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SHARING 
 MY NOTE BOOK 
 
 by 
 HAL W TROVILLION 
 
 TROVILLION PRIVATE PRESS 
 
 at the sign of the silver horse 
 
 HERRIN ILLINOIS USA 
 i960 
 
Copyright i960 
 Trovillion Private Press 
 
 first edition 
 
 Printed in London, Great Britain 
 By John Roberts Press Limited 
 

 CONTENTS 
 
 Page 
 
 HALF A CENTURY OF PUBLISHING . . . i 
 
 BY STROKE OF CIRCUMSTANCE .... 4 
 
 STORY OF A PINE 8 
 
 CONSIDER THE SUNDIAL 11 
 
 LARES AND PENATES 16 
 
 NO MORE DOGS 19 
 
 BELLS IN MY LIFE 23 
 
 TOBACCO 26 
 
 ONE OF MY FAVORITE WRITERS ... 30 
 
 VOYAGING TO NAPLES 33 
 
 WALKING IN WATERLOO PLACE .... 37 
 
 MENTAL CLIMATE OF CATHEDRALS . . 40 
 
 STORMY NIGHT ON THE LIZARD ... 42 
 
 SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY 46 
 
 IRRETRIEVABLE MOODS 56 
 
 PRAYERS 58 
 
 TAILCORN 62 
 
 A MAN, A KITTEN AND A STRING ... 64 
 
 THE UNBESTOWED BOOK 65 
 
 CONVERSATION IN UNDERPASS .... 67 
 
 YULETIDE IN MY TOWN 69 
 
 o 
 
 *J9 
 
CHARM OF THE OLD SOD 71 
 
 THE DOCTOR AND THE CHARWOMAN . 72 
 
 CHRIST AND SATAN IN HERRIN .... 73 
 
 HUNKYDORY, A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE 76 
 
 HOPE SPRINGS ETERNAL 78 
 
AN APERITIF FOR THE READER 
 
 Well ! we are all condamnes, as Victor Hugo says : we are all 
 under sentence of death but with a sort of indefinite re- 
 prieve - les hommes sont tons condamnes a mort avec des sursis 
 indefinis : we have an interval, and then our place knows 
 us no more. Some spend this interval in listlessness, some 
 in high passions, the wisest, at least, among "the children 
 of this world," in art and song. For our one chance lies in 
 expanding that interval, in getting as many pulsations as 
 possible into the given time. Great passions may give us 
 this quickened sense of life, ecstasy and sorrow of love, the 
 various forms of enthusiastic activity, disinterested or 
 otherwise, which come naturally to many of us. Only be 
 sure it is passion - that it does yield you this fruit of a 
 quickened, multiplied consciousness. Of this wisdom, the 
 poetic passion, the desire of beauty, the love of art for art's 
 sake, has most ; for art comes to you professing frankly to 
 give nothing but the highest quality to your moments as 
 they pass, and simply for those moment's sake. 
 
 -Walter Pater 
 
Reader, loe here a well-meaning Booke. I have proposed 
 unto myself no glory. Had my intention been to forestal 
 opinion and favour, I would surely have kept a more 
 grave and solemne march. My imperfections shall be read 
 to the life, and my naturall forme discerned. 
 
 -Montaigne 
 
TO THE PATIENT READER 
 
 This is the latest book from our press. It is the fifty-first title we 
 have written and printed in the fifty-one years we have been pub- 
 lishing books. The volume is similar to our recent book, Faces 
 and Places Remembered, which is now rapidly approaching 
 the out-of-print list. 
 
 The contents of this book are a sort of salmagundi. It consists 
 of many interesting and enlightening subjects - travel, friends, 
 flowers, gardens, lares and penates, and such worthwhile experi- 
 ences as eventuate in life's brief journey. 
 
 We trust our patrons who are familiar with our other books 
 will relish this volume for it offers a satisfying repast. As was 
 once said of Old Nicholas Breton's works, Sharing My Note 
 Book provides wholesome reading, "serving both to purge melan- 
 choly from the minds and gross humours from the body-pleasant 
 for youth, recreative for age, profitable for all and not hurtfull to 
 any". 
 
