with a sterner, deeper purpose than 
 her predecessors. She looked out upon the 
 world with sorrowing, brooding eyes. She saw 
 more sin than virtue, more misery than glad- 
 ness, and the time to her was full of evil portent. 
 She wrote with the soul's desire to raise a 
 warning voice among the people, to point out 
 to them the stern necessity for moral restraint, 
 for intellectual largeness, for brotherly charity, 
 if they did not wish to sink into the degrada- 
 tion of despair. Learned as few men or women 
 are, gifted with a noble eloquence, having 
 suffered and sorrowed and searched, she exerted 
 the powers of her great mind to strip the human 
 soul naked, to show it in all its pitiful weak- 
 ness, with all its inherited vice, with its latent 
 germs of heroism and nobility, with its infinite 
 
 105 
 
NOVELS AND NOVELISTS 
 
 capacity for good or evil. Yet together with 
 this temperament of the preacher she had 
 humor as well as sarcasm, and infinite tender- 
 ness as well as strength. There are few stories 
 in the English language so great as Adam Bede, 
 Silas Marner, The Mill on the Floss, Middle- 
 march, Daniel Deronda, and Scenes from 
 Clerical Life. 
 
 Edwaed Bulwer Lytton 
 
 With these names we have exhausted the 
 most splendid on the list of nineteenth-century 
 novelists, and now we must descend somewhat. 
 Bulwer Lytton is one in the next rank, and 
 although in his temperament there was a good 
 deal of the charlatan and the sentimentalist, 
 it seems unkind to say so in view of the 
 immensely entertaining novels he has left for 
 our enjoyment. I confess that I have never 
 been more enthralled by fiction than when I 
 read his splendid trio — The Caxtons, My Novel, 
 and What will He do with it? They are brilliant 
 imitations of the masterpieces of Fielding, 
 Sterne, and Smollett; and what is much to their- 
 honor if not to their genius, they are not dis- 
 figured by the coarse humor of the earlier 
 English novels. Personally I do not care 
 much for his prodigies of sentiment — Night 
 and Morning, Alice, and Ernest Maltr avers, 
 
 106 
 
NOVELS AND NOVELISTS 
 
 but I acknowledge as old favorites his stirring 
 historical romances, The Last of the Barons, 
 and Harold, and his idealistic but very charming 
 novel of Kenelm Chillingly. 
 
 A Cluster of Bright Names 
 
 Charlotte Bronte had the true hall-mark of 
 genius, sincerity, and enthusiasm. Jane 
 Eyre is a marvelous piece of work, most 
 marvelous when we consider the narrow envi- 
 ronment and the limited experience of its 
 author. Shirley also shows extraordinary 
 imagination and power, though not to be 
 compared to the almost titanic force of With- 
 ering Heights, by Charlotte's sister Emily, 
 which is as gruesome a piece of realism as any 
 of Zola's. 
 
 Anthony Trollope and Wilkie Collins come 
 in the third-rate rank, though the first produced 
 some very entertaining and artistic novels, and 
 the latter holds the highest rank in sensational 
 fiction, which has a crowd of modern disciples, 
 many of them of very objectionable character. 
 I must say a good word or two for Samuel 
 Lover and Charles Lever, whose rollicking 
 Irish stories are the best cure I know for the 
 megrims. There are few such downright good 
 fellows as Handy Andy, Harry Lorrequer, and 
 Charles O'Malley. Harrison Ainsworth, too, 
 
 107 
 
NOVELS AND NOVELISTS 
 
 was a friend of my boyhood, for whom I still 
 keep a warm corner in my heart. Jack 
 Sheppard has been called the most dangerous 
 book ever written, and I confess, when I read 
 it at the age of thirteen, I had a temporary 
 ambition to be a professional burglar. But 
 that passed! His Tower of London holds its 
 own still, and there are few books out of his 
 long list which I did not devour and enjoy in 
 earlier days. Greater than he, however, was 
 Charles Reade, whose masterpiece, The Cloister 
 and the Hearth, I have just read again with 
 immense pleasure. It is a big thing to say — 
 but I don't think Scott wrote anything finer, 
 nor in some ways quite so fine. His other books 
 are far below this in merit, but many of them 
 are as powerful as they are realistic. Charles 
 Kingsley's Westward Ho! is worthy of name 
 beside The Cloister and the Hearth, and his 
 Hypatia and Hereward the Wake are almost as 
 fine. I do not much care for his Alton Locke, 
 though it contains some powerful writing. 
 
 Novelists of Latterday Repute 
 
 Now I come to more modern writers, and I 
 use the little space left to me to give but a word 
 or two to the best of them. Mrs. Oliphant and 
 Mrs. Craik are two writers who did honor to 
 their sex, and John Halifax, Gentleman, by 
 
 108 
 
NOVELS AND NOVELISTS 
 
 the latter, is worth its weight in gold. Mrs. 
 Humphry Ward's great books, Robert Elsmere 
 and David Grieve, set the fashion for the modern 
 problem novel, and there are few to be com- 
 pared with them. Mrs. Henry Wood's novels 
 are for those who want more entertainment 
 than instruction (though they are true studies 
 of modern social life). George Meredith is put 
 on a high pedestal by those who like brilliant 
 epigrams and a polished style. I admit (and 
 I know it to be heresy) that his works do not 
 appeal to me, as I cannot help feeling that his 
 art is artificial and his genius clouded with 
 mannerisms. 
 
 Robert Louis Stevenson founded a new 
 school, and is now almost a classic. Treasure 
 Island is perhaps worthy of being mentioned 
 in the same breath as Robinson Crusoe; and 
 The Master of Ballantrae, for subtle character- 
 ization and realistic strength, may rank with 
 the finest romances of the last twenty years. 
 The Weir of Hermiston is a noble and pathetic 
 fragment that gave promise of greater things, 
 but those whom the gods love die young. 
 David Balfour and Catriona are full of charm 
 and literary skill, but they have a more 
 limited interest, I think. William Black 
 and Walter Besant have left long lists of 
 novels, in which there is nothing great but 
 
 109 
 
NOVELS AND NOVELISTS 
 
 nothing without charm and delightful enter- 
 tainment. 
 