 This may be the last book to come from our press, now the oldest 
 in America. The road is now short, the sands are running low in 
 the hour-glass and soon comes the night. But in creating this book, 
 we are happy to have escaped the despondent mood in which Mark 
 Twain found himself in the concluding days of his book writing, 
 when he penned these lines : 
 
 " There ain't nothing more to write about, and lam rotten glad 
 of it, because if Vd a knowed what a trouble it was to make a 
 book, I wouldn't a tackled it, and ain't a-going to no more." 
 
 So we launch our little craft with the blessings once bestowed by 
 Wordsworth : 
 
 "Go forth, my little book! pursue thy way! 
 Go forth, and please the gentle and the good." 
 
 THATCHGOT 
 
 Herein, Illinois, U.S.A. Hal W. Trovillion 
 
 Autumn of 1 959 
 
HALF A CENTURY OF PUBLISHING 
 
 The year of nineteen hundred and fifty-eight marks 
 the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of Trovillion Pri- 
 vate Press. It is now the oldest such press in operation in 
 this country. The honor fell upon it ten years ago when 
 Edwin B. Hill of Tempe, Ariz., passed away after spend- 
 ing sixty-five years with his chosen hobby. He had retired 
 as editorial writer for the Detroit Journal before establish- 
 ing his press. 
 
 In the fall of 1904, I left Indiana University and came 
 to Herrin, 111., a fast booming, little town far down in 
 Southern Illinois in the newly developing coal mining re- 
 gion. Here I bought a little weekly newspaper and job 
 printing plant, both quite antiquated, and launched out 
 on the career for which I had prepared myself. 
 
 The printing and publishing business was not as rush- 
 ing as I had anticipated and I turned some of the idle 
 hours to putting out little pamphlets, brochures and such 
 of a literary nature. These were distributed among my 
 friends. Always at Christmas time, I issued some sort of a 
 greeting card or booklet. There was nothing commercial 
 about the project. It was always a labor of love, and in ex- 
 changing such ephemera with other publishers and 
 friends, I became much interested. I had read of private 
 presses and according to a noted English authority found 
 I was qualifying for such, conforming to the definition 
 which was put thus: 
 
 "For a press to be private, a double justification seems 
 to be necessary : the books it prints must not be obtain- 
 able by any chance purchaser who offers a price for them 
 and the owner must print for his own pleasure and not 
 work for hire for other people." 
 
SHARING MY NOTE BOOK 
 
 In 1908 I put out the first hard-bound book. It was en- 
 titled Thoughts from R. L. Stevenson, a collection of senti- 
 ments of my favorite writer. One hundred and four copies 
 were printed, numbered and signed, and distributed as 
 gifts to friends. 
 
 Under what trying hardships this first little cheerful 
 book was produced ! In between issues of getting out a 
 small weekly paper in a wild, booming mining town, with 
 a cursing foreman and a periodically drunken printer who 
 was always getting his unanchored, long, grease-spotted 
 necktie mixed in the fountain of dabby black ink, I man- 
 aged, as if by miracle, to bring to completion the first at- 
 tempt in real book-making. 
 
 This was the beginning of my private press as a hobby. 
 Today these books are scattered in the homes of friends 
 and acquaintances all over the world. The libraries at 
 Cambridge and Oxford Universities in England, Edin- 
 burgh University in Scotland, Tokyo University in Japan 
 and many of the college libraries in America can show 
 you some of these books. 
 
 For the first twenty-five years of operation, I distribut- 
 ed the books and brochures to friends and fellow crafts- 
 men with no thought of compensation. But the demand 
 became so great, I could not afford to continue, despite 
 the comforting reminder of the Apostle Paul that "God 
 loveth a cheerful giver". So in 1938, I put out my first 
 catalog, Books Beautiful, listing and pricing ten hard- 
 bound titles, and two brochures. This advertising brought 
 in some sales and helped to pay for the hand-made papers 
 I occasionally used and the binding and a few other ex- 
 penditures, but it never made a rich man out of the pub- 
 lisher - it partly paid off in praise, but surely not in 
 pudding. 
 
 I owe a debt of gratitude to many for the success (not 
 monetary success) that has been achieved. Two literary 
 friends gave me great encouragement and stand out above 
 the many - both now of blessed memory : William Marion 
 
HALF A CENTURY OF PUBLISHING 
 
 Reedy, editor of The Mirror, St. Louis, Mo.; the other 
 dear old Tom Mosher, maker of the famous Mosher 
 Books, Portland, Me. No one could read Reedy's Mirror 
 long without getting an unquenchable book-thirst. And 
 the monthly visitations of Moshefs Bibelot, came to me the 
 full two decades of its existence, keeping me enthused over 
 beautiful books, beautifully printed and filled with choice 
 selections. 
 
 In my search for old out-of-print gardening books in 
 England, I had the good fortune of meeting a number of 
 helpful people: John Johnson, printer to Oxford Univers- 
 ity; the librarian of Bodleian, Miss Eleanour Sinclair 
 Rohde, noted herbalist and author of several gardening 
 books ; and my faithful old friend, John Cowper Powys, 
 the Welsh writer. I was given assistance at the rare book 
 section of the British Museum, and I became well ac- 
 quainted with James Guthrie, poet, artist and founder of 
 England's oldest private press operating then. 
 
 The last title off the press is this you are reading. This 
 brings the total number of volumes to fifty-one, an aver- 
 age of a book a year. During the fifty years of operating, 
 countless brochures, pamphlets and ephemera have been 
 turned out. 
 
 There is a suspicion that attaches to the word private. 
 And when applied to a private press, it still suggests some- 
 thing sub rosa. Ofttimes a private press is refuge for ob- 
 scenity. However, my press has been kept clean and there 
 has never been anything published that I regret or would 
 like to withdraw. 
 
 More than half a century of publishing has been alto- 
 gether a very happy adventure. If there was any one 
 thing that kept me a devotee to literature and the making 
 of wholesome and beautiful books, it was the friendship of 
 encouraging writers, book editors, printers and fellow 
 private press operators. This has kept me happily and 
 faithfully wed to my favorite diversion. 
 
BY A STROKE OF CIRCUMSTANCE 
 
 The summer of 1904 found me spending my vacation 
 in Norris City, a village in White County, Illinois, where 
 I was born and reared. I had, sometime before, removed 
 my mother, recently a widow, and my two sisters to 
 Bloomington, Ind., where I was a student in the univers- 
 ity. Everyone in my little town was talking about the new 
 and rapidly growing city of Herrin over in Williamson 
 county, 111., some sixty miles west of my home town. A 
 very large seam of soft coal had been discovered in that 
 vicinity and large mines were being sunk. Many families 
 had removed there and found jobs, and all roads seem to 
 lead to Herrin. I decided that I would visit the place, 
 since I would be out of college in a few months and I was 
 seeking a place where I could get into newspaper work 
 for which I was preparing myself. 
 
 So I set off for this magic city, via Marion, the county 
 seat of Williamson county, in which Herrin was located. 
 I took an interurban car into the newly incorporated city 
 arriving about noon at the end of the line on Park Avenue. 
 It was the widest main street I had ever seen in that sec- 
 tion of the state, having a width of one hundred feet or 
 more. 
 
 I followed the crowd that got off the car. The streets 
 were not paved, but dusty as a much travelled country 
 road. The sidewalks were of cinders, some wooden and a 
 few concrete slabs were here and there. The buildings 
 were a conglomeration of "jerry-built" houses and re- 
 sembled a frontier settlement. The business places were 
 of all sorts, brick, concrete blocks, frame, lean-to-sheds 
 and an occasional canvass shelter with a sawdust floor. 
 There appeared to be austerity a plenty, and life as lived 
 here looked rugged. 
 
BY A STROKE OF CIRCUMSTANCE 
 
 There were among these pioneer surroundings many 
 smiling faces and everyone appeared to be busy. All this 
 hustle and bustle reminded me of a busy carnival being 
 hastily set up for a few days run. 
 