 Novelists of Today 
 
 Greatest of living novelists is Thomas Hardy. 
 His novels are not always wholesome, and to 
 my mind his views of social morality are 
 strangely warped at times. Nevertheless, he 
 has true poetic genius, and there is no man 
 alive in closer touch with nature. Indeed, 
 his prose has the melting charm of poetry, 
 and his pictures of woodland scenery are 
 exquisite and flawless. Some people call him 
 a realist, but he is not. He is an idealist if 
 ever there was one, and his Wessex folk are 
 transfigured by the glamour of his glowing 
 imagination. Hall Caine began by writing 
 literature, and has degenerated into sensational 
 melodrama. Rudyard Kipling hardly ranks 
 as a novelist, his title to renown being based 
 more on his poetical works and short stories. 
 But his Light that Failed is almost great, and 
 Kim, though not a novel in the ordinary sense 
 of the word, is a masterly picture of Indian 
 life. Stanley Weyman is a good English 
 imitator of Alexandre Dumas, without the 
 fire of his genius. Anthony Hope is always 
 entertaining, and Gilbert Parker's French 
 Canadian stories have a charm all their own. 
 
 110 
 
NOVELS AND NOVELISTS 
 
 J. M. Barrie has a very subtle knowledge of the 
 human heart, and can paint a woman's portrait 
 with much grace and tenderness; while if 
 Sentimental Tommy is not more autobiography 
 than fiction, then Barrie has even more imagi- 
 nation than I give him credit for. Zangwill's 
 Jewish stories show great power, though they 
 are terribly sad. Conan Doyle has done some 
 good honest work, and although his Sherlock 
 Holmes, which ranks first in popular favor, is 
 not the highest form of fiction, English litera- 
 ture has been enriched by the addition of The 
 White Company and Rodney Stone, which are 
 both admirable novels. Rider Haggard will 
 live always on the reputation of King Solomon's 
 Mines and She. A. T. Quiller-Couch, known 
 also as "Q," has maintained the highest tradi- 
 tions of English style, and his west-country 
 stories are wholesome, fresh, and charming. He 
 may also rank as the best short-story writer 
 of the day. Maurice Hewlett has so steeped 
 himself in the spirit of old-time romance that 
 his historical novels impress one with a sense 
 of absolute truthfulness. For pure entertain- 
 ment Arnold Bennett has scarcely an equal, 
 and H. G. Wells, though not a great novelist, 
 cannot be neglected because his works are 
 so brimful of thought and so stimulating to 
 the man or woman who would dip into the 
 
 111 
 
NOVELS AND NOVELISTS 
 
 surging stream of this wondrous twentieth 
 century. 
 
 The American Novel 
 
 In the nineteenth century in America we 
 find James Fenimore Cooper and Nathaniel 
 Hawthorne, both already mentioned. Cooper 
 received his literary impulse from Scott, and 
 his novels, of which The Spyj The Pioneer, 
 The Last of the Mohicans and The Pilot are 
 most popular, are vivid romances of enduring 
 appeal. Hawthorne's novels are romantic 
 also in their appeal, but they are better written, 
 in a style of exquisite delicacy, with rare pathos 
 and humor, and a psychological interest that 
 was an altogether new note in fiction. The 
 Scarlet Letter and The House of the Seven 
 Gables should not be omitted from any good 
 reading list, for this New England writer, who 
 inherited the gravity of his Puritan ancestors 
 without their superstitions, is one of the great 
 masters of English prose. 
 
 Of modern realistic writers many might be 
 profitably read — Henry James, William Dean 
 Howells, Edith Wharton, Robert Herrick, Wins- 
 ton Churchill, Jack London in his best work, 
 Ernest Poole, and a few others. The strength 
 of Henry James is in psychological analysis, 
 and the convincing lif elikeness of his characters, 
 
 112 
 
NOVELS AND NOVELISTS 
 
 the way they act and speak and think and feel 
 is almost uncanny, though unendingly delight- 
 ful. The style of the later novels is so involved 
 as to make them almost impossible for the 
 average reader, but the peculiar " manner " 
 of Henry James is really an acquired thing 
 which does not touch such charming early 
 works as Roderick Hudson, Daisy Miller and 
 The Portrait of a Lady, 
 
 Howells, like James, excels in detailed 
 analysis of character, and his novels, aside 
 from their psychological interest, will have 
 permanent value for their accurate delineation 
 of social types and phases. Edith Wharton in 
 The House of Mirth, The Fruit of the Tree and 
 The Custom of the Country has, besides produc- 
 ing interesting stories, dissected certain Ameri- 
 can types with the clean, sure touch of a 
 surgeon, while in Ethan Frome she has produced 
 a work as simple and intense as a Greek drama. 
 Robert Herrick's novels are devoted largely 
 to the analysis of the American marriage, not a 
 particularly pleasant subject, though Herrick 
 is neither morbid nor hopeless; Winston 
 Churchill in his later novels also makes the 
 story subservient to the discussion of problems; 
 and Jack London has not always produced 
 works as artistic as The Call of the Wild. 
 Ernest Poole is the author of youngest fame, 
 
 113 
 
NOVELS AND NOVELISTS 
 
 whose first novel, a story of New York, The 
 Harbor, brought almost instant recognition. 
 
 Here, then, is a list of names of the most 
 renowned novelists, from the beginning of the 
 nineteenth century to the present day, whose 
 works have a profound influence upon modern 
 thought. 
 