 I followed the crowd up the street, being likely the only 
 one who didn't know where he was going. In the window 
 of an upstairs office, my eye caught sight of a large plac- 
 ard sign. It read "The Herrin News, Printing and Pub- 
 lishing". That interested me very much, and so I climbed 
 the steps and entered the office. A youngish man was sit- 
 ting at a paper littered desk. His greeting was anything 
 but cordial, and as we made conversation I soon found 
 out why. He had just been defeated in an election to suc- 
 ceed himself as Socialist mayor of this booming little city. 
 That was not all. Only last week his daughter, who was 
 his typesetter and mainstay in putting out the little week- 
 ly paper, had eloped and married. So he had troubles and 
 every reason to be glum. 
 
 Looking around I sized up his meagre plant. It was 
 quite crude, old and not very productive looking. It had 
 been brought up a few years ago from a village in the hills 
 of Union county. There was nothing modern about it. I 
 knew a little about printing equipment, but more about 
 the editorial end of the publishing business than the me- 
 chanical. I had for two years been college editor of the 
 Bloomington (Indiana) Daily Telephone, besides con- 
 nected with the Daily Student paper at the university. 
 
 We discussed the promise of Herrin and he stressed the 
 importance of his little paper, the only one there, and 
 painted a rather bright prospect. Then he proposed that 
 here was just the opportunity for me to launch my 
 journalistic career. 
 
 Half an hour later, I retraced my steps down the stairs 
 to the street to continue my sizing up of this ambitious 
 little city. In my pocket I had an option to buy The Her- 
 rin News, lock, stock and barrel, signed by the owner and 
 sole editor, Charles E. Ingraham. As earnest money, he 
 
SHARING MY NOTE BOOK 
 
 had my dollar down payment to bind the contract. 
 
 Now I really became intensely interested in thoroughly 
 analyzing and summing up this youthful city and its 
 future possibilities. I was so interested that I almost forgot 
 the matter of lunch. So I set out on the hunt for an eating 
 place. There were very few, none appeared in the least 
 inviting. They were sort of "hash joints", but I had to eat, 
 so I overlooked all objections and finally satisfied my 
 hunger. 
 
 Most of the afternoon was spent in finding a place to 
 put up for the night. There were a few lodging signs dis- 
 played in resident windows of little homes, but they were 
 places where I would hesitate to stay for the night. Final- 
 ly, a nice lady at the Karnes House, after much conversa- 
 tion, took me in, agreeing that I might have the room 
 occupied by the superintendent of one of the mines. He 
 was away for a week. It was a new building and the smell 
 of turpentine and paint kept me from sleeping for quite 
 a while. 
 
 Having arranged quarters for the evening, I set out to 
 see the night life of this new and raw city. From what I 
 had already observed, I was rather a bit fearful of the 
 adventure, since I knew no one, and all was strange and 
 unknown to me. The stores closed their doors around 
 eight that evening. All the life and action of the city was 
 then confined to the saloons. The night was theirs. They 
 outnumbered any other businesses three or four to one. 
 These places were filled with noisy, riotous crowds and 
 occasionally a sprinkle of toping women. Many strange 
 tongues were heard. With the influx of workmen from 
 other mining sections there were laborers from Wales, 
 Scotland, England and the mining regions of Europe. 
 The largest group was Italian that came from the pro- 
 vince of Lombardy in northern Italy. 
 
 The saloon was an institution with which I had never 
 become familiar. I do not recall that I was ever in a 
 saloon up to that time. I was certain that I was not going 
 
 
BY A STROKE OF CIRCUMSTANCE 
 
 to venture into one now, and especially where I would 
 not know a single soul I should see there. So I satisfied my 
 curiosity by quietly passing by their noisy doors and en- 
 during for a few moments the smell of the brew and re- 
 minding myself that I must surely be in the clear before 
 the "pouring out" and "throwing out" hour came which 
 was usually close to midnight. 
 
 Thus ended my first busy day of the discovery of Her- 
 rin. I had now much to think about by having made this 
 little visit. I did some very serious thinking. My decision 
 would determine my future. Sizing up the situation, it 
 looked as if opportunity had knocked at my door. And I 
 was reminded that it knocks but once, according to the 
 old adage. Here I was within a few months of being grad- 
 uated from the university. I was familiar with the stories 
 written by "Holy Horatio" Alger. I was a believer in 
 Theodore Roosevelt's "Strenuous Life". I was full of 
 courage and felt venturesome. It all summed up that now 
 was the time and here the place to launch my chosen 
 career. 
 
 These matters were weighing heavily on my mind 
 when I dropped off to sleep on my first night spent in 
 Herrin. They were with me when I awakened in the 
 morning. I thought what a contrast this mad, noisy, rush- 
 ing place was to the pretty little university city where my 
 mother was living. It was filled with cultured people who 
 dwelt in beautiful homes that lined the paved clean 
 streets with their landscaped terraces and shaded 
 grounds. 
 
 Just what would my mother say when I broke the news 
 to her? These matters were all finally settled, although 
 tears were shed back in Indiana. But thanks to the Master 
 Pilot who guides our ship of life in safe channels, I reached 
 a decision and cast my lot in the spectacular city of Her- 
 rin. Here I have lived for many happy years surviving 
 their numerable bloody and perilous periods. 
 
THE STORTOFA PINE 
 
 The Bard of Avon tells us about "finding tongues in 
 trees, books in running brooks, sermons in stones, and good 
 in everything". Trees come into a person's life more than 
 many realize. The poet reminds us that "the trees were 
 God's first temples". There is such a thing as tree-worship, 
 and it is found among the very earliest records we have. 
 Not only is it among the early forms of ritual worship, but 
 one of the last to pass before the growth of Christianity. 
 
 This is just a story of a pine tree, a blue spruce, Picea 
 pungens kosteri, to be botanically exact. Of all the varieties 
 of the pine family, I have long favored this species of 
 spruce. It is one of that group of the "grand triad with the 
 apple and oak", and stands out as an aristocrat in any 
 well landscaped garden. Some rank it as the most famous 
 ornamental in the world. Of course, that is a matter of 
 opinion. The poet, Blake, once wrote that "A fool sees not 
 the same tree that a wise man sees". 
 
 The family of picea to which the spruce belongs is an 
 illustrious one. Its wood has been regarded as precious. In 
 ages past, it has served as pillars and beams of princes' 
 houses, palaces, and temples. The wood is moth and 
 worm resistant. It has many virtues that have made it a 
 chosen tree for ornamental planting. 
 
 Furthermore, Koster's blue spruce is genuinely Amer- 
 ican. The original tree sprang from seeds gathered in the 
 Rocky Mountains. They were sent to the Zurich Botani- 
 cal Gardens in Switzerland, thence to Koster's Nursery in 
 Holland. Among a little batch of seedlings, an intensely 
 blue one stood out over all others. Its possibilities were at 
 once realized, and this one plant was carefully guarded 
 and propagated. From it came the true Koster spruce we 
 see today. 
 
 8 
 
THE STORY OF A PINE 
 
 Such a tree, with its twin-like mate, made its advent at 
 Thatchcot a few days after Harding and Coolidge were 
 nominated as Republican candidates for president and 
 vice-president respectively in the summer of 1920. These 
 trees were planted in the front lawn. The one beside our 
 house was christened Koster Harding, and the other, in 
 my mother's yard next door, she named Koster Coolidge. 
 There they stood brave and bold like attentive guards. In 
 the springtime when clad in their silver blue uniforms, 
 they looked like soldiers at attention, ramrod erect, fit and 
 ready for any emergency and engladdening all their sur- 
 roundings. They were very attractive. Once a redbird 
 chose to nest in one of them. 
 
 Following a severe winter, spring came tripping into 
 the garden again and found Koster Harding looking 
 rather sickly. Instead of arraying itself in the customary 
 silver blue, it now wore a shaggy coat of rusty brown, and 
 gave unmistakable signs that its days were limited. 
 Neither the hours of beautiful sunshine nor the refreshing 
 cooling moonlight nights revived it. One could plainly see 
 that it was a doomed tree. Finally the executioner ap- 
 peared with the shining, keen-edged ax and laid the tree 
 low. It was dragged off to the compost pile to start on 
 another cycle of existence. 
 