 114 
 
ELEVENTH TURN 
 
 On the Study of Human Nature 
 
 The Stage of Life 
 
 There is no branch of knowledge so generally 
 ignored as the one I have alluded to in the above 
 title. Yet there are few so essential to man's 
 happiness, and few so fruitful of true philosophy. 
 Most of us go through life with our eyes shut, 
 or only half-opened to the great drama being 
 played around us. The majority of men and 
 women are blind spectators of life's shifting 
 scenes of tragedy and comedy, of life's epic 
 poem, of its heroic meter, and of its plain, 
 unvarnished prose. "All the world's a stage, 
 and men and women merely players," but each 
 plays his little part, each has his entrance, 
 mouths his speech, and takes his exit without 
 studying the characters allotted to his fellows. 
 Thus — to carry the simile further — it happens 
 that men and women often come in at the 
 wrong cue. When a fellow-actor is playing 
 his tragedy they set his poor nerves a-j angling 
 with their pitiless burlesque, and when some 
 merry-hearted low-comedy men are cutting 
 their capers and splitting their sides with 
 laughter up comes a Melancholy Jacques, with 
 
 115 
 
STUDY OF HUMAN NATURE 
 
 his mouth drawn down at corners, and his 
 visage woe-begone like a death's-head at a 
 feast. It is like a pantomime rehearsal without 
 a stage-manager. Everybody says the right 
 thing at the wrong time. Nobody listens to 
 anybody else. Only one or two spectators 
 in the gallery watch the various parts being 
 played, and distinguish between the actors. 
 They alone can see that the noise of the pan- 
 tomime is deafening the noble words of some 
 first-rate actor, and that some small parts 
 are being played excellently well. But I have 
 worn out my theatrical simile, and those who 
 do not see the allegory will be gaping until I 
 write more soberly. 
 
 The Danger of Introspection 
 
 Most of us nowadays are too introspective. 
 It's an excellent thing to have a care for one's 
 own immortal soul, but one can be too busy 
 even with such a business. It's a good thing 
 to remember other people's souls. I think it 
 is a very general tendency among people, and 
 especially among young people, to be always 
 withdrawing to the inner chamber of their own 
 consciousness, either for the purpose of sweep- 
 ing it clean or garnishing it with bright day- 
 dreams, or, perhaps, in order to sit in the 
 solitary state of their own council chamber, 
 
 116 
 
STUDY OF HUMAN NATURE 
 
 there to hold judgment upon their own char- 
 acter, to advise upon their own actions, to 
 reflect upon their own past and future. We 
 all do this more or less, and a certain amount 
 of introspection is necessary for the building up 
 of one's character. But the habit can be, and 
 frequently is, carried too far. The introspective 
 man is often the selfish man, for he is one of those 
 blind spectators I have alluded to above, who 
 takes no heed of anyone's part but his own. 
 
 In large families, where six or seven brothers 
 and sisters sit at the same board, sleep under 
 the same roof, day by day, and night by night, 
 it will often happen that they are as ignorant of 
 each other's real character, as careless of each 
 other's prejudices, aspirations, and ideals, as 
 if they were separated by continents. Each 
 will go about his or her business, wholly 
 self-absorbed, treading, in their ignorance, 
 upon each other's mental or moral corns, 
 jangling each other's sensibilities, outraging 
 each other's most sacred feelings, simply 
 because they have never taken the trouble to 
 study the shallows and depths of the characters 
 with whom they have always lived. 
 
 The Master Art 
 
 Believe me when I say that the study of 
 human nature is much more valuable than the 
 
 117 
 
STUDY OF HUMAN NATURE 
 
 study of books. But, in saying this, I do not 
 wish to decry the value of reading, but rather 
 to maintain that the art — "the Master Art" — 
 of how to live, is best learned by studying the 
 varied characters of the men and women with 
 whom one rubs shoulders every day, who to us 
 represent the world, and upon whose good 
 fellowship and service we so much depend. 
 How often one hears the cry, "Oh, this 
 prosaic, this deadly dull world! Romance is 
 gone, and the reign of Humdrum is with us." 
 This is true enough for those who think so. 
 For those who have eyes but see not, the world 
 is dull; for those who do not look beyond their 
 own noses, life is humdrum and prosaic. 
 But for those who, having eyes, know how to 
 use them, for those who, having ears, can hear, 
 life under the most homely conditions, in its 
 dreariest aspect, within the narrowest bounds, 
 is always a drama, and too often a melodrama — 
 so full of broken hearts and tragedy, so startling 
 in its intensity of passion, so thrilling to the 
 scale of one's emotion, that the student of human 
 nature, realizing all this, will be apt to rejoice 
 when the play is over and he can go to rest. 
 
 The Secrets of the Heart 
 
 Romance! We need not look far to find it. 
 It is in the life of our next-door neighbor. We 
 
 118 
 
STUDY OF HUMAN NATURE 
 
 ourselves may be a living farce, or tragedy, or 
 heroic poem. That hollow-eyed, grizzle- 
 haired man who perhaps is our employer, 
 perhaps our clerk, hides in his heart the 
 remembrance of a dead wife, hides his sorrow 
 by an outward gruffness that makes men shun 
 his company. That worn-looking, plainly- 
 dressed woman, who is our washerwoman or 
 landlady, is battling heroically against ill- 
 health and poverty, to keep the wolf from the 
 door for her invalid husband. That smiling 
 old fellow, with the cheery, wrinkled old face, 
 who sweeps a crossing near our house, smiles 
 and bids a cheery "good morning/ ' though his 
 bones are twitched with ague — smiles, though 
 he is hungry and we well-fed — smiles, though 
 he has nothing to smile for, God knows, beyond 
 the courage and faith that bids him keep 
 cheerful against all odds. That fellow with the 
 stammer and the pock-marked face, the fellow 
 whose nerves set him a-trembling at a sudden 
 question, is not an object for ridicule. He is 
 a hero, though he does not look like one. He 
 has fought the drink devil with both hands, 
 and the fight, though he has won, has left its 
 mark on him. That maid-servant of ours, 
 with the red hair and nose "tip-tilted up to 
 heaven," may look commonplace enough, but 
 her heart is awhirl with romance, and her head 
 
 119 
 
STUDY OF HUMAN NATURE 
 
 chock-full of dream fancies — for love, the knight 
 in white armor, has come to her in the guise of 
 a butcher-boy, and mistresses may scold, and 
 masters swear, but she — and he — care not a 
 toss for all the world as long as love is true. 
 
 All Sorts and Conditions of Men 
 
 As a humble student of human nature, I can 
 vouch for the fact that more interesting than 
 all the books ever written, more fascinating 
 than any science built up by the skill of man, 
 is that human document which may be read 
 in the streets, in the dingy back rooms of the 
 poor as well as in the salons of the wealthy. 
 I have always been an interested observer of 
 my fellow men and women. As a child I 
 watched and listened, and made mental notes 
 about the people I met and saw; and now, in 
 railway trains or 'buses, wherever there are 
 people's faces to observe, and their tongues 
 go a-wagging, my eyes and ears are busy. Arid 
 this I will say — which is a comforting reflec- 
 tion — that the closer knowledge one gets of the 
 human heart, the nearer one gets to the real, 
 inmost character of people, the more one is 
 reconciled to human nature. Especially is 
 this so with the lower classes. In my own 
 little wanderings I have penetrated into some 
 rather out-of-the-way phases of society, and 
 
 120 
 
STUDY OF HUMAN NATURE 
 
 come into touch with rather unconventional 
 types. I have chatted with the " gamins" or 
 gutter-boys of Paris, and made friends with 
 more than one of them. I have " chummed up " 
 with Whitechapel costers, Punch-and-Judy 
 men, street acrobats, professional rat-catchers, 
 and East End Jews. I have had afternoon tea 
 alfresco with pure-blooded gipsies, have had the 
 unusual honor of an invitation into their 
 caravans, and have listened to the story of their 
 careers. One of the most interesting conver- 
 sations in my life was with a circle of gipsy 
 friends, and I found they had a philosophy that 
 men of better education than themselves have 
 no cause to sneer at. In the Italian quarter of 
 London — one of the most interesting districts 
 of the great City — I have spent many pleasant 
 afternoons, and made many agreeable acquaint- 
 ances. I spent a delightful week-end trip 
 on a barge from Rochester to Gravesend, and 
 found that though the skipper could neither 
 read nor write, being "no scholard," as he 
 phrased it, he was yet in many ways a wiser 
 man than I. One of the most cheery philoso- 
 phers I have met was a blind man who sells 
 matches and laces at the bottom of a dark 
 alley in a big town. I feel the better for know- 
 ing that sturdy fellow who bears his affliction 
 so bravely, so cheerily. I once wrote a little 
 
 121 
 
STUDY OF HUMAN NATURE 
 
 article about him, and I count it a pleasant 
 memory that my words were read by some 
 person out in India, who, feeling touched by the 
 man's optimism, sent a nice little cheque, 
 addressed to "The blind man who stands at 
 the bottom of the alley/ ' in such-and-such a 
 place. I give these instances because they are 
 a few little experiences of my own, which have 
 proved to me that all wisdom does not lie in 
 books, and that among the very poor, in the 
 ordinary sense of the word, may be found many 
 riches of another kind. 
 
 The student of human nature, if he has any 
 love for his study, will find he needs no other 
 key to unlock its secrets than sympathy. That 
 is the only premium that must be paid. I have 
 not had a very varied experience of life, but 
 even to me, people — strangers often — have told 
 their life-stories and their secret troubles, for no 
 other reason than that I seemed ready to listen. 
 I have a friend — nay, more than a friend, my 
 father — who has made the most surprising 
 friendships on the spur of the moment, encoun- 
 tered the strangest adventures in ordinary city 
 life, and listened to extraordinary confidences 
 from people who have never set eyes on him be- 
 fore, and perhaps never will again. Adventures 
 are to the adventurous, the man who can listen 
 will hear, and the man who observes will see. 
 
 122 
 
TWELFTH TURN 
 The Advantages of Travel 
 
 In the Good Old Days 
 
 " Home-keeping youth have ever homely 
 wits," said friend Valentine in The Two Gentle- 
 men of Verona. This statement is not to be 
 accepted without modification, for our Shakes- 
 peare, and Burns, and many another " home- 
 keeping youth," have had more wit than a 
 thousand, or a hundred thousand, individuals 
 who have done the Grand Tour. Still, there is 
 some truth in it, and generally speaking the 
 man who has stepped beyond his own little 
 local world, who has seen other nations, other 
 cities, other manners than his own, is a broader, 
 larger-souled being than he who judges men and 
 matters from the standard of his petty parish. 
 
 And nowadays what facilities we have for 
 travel compared with the days of our great- 
 grandfathers! In the good old times a journey 
 from London to Edinburgh, from New York 
 to Philadelphia, aye, from any town fifty miles 
 distance to any other, was not to be undertaken 
 without fear and trembling on the part of the 
 timid, and with much will-making and prepara- 
 
 123 
 
ADVANTAGES OF TRAVEL 
 
 tion by even the most intrepid of travelers. 
 And no wonder! For who could face with 
 equanimity the prospect of a fifty-mile journey 
 on a lumbering old coach, with perhaps an 
 outside seat, an east wind biting one's ears and 
 nose, a gentleman highwayman at the turning 
 of a lonely road, a wheel off in a malignant 
 rut, and other items of an equally disturbing 
 character? In those days, too, only a man of 
 wealth could dream of long journeys, unless he 
 were willing to trudge on shanks' mare (and 
 there are worse modes of travel than that), for 
 one didn't travel in those days at the rate of 
 two cents a mile. 
 
 But now, "Nous avons change tout cela!" — 
 we have changed all that — as Moliere's doctor 
 remarked. Travel becomes cheaper every 
 day, and the home-keeping youth is hard put 
 to it to find an excuse. Such enterprising 
 tourist agents as Messrs. Cook and Sons, and 
 the healthy competition of the railway and 
 steamboat companies, have made the man in 
 the street a traveler, and converted the world 
 into a " universal exhibition" with a cheap 
 entrance ticket. 
 
 Over the Hills and Far Away 
 
 I have a poor opinion of young men who 
 always spend their holidays in the same place, 
 
 124 
 
ADVANTAGES OF TRAVEL 
 
 and that some commonplace conventional 
 straw-hat-and-flannels, cigarette - and - sweet- 
 heart sniggering seaside resort within easy dis- 
 tance on the main line. I know of young 
 fellows who invariably do this sort of thing 
 and consider it the height of bliss. Well, 
 it's a pettifogging bliss, say I, and I know of 
 a bliss on a higher scale. To an unmarried 
 man with a few dollars in his pocket 
 and a week's or a fortnight's respite from 
 the daily grind, I would say, strap a knap- 
 sack on to your back, with a change of linen, 
 socks and boots (none so important as the 
 last), put a guide-book in your pocket, take 
 a friend with you if there is one at liberty, and 
 set out with a light heart for "fresh fields and 
 pastures new." In your own country there 
 are many lovely stretches of scenery, free as 
 the winds of God to those who wish to gaze 
 upon them, and if a man with a week's holiday 
 and two legs does not know what to do with 
 them he is a poor creature. 
 