 The passing of the tree made us all very sad. The vac- 
 ant spot was a constant reminder that sooner or later all 
 things, both good and bad, must come to an end. It gave 
 my mother much concern. Being Kentucky-born and 
 reared, and filled with folklore traditions, she interpreted 
 the death of the tree as a sign of bad luck. 
 
 The incident brought to mind a prediction she had 
 made a long time ago when, on a quiet night, there was 
 a loud crash heard in the house. The next morning we 
 discovered that a large framed picture of President Mc- 
 Kinley had fallen to the floor and showered the room with 
 glass. 
 
 * 'That's a sign of bad luck; something terrible is going 
 
SHARING MY NOTE BOOK 
 
 to happen," she commented as she cleaned up the mess 
 and rolled up the crumpled lithograph of our beloved 
 president. 
 
 Her prediction did not go amiss. That afternoon when 
 I picked up the evening paper, heavy black headlines 
 told of the assassination of President McKinley. 
 
 And now my soothsaying mother had predicted that ill 
 fate would follow the death of Koster Harding. Strange it 
 is to admit that what followed involved another president 
 of our country. For only a short time after the passing of 
 this tree, there came the tragic and shocking news of the 
 death of President Harding after whom my pine had been 
 named. 
 
 10 
 
CONSIDER THE SUNDIAL 
 
 Of all the shrines and ornaments that are intro- 
 duced into the garden, none appears to fit in so perfectly 
 as the sundial. Old world gardens usually have a sundial. 
 Not long ago, I placed one in our grounds and mounted 
 it on an old millstone. It stood at a corner close by the 
 street where children who passed on their way to school 
 stopped to marvel at it, for many of them had never seen 
 a sundial. It continues to be a source of unending interest, 
 although the gnomon that casts the shadow has to be fre- 
 quently replaced. The children like to tinker with it and 
 ofttimes the gnomon is broken off. 
 
 There is a close relationship between garden and sun- 
 dial. They belong together, for they are both under the 
 supreme command of Old Sol. The poet sings :- 
 "He makes the garden grow; 
 He makes the sundial go." 
 
 The story of the sundial is old as well as long and ro- 
 mantic. It is referred to in the Bible, Isaiah 38:8. 
 
 "Behold, I will bring again the shadow of the degrees, 
 which is gone down in the sundial of Ahaz, ten degrees 
 backward. So the sun returned ten degrees, by which de- 
 grees it was gone down." 
 
 The Greeks knew about the sundial, and Rome was 
 using it three centuries before Christ. It was keeping time 
 for England when the Conqueror crossed the Channel. 
 Not until 1288 was it beginning to be displaced in Lon- 
 don, when Westminster put up its first clock. 
 
 Sundials located on standard meridian clock time, 
 which is known as mean time, and dial time or apparent 
 time, agree only four times a year; April 15, June 14, 
 September 1, and December 25. 
 
 11 
 
SHARING MT MOTE BOOK 
 
 It was well into the early i 700's before the clock gave 
 sure promise of being accepted over sundial time; even 
 then the sundial was still regarded as the most depend- 
 able, and generally the clocks were checked by it. In 
 Shakespeare's day, the clock, still imperfected, was much 
 of a joke. In his Love's Labour's Lost, Biron says: 
 "I seek a wife I 
 
 A woman that is like a German clock, 
 
 Still a-repairing; ever out of frame; 
 
 And never going aright, being a watch, 
 
 And being watch? d that it may still go right!" 
 The sundial is more at home in the garden than any- 
 where else in the world. That is what Charles Lamb 
 thought. He pays a touching tribute to it in his lovely 
 essay on the Old Benchers : 
 
 "It stood as the garden god of Christian gardens," he 
 wrote. "Why is it almost everywhere vanished? If its bus- 
 iness use be suspended by more elaborate inventions, its 
 moral uses, its beauty, might have pleaded for its contin- 
 uance. It spoke of moderate labors, of pleasures not pro- 
 tracted after sunset, of temperance and good hours. It was 
 the primitive clock, the horologe of the first world. Adam 
 could scarce have missed it in Paradise. It was the meas- 
 ure appropriate for sweet plants and flowers to spring by, 
 for the birds to apportion their silver warblings by, for 
 flocks to pasture and be led to fold by. The shepherd 
 'carved it out quaintly in the sun,' and turning philoso- 
 pher by the very occupation, provided it with mottoes 
 more touching than tombstones." 
 
 For those romantically inclined, there is a world of 
 legend connected with the sundial. Many a death-bed 
 request asked that the sundial mark their last resting 
 place in God's acre as a symbol of life eternal. It is record- 
 ed that Sir William Temple ordered that his heart should 
 be put in a silver box and buried beneath the sundial in 
 his beautiful garden of which he wrote such elegant essays. 
 If you should ever be traveling in the south of Old Ire- 
 
 12 
 
 
CONSIDER THE SUNDIAL 
 
 land, you will find sundials in the graveyards, ofttimes 
 attached to the tombstones. On some the gnomon is miss- 
 ing. Priests' visits being rare in those sections, the be- 
 trothed sometimes placed their fingers in the empty holes 
 that held the gnomon, and in the presence of witnesses, 
 pledged marriage. Later came the good priest and did the 
 job legally in form. So goes the strange tradition. 
 
 In our own history it is recorded that George Washing- 
 ton carried a pocket dial instead of a watch. Benjamin 
 Franklin was a lover of the sundial. Two inscriptions on 
 our currency come from sundial mottoes : "Fugio," mean- 
 ing "I fly," and "Mind your own business." Both are 
 attributed to Franklin. 
 
 The real charm of the sundial, however, is in the motto 
 it bears. Some of these mottoes are sermons in miniature; 
 preachments, advising, warning, reminding, and usually 
 comforting all of the 'passingers' who chance to stroll by. 
 Communion with dial-mottoes is an Enoch's walk for any 
 person. 
 
 A few years ago, while gathering mottoes, I compiled a 
 collection and printed them in a book entitled Sundial in 
 Our Garden. This little book has given pleasure and spirit- 
 ual comfort to many of its readers, and because of it there 
 probably now are more sundials in gardens. 
 
 Choosing a satisfying and inspiring motto for one's sun- 
 dial is an interesting pastime. A little while back, I visited 
 many old gardens in England, Scotland, Ireland, and up 
 into Sweden before making a choice of a motto to go on 
 the base of the armillary dial I had bought in Stockholm. 
 Finally I came upon this serious admonition on an age- 
 stained dial found in an old garden in the quiet village of 
 Sundridge near Sevenoaks, in Kent, not far from London : 
 It read : 
 
 "Tet a little while is the light with you; walk while ye have 
 the light: 1 
 
 As visitors stroll through the garden and read these 
 wise words of warning, the motto serves to test their Bibli- 
 
 13 
 
SHARING MY MOTE BOOK 
 
 cal knowledge. Many church-going people are unable to 
 identify the source of the quotation, and when informed 
 that it is the words of the Saviour and are found in John 
 12:35, they plainly show embarrassment. 
 
 Two sundials grace the garden here at Thatchcot. 
 They are of different types. The first one we procured 
 was placed on the terrace just outside the garden wall, 
 where stands a historic marker dedicated to George 
 Rogers Clark and his little band of braves who passed 
 this way in June of 1 778 on their way to capture Kaskas- 
 kia from the British. This dial is of the type usually seen 
 in this country. It is mounted atop a worn old millstone 
 that, in the early days, was used in a water-operated grist 
 mill. It has a vertical gnomon which casts the shadow on 
 the plate base that is marked off in hour figures. To those 
 who pause to read, it says : "The sunshine hours I tell." 
 
 The other sundial has a more prominent place in the 
 garden. It is the armillary or spherical type, with several 
 bands forming a globe design, such as was usually seen in 
 old world gardens centuries ago. 
 
 I came upon this beautiful solvisare, as the Swedish call 
 it in their language, in an ironmonger's shop in Stock- 
 holm. It is handmade of hammered copper, with beauti- 
 ful workmanship, and had just won an award in an ex- 
 position of handicraft metal work that was held in 
 Sweden that year. 
 