 Wheeling and Walking 
 
 Of course the automobilists have it all their 
 own way nowadays, and a man riding looks 
 down with superb scorn upon any poor fool 
 trudging in the highway. I do not want to 
 quarrel with them. I have been in an automo- 
 
 125 
 
ADVANTAGES OF TRAVEL 
 
 bile myself, and know the joy of skimming 
 along a level road with the wind in one's teeth, 
 and a broad view ahead when one's eyes see 
 straight to the horizon. Still, by nature I am 
 a tramp, and every other tramp is my brother. 
 I do not like to be hampered by a machine, nor 
 fettered to the highroad. I am of a discursive 
 and digressive turn of mind, and hate a 
 straight road as a weariness to the flesh. When 
 I am out for the day with the world before me, 
 I am a meanderer. When I see a little by-path 
 where the trees on either side clasp their 
 branches in close embrace, and the under- 
 growth straggles across with the luxuriance 
 of an unfrequented way, when a rabbit scuttles 
 to its burrow, and the blackbird calls to its 
 mate, there are ten chances to one that I accept 
 such a seductive invitation, and abandon the 
 straight way. Then to lie on my back in the 
 sun by the side of a brook, or just outside the 
 shade of a spreading tree, to listen to the 
 melodious humming of nature's tiny organists, 
 or the sweet swish of the trickling stream as it 
 stirs the rushes by its bank, are interruptions 
 to my day's journey too frequent to obtain 
 the sanction of an automobile tourist. 
 
 I admit, however, that much may be said 
 for both the automobile and the railroad, and 
 America is so vast that one must accept these 
 
 126 
 
ADVANTAGES OF TRAVEL 
 
 means of locomotion if one would really see 
 the country. A five-day journey carries one 
 from New York to San Francisco, and even in a 
 short time one may see many of the interesting 
 places that lie between. People travel all over 
 the world and find no city so wonderful as New 
 York with its gigantic skyscrapers; they visit 
 Asia to study forgotten civilizations, when Red- 
 skins still live on the western plains and cliff 
 dwellings reveal strange stories of the past; 
 they long for the Alps without realizing that 
 the supreme miracle of Nature awaits them in 
 the Grand Canyon of Arizona. 
 
 Across the Mill Pond 
 
 As I have said, one's own country affords 
 plenty of charm and interest and instruction 
 to the traveler, but I want to advocate also 
 the merits of foreign travel. And what a 
 source of infinite fascination is a trip abroad 
 to the man or woman who all the year round, 
 save for that brief spell, is a stay-at-home. It 
 opens up a new world to one. Everything is 
 so different, so fresh, so full of interest. One's 
 first trip abroad enlarges one's character to no 
 mean extent. One's mental focus is read- 
 justed, one's mind is filled with fresh pictures. 
 Though it may not be so good for one's bodily 
 health, compared to a seaside holiday at home, 
 
 127 
 
ADVANTAGES OF TRAVEL 
 
 a fortnight abroad is wonderfully invigorating 
 and inspiring to one's spirit. The people, the 
 language, the customs, the dress, are all 
 different, and therefore all interesting. 
 
 And now half a dozen words of advice. If 
 you decide to spend your holidays abroad, 
 acquire before you start at least an elementary 
 knowledge of the language, history, literature, 
 and habits of the country to which you are 
 going, and your enjoyment will be tenfold. 
 
 128 
 
THIRTEENTH TURN 
 
 The Art of Conversation 
 
 Most people born with a tongue between their 
 teeth know how to talk more or less, but 
 between talk and conversation there is as much 
 difference as between the beating of a nigger's 
 tom-tom and a fantasia on the piano by a 
 Paderewski. Conversation with most people 
 is an unknown art. So dense is their ignorance 
 of it, that they are more than likely to dispute 
 that it is an art at all. They entertain no 
 doubt that conversation comes as natural to a 
 man as blowing his nose. And yet they are 
 mistaken. This is one of the most difficult 
 of arts, more difficult than music on any wind 
 or stringed instrument, as difficult indeed as 
 life itself, for fine conversation comes only 
 from fine character, and that is a material not 
 easy to produce. 
 
 The Old Regime 
 
 Conversation, as distinct from mere talking, 
 reached a higher standard with our forefathers 
 than is now maintained. We have grown 
 slipshod in our speech, careless of phrase, 
 
 129 
 
ART OF CONVERSATION 
 
 jerking out ill-formed and disconnected sen- 
 tences that but barely express our thoughts. 
 The man of culture of the olden time had more 
 dignity of language. It may have been more 
 artificial, it may have hidden rather than 
 revealed his inmost thought (though this is 
 doubtful), but there was a fine grace in the 
 turn of his phrase, as there was in the nourish 
 of his three-cornered hat and the easy elegance 
 of the bow with which he greeted his friend. 
 Conversation was then looked upon as an art, 
 not only worth cultivating, but indeed as one 
 of the most necessary branches of education. 
 A man might be wicked — the flesh is weak and 
 the heart of man is prone to evil — but to be a 
 dull dog in company was an unpardonable 
 offence that ostracized a man from society. 
 
 The French carried conversation to its 
 finest pitch in the days immediately before 
 the great Revolution. In the clubs of the 
 philosophers, whose destructive theories were 
 to plunge their nation into a whirlpool of 
 anarchy, in the salons of charming women like 
 Madame Geoffrin, Mdlle. de PEspinasse and 
 Madame de Stael, at the " little dinners" of 
 literary men and patrons like the Baron 
 d'Holbach, conversation was the only purpose, 
 and the sole attraction of gatherings which were 
 attended by the keenest and brightest wits, 
 
 130 
 
ART OF CONVERSATION 
 
 the most brilliant personalities not only of 
 France but of Europe. 
 
 In these salons of old France the conversa- 
 tion that made the long evening seem like a 
 brief minute sparkled with a constant gaiety 
 and a brilliance kept alive by quick rallying 
 repartee, by pungent epigram, by bright 
 anecdote, by keen flash of wit, leavened some- 
 times by an undercurrent of deeper thought 
 and a revelation of that new philosophy which 
 was to shake the foundations of the old world. 
 
 In England also there were coteries in which 
 the art of conversation excelled. Conversation 
 flourished and saw golden days when Shakespeare 
 and Ben Jonson met at the "Mermaid," and 
 when, as one who heard those rare encounters 
 of genius has reported, Jonson's eloquence was 
 like a heavy Spanish galleon, while Shakespeare 
 was like an English frigate that tacked about 
 swiftly, throwing in shot on every side of the 
 enemy. Conversation was golden, too, in those 
 same glorious Elizabethan days when Walter 
 Raleigh, Philip Sidney and Edmund Spenser 
 were brilliant stars in the Court of Queen Bess; 
 in the clubs of Queen Anne's days, when Dr. 
 Johnson spoke like an oracle — ungainly, snuffy, 
 grease-stained, but nevertheless an oracle with 
 words of golden wisdom — with such literary 
 worthies as "Noll" Goldsmith, the patient 
 
 131 
 
ART OF CONVERSATION 
 
 Boswell, the fiery Garrick and the bright-eyed 
 Joshua Reynolds; when Addison, Steele and 
 Swift discussed papers for The Tatler; and in 
 the latter days when Alfred Tennyson, Arthur 
 Hallam and that reverend jester Brookefield 
 made soaring thought the boon companion 
 of side-splitting laughter. 
 
 Intellectual Delight 
 
 These are some of the famous circles^ where 
 conversation has reached its highest pitch of 
 excellence; but always in the world, and still, 
 there have been, and are, little companies of 
 men and women in which this delightful art 
 is on no vulgar plane. What greater pleasure 
 is there than to enter such a circle; to listen 
 to the rallying banter of bright wit, to stand 
 by while two well-matched minds fight out a 
 duel on the tilting-ground of argument with 
 the skill and vigor and with the courteous 
 grace of well-trained combatants; to follow the 
 thread of discourse, which leads on to a hundred 
 different subjects, wending maze-like in and 
 out, yet never broken or disconnected. But 
 conversation is best when only two tongues 
 have the wagging. No enjoyment is there 
 greater among life's few real pleasures than 
 that which two friends may have who, unlock- 
 ing the little door which leads to the inner 
 
 132 
 
ART OF CONVERSATION 
 
 chamber of their soul, give one to the other 
 those gifts which have been gathered along 
 life's pathway — wild flowers of thought plucked 
 from places beyond the common reach, dead 
 rose-leaves that have the fragrance of past joys, 
 and now and then a few bitter herbs of thoughts 
 garnered in pain and sorrowing. 
 
 This great pleasure of conversation comes 
 not by nature's free gift alone. It must be 
 cultivated, trained, and practiced. As a man 
 may have a world of music in his soul and yet, 
 placed before an instrument, is by lack of 
 training unable to give it expression or to 
 produce anything but ugly and discordant 
 sounds, so may he also have fine thoughts lying 
 deep in the caverns of his mind, like diamonds 
 bedded in a rock, and for lack of training cannot 
 bring them to outward expression, nor present 
 them with any charm of polished speech. 
 
 Rules for Conversation 
 
 What, then, are the rules for this art of 
 conversation? Certainly they are not to be 
 laid down like trolley lines so that anyone fol- 
 lowing them may reach the highest summit of 
 the art. Conversation has a thousand styles, 
 like any other art, and it is intimately bound 
 up with temperament, which is of infinite 
 variety. Nevertheless, there are certain broad 
 
 133 
 
ART OF CONVERSATION 
 
 and general rules which may be set down in our 
 textbook. The person who wishes to become 
 a master of the art must first store his mind 
 with much varied knowledge. To talk merely 
 fine phrases without solid information behind 
 them (and such a thing is possible and frequent) 
 is to create an instrument of torture for all who 
 come within earshot of that clacking. This 
 knowledge should not be of books only, but of 
 men and things. More valuable even than 
 knowledge is thought — thought developed by 
 meditation, by wrestlings in secret with some 
 of the problems of life and the soul, by keen 
 and patient observation of the little things as 
 well as the big things of existence, by an 
 inquiring and interested mind upon everyday 
 subjects. It is good to have a memory for 
 anecdotes, lines from the poets and quotations 
 from great writers. A lively anecdote, a happy 
 quotation, to illustrate a passing topic of 
 conversation, lends a brightness and piquancy 
 that is not to be lightly valued. On the other 
 hand, to have a limited stock of old anecdotes, 
 a repertory of familiar "quotes," and to trot 
 them out glibly in every company is to label 
 oneself "Bore" in letters of advertising size. 
 Preserve me from any such ! 
 
 It must never be forgotten that good conver- 
 sation also means good listening. A one-sided 
 
 134 
 
ART OF CONVERSATION 
 
 conversation is an impertinence of the talker 
 and a martyrdom of the listener. It is like a 
 game of tennis with the balls always served 
 from one court and never returned. The man 
 who monopolizes the conversation is to be put 
 down as a public enemy. On the other hand, 
 a man must not be afraid of having his little 
 say, of holding the stage awhile with a good 
 set speech. Conversation which is a mere 
 volleying of one-phrase sentences keep's one's 
 nerves on the jig. 
 
 The Unfailing Recipe 
 
 Next among the ingredients of good conver- 
 sation I recommend humor as the best season- 
 ing. It irradiates a conversation; like the sun 
 shining upon a town, it turns all to gold. The 
 best of humor is that good-tempered, happy 
 sort which sees the ludicrous in the common- 
 place, comicality in inconveniences, and touches 
 every topic with a quaint ridicule. Men and 
 women of this quality are benefactors to their 
 kind. 
 
 Then must you add to the recipe a bountiful 
 supply of sympathy. In conversation there 
 must be a quick response of sentiment between 
 the speakers. Each must enter into the other's 
 mood; and, as a stringed instrument vibrates 
 to the touch of the musician, so should a speaker 
 
 135 
 
ART OF CONVERSATION 
 
 feel that he has stirred the chords in the hearts 
 of his company. 
 
 And now for two maxims to round off this 
 monologue. Remember that speech must be 
 trained continually, if one would express one's 
 thoughts felicitously. When Dr. Johnson was 
 asked for the secret of his eloquence, he said 
 that he had always made it a rule to utter his 
 ideas in the most careful, clear, and appropriate 
 language he could find. Remember also that 
 to speak well one must live well, for speech is 
 the expression of one's character; and although 
 that is a witty epigram which says, " speech is 
 given us to conceal our thoughts," it is not a 
 true one, and a man who would hide his real 
 self must keep silent. I say again, to speak 
 well one must live well; and he who would 
 excel in conversation must first find charity 
 and sympathy and modesty, which three virtues 
 go far to make a man a good fellow and a 
 gentleman. 
 
 136 
 
ADVERTISEMENT 
 
 Many of the books mentioned in the for- 
 going pages are to be found among 
 
 Winston's Illustrated Handy Classics 
 
 In no other edition are they to be had so 
 attractively made and at such a reasonable 
 price. For the convenience of readers the 
 volumes so far issued are listed on the follow- 
 ing pages, and further particulars may be 
 learned by writing to us. 
 
 Clear Type, Thin Good Paper, Compact Size 
 
 These beautiful books are printed in large, 
 clear type, but the volumes are of small size, 
 measuring only 4x6 inches. Fine, thin paper 
 permits a great number of pages per volume, 
 in a book which slips easily into the pocket. 
 
 Flexible Leather Binding, Fine Illustrations 
 
 Each volume is bound in genuine, flexible, 
 polished leather, with numerous new illustra- 
 tions especially drawn from the paintings of 
 the foremost artists. 
 
 Regular Price, 65 cents, postpaid, per volume 
 
 SEND 65 CENTS FOR A SAMPLE VOLUME 
 
WINSTON'S HANDY CLASSICS 
 
 AINSWORTH, H. 
 
 74 Windsor Castle 
 200 The Tower of London 
 228 Old St. Paul's 
 
 ANDERSEN, HANS 
 
 175 Fairy Tales 
 ARNOLD, MATTHEW 
 
 138 Poems 
 
 AURELIUS, MARCUS 
 
 82 The Meditations 
 
 AUSTEN, JANE 
 
 53 Sense and Sensibility 
 103 Pride and Prejudice 
 190 Emma 
 193 Mansfield Park 
 
 BACON, FRANCIS 
 
 167 Essays 
 BALZAC, HONORE DE 
 
 221 Old Father Goriot 
 BARHAM, REV. R. H. 
 
 71 The Ingoldsby Legends 
 BEACONSFIELD, LORD 
 
 183 Vivian Grey 
 BLACKMORE, R. D. 
 
 176 Lorna Doone 
 
 BRONTE, CHARLOTTE 
 
 7 Shirley 
 11 Jane Eyre 
 64 Villette 
 
 BRONTE, THE SISTERS 
 
 91 Agnes Grey, The Professor, and Poema 
 BROWNING, MRS. E. B. 
 
 67 Poems — Series I 
 
 127 Poems — Series II 
 
 BROWNING, ROBERT 
 156 Poems 
 
WINSTON'S HANDY CLASSICS 
 
 BUNYAN, JOHN 
 
 24 The Pilgrim's Progress 
 
 BURNS, ROBERT 
 164 Poems 
 
 CARLYLE, THOMAS 
 
 61 Heroes and Hero- Worship 
 109 Sartor Resartus 
 
 1 14 French Revolution — I 
 
 115 French Revolution — II 
 155 Past and Present 
 
 CARROLL, LEWIS 
 
 81 Alice in Wonderland 
 
 COLLINS, WILKIE 
 
 18 The Woman in White 
 20 No Name 
 130 The Moonstone 
 
 COOPER, FENIMORE 
 134 The Deerslayer 
 188 The Pathfinder 
 
 CRAIK, MRS. 
 
 5 John Halifax, Gentlemen 
 80 A Noble Life 
 137 A Life for a Life 
 
 DARWIN, CHARLES 
 
 69 Voyage of the Beagle 
 149 On the Origin of the Species 
 
 DAUDET, ALPHONSE 
 
 182 Tartarian of Tarascon 
 DE QUINCEY, THOMAS 
 
 75 The Confessions of an Opium Eater 
 DICKENS, CHARLES 
 
 1 David Copperfield 
 14 Great Expectations 
 29 Barnaby Rudge 
 33 Oliver Twist 
 
 35 A Tale of Two Cities 
 
 36 The Old Curiosity Shop 
 
 37 Nicholas Nickleby 
 
WINSTON'S HANDY CLASSICS 
 
 DICKENS, CHARLES (Continued) 
 
 38 Pickwick Papers 
 
 39 Sketches by Boz 
 
 40 Dombey and Son 
 
 41 American Notes 
 
 42 Hard Times 
 
 43 A Child's History of England 
 
 44 Christmas Books 
 
 45 Reprinted Pieces 
 
 46 Martin Chuzzlewit 
 
 47 Bleak House 
 
 48 Little Dorrit 
 
 49 Master Humphrey's Clock, etc. 
 
 50 Stories and Sketches 
 73 Our Mutual Friend 
 
 154 The Uncommercial Traveller 
 220 Edwin Drood 
 
 DODD, WILLIAM 
 
 169 The Beauties of Shakespeare 
 
 DUMAS, ALEXANDRE 
 
 62 The Three Musketeers 
 123 Twenty Years After 
 
 132 Count of Monte-Cristo (Vol. I) 
 
 133 Count of Monte-Cristo (Vol. II) 
 160 The Black Tulip 
 
 165 Marguerite de Valois 
 
 173 Vicomte de Bragelonne 
 
 178 Louise de Valliere 
 
 185 The Man in the Iron Mask 
 
 199 The Forty-five Guardsmen 
 
 206 Chicot the Jester 
 
 214 Le Chevalier de Maison Rouge 
 
 ELIOT, GEORGE 
 
 3 Adam Bede 
 13 The Mill on the Floss 
 19 Silas Marner 
 32 Scenes of Clerical Life 
 68 Romola 
 96 Felix Holt 
 
 223 Middlemarch— I 
 
 224 Middlemarch— II 
 
 EMERSON, R. W. 
 
 99 Essays and Representative Men 
 
WINSTON'S HANDY CLASSICS 
 
 GASKELL, MRS. 
 
 54 North and South 
 57 Cranford 
 186 Mary Barton 
 
 GOLDSMITH, OLIVER 
 
 94 The Vicar of Wakefield 
 GRIMM BROS. 
 
 143 Fairy Tales 
 
 HAWTHORNE, N. 
 
 17 The Scarlet Letter 
 
 28 The House of the Seven Gables 
 
 HOLMES, O. W. 
 
 59 The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table 
 92 The Professor at the Breakfast Table 
 
 113 The Poet at the Breakfast Table 
 
 124 Elsie Venner 
 
 HUGHES, THOMAS 
 
 8 Tom Brown's School Days 
 
 HUGO, VICTOR 
 
 128 The Hunchback of Notre Dame 
 
 142 Les Miserables 
 
 162 The Toilers of the Sea 
 
 202 Ninety-three 
 
 IRVING, WASHINGTON 
 
 107 The Sketch Book 
 
 KEATS, JOHN 
 179 Poems 
 KINGSLEY, CHARLES 
 4 Two Years Ago 
 6 Westward Ho! 
 86 Hypatia 
 
 89 Hereward the Wake 
 106 Alton Locke 
 
 108 The Heroes 
 161 Yeast 
 
 LAMB, CHARLES 
 
 56 The Essays of Elia 
 
WINSTON'S HANDY CLASSICS 
 
 LAMB, CHAS. AND MARY 
 
 76 Tales from Shakespeare 
 LEVER, CHARLES 
 
 148 Harry Lorrequer 
 
 LONGFELLOW, H. W. 
 65 Poems 
 
 LOVER, SAMUEL 
 
 60 Handy Andy 
 
 LYTTON, LORD 
 
 27 The Last of the Barons 
 55 The Last Days of Pompeii 
 
 77 Rienzi 
 87 Harold 
 
 126 The Caxtons 
 
 152 Eugene Aram 
 
 191 My Novel 
 
 204 Devereux 
 
 216 Night and Morning 
 
 229 Kenelm Chillingly 
 
 MACAULAY, LORD 
 
 118 Historical Essays 
 
 119 Miscellaneous Essays 
 
 MARRYAT, CAPTAIN 
 
 84 Mr. Midshipman Easy 
 
 195 The Children of the New Forest 
 
 MELVILLE, WHYTE 
 
 85 The Gladiators 
 105 The Interpreter 
 145 The Queen's Maries 
 
 196 Cerise 
 
 212 Kate Coventry 
 
 OLIPHANT, MRS. 
 
 102 Miss Majoribanks 
 PALGRAVE, F. T. 
 
 95 The Golden Treasury 
 POE. EDGAR ALLAN 
 
 201 Tales of Mystery and Imagination 
 
WINSTON'S HANDY CLASSICS 
 
 READE, CHARLES 
 
 9 It is Never Too Late to Mend 
 
 21 Cloister and the Hearth 
 52 Hard Cash 
 
 136 Peg Woffington and Christie Johnston 
 150 Love Me Little, Love Me Long 
 170 Put Yourself in His Place 
 
 231 Griffith Gaunt 
 
 RUSKIN, JOHN 
 
 70 Sesame and Lilies and the Political Economy 
 
 of Art 
 78 Unto This Last and The Two Paths 
 
 SCOTT, SIR WALTER 
 2 Kenilworth 
 12 The Talisman 
 
 22 Ivanhoe 
 58 Waverly 
 
 63 Heart of Midlothian 
 
 90 Old Mortality 
 101 Poems 
 
 112 Bride of Lammermoor 
 117 The Fair Maid of Perth 
 131 Guy Mannering 
 139 Rob Roy 
 153 The Monastery 
 157 The Abbot 
 163 The Antiquary 
 168 Red Gauntlet 
 174 Fortunes of Nigel 
 177 Woodstock 
 180 The Pirate 
 187 Quentin Durward 
 194 Peveril of the Peak 
 
 203 The Black Dwarf and Legend of Montrose 
 208 Anne of Geierstein 
 219 St. Ronan's Well 
 
 232 Castle Dangerous and the Surgeon's Daughter 
 
 SHAKESPEARE, WILLIAM 
 189 Tragedies 
 230 Comedies 
 
 SOUTHEY, ROBERT 
 
 111 The Life of Nelson 
 
WINSTON'S HANDY CLASSICS 
 
 TENNYSON, LORD 
 
 25 Poems 
 
 THACKERAY, W. M. 
 
 23 Henry Esmond 
 34 Vanity Fair 
 66 The Newcomes 
 83 The Virginians 
 
 120 Adventures of Philip 
 
 121 Pendennis 
 
 144 Yellowplush Papers 
 151 Four Georges 
 
 158 Christmas Books 
 171 Lovel the Widower 
 181 Barry Lyndon, etc. 
 184 The Book of Snobs 
 
 192 The Great Hoggarty Diamond 
 198 The Paris Sketch Book 
 205 The Irish Sketch Book 
 207 Roundabout Papers 
 
 TROLLOPE, ANTHONY 
 79 Barchester Towers 
 100 Framley Parsonage 
 147 Orley Farm 
 
 159 The Claverings 
 
 WOOD, MRS. HENRY 
 10 East Lynne 
 16 The Channings 
 
 26 Mrs. Halliburton's Troubles 
 30 Danesbury House 
 
 51 Verner's Pride 
 210 Lord Oakburn's Daughters 
 
 YONGE, C. M. 
 
 93 The Heir of Redclyffe 
 166 The Dove in the Eagle's Nest 
 213 A Book of Golden Deeds 
 
 THE JOHN C. WINSTON CO. 
 
 PUBLISHERS 
 1006-1016 Arch Street, Philadelphia, Pa.