 I was so proud to find such an artistic model that it was 
 given an honored placement in the garden, basing it on a 
 granite pedestal built up some two feet, thereby lifting the 
 sundial clear and prominently above the growing ever- 
 greens grouped around its base. The capstone bears my 
 bookplate inscription, "Time Tryeth Troth". On the 
 front side is cemented a small serpentine Celtic cross from 
 Cornwall. 
 
 The motto on the face of the pedestal is framed with 
 small rocks picked up in far away places. Some of them 
 from the native country of the solvisare were found in little 
 
 H 
 
 
CONSIDER THE SUNDIAL 
 
 quiet towns strung along the Gota canal ; from the shores 
 of Saltsjobaden ; from the Rock of Cashel in Tipperary 
 county ; and one from Blarney Castle. Others were gath- 
 ered from famous shrines and noted places throughout 
 England, all the way from Land's End to Lossiemouth in 
 the north of Scotland, and from the Vale of Avon in the 
 south of Ireland. This collection forms a small "Cairn of 
 Remembrance", and gives friendly berth to the dial 
 brought from distant shores. 
 
 There is romance aplenty, and devotion and nourish- 
 ment for the soul, too, in a sundial, wherever it may be 
 found. It provokes the most serious thoughts, and stands 
 as a symbol of eternity - giving one visions of the angel 
 with the inverted torch ; the bent, old man approaching 
 with his inevitable scythe ; and the sand glass running low ; 
 all reminders, as the dial-motto so often warns, that "Life 
 is fleeting, Death is sure", and that along with the many 
 duties of earthly dwelling, we should "Learn to live and 
 be ready to die". 
 
 *5 
 

 LARES AND PENATES 
 
 These titular words were meaningless to me until a 
 little while ago when I was thumbing through that won- 
 derful set of the New Oxford Dictionary. Then I learned 
 that my house, as well as every other house, was literally 
 filled with lares and penates. No, I am not going to tell 
 about termites which are also found about most houses 
 these days. Lares and penates, words used together, are de- 
 fined as the guardian deities of the household. They were 
 the household gods of the ancient Romans. The lares and 
 penates at Thatchcot are legion almost. 
 
 The first view one gets of Thatchcot is a curious device 
 mounted on the stone chimney breast. It is a bow piece of 
 a gondola, commonly called ferro, meaning in Italian iron. 
 The real name is palamento. It is a hatchet-like blade from 
 the bow of the little gondolas that busily ply the waters of 
 the Grand Canal in Venice. The one I have is more than 
 130 years old. It laid on the bottom of the sea for more 
 than a century. It is dated by the fact that it has only five 
 teeth, or broche, projecting outward. Each tooth repre- 
 sents a borough of the ancient city of Venice. More than 
 a century ago another borough was added which called 
 for the addition of another tooth in the ferro. 
 
 On a visit to Venice many years ago, I had my first 
 thrilling and romantic moonlight trip in a gondola. Some- 
 how I became fascinated with the ferro, as many others 
 do. I later chose it as a good device for a bookplate and 
 adopted it as a printer's mark and frequently use it in the 
 colophon for the books I have printed. 
 
 A little while ago, the son of the English artist, who 
 designed and cut the block for my bookplate, sent me the 
 ferro which is now mounted on the side of the chimney. 
 He was residing in Venice and his gondolier told him of 
 
 16 
 
LARES AJVD PENATES 
 
 this rare, old ferro that had been hauled up from its cent- 
 ury's sleep beneath the sea. 
 
 Among my lares, this ferro is a good conversation piece. 
 It has romance and plenty of appeal to the imagination. 
 To my astonishment, I discovered not long ago, that I 
 was not the only person whose interest had been aroused 
 by this unique bow piece. Mark Twain once wrote his 
 daughter about the^rro which had aroused his curiosity. 
 Here is a part of his letter sent the curious, inquiring 
 daughter; Clara Clemens Gabrilowitsch : 
 
 ''Well, Dear, 'I done my best,' I examined two ency- 
 clopedias and the Century Dictionary, then examined the 
 Astor library - but all to no purpose ; none had a word to 
 say about the origin of the blade that is on the bow of the 
 gondola. However, the Century says that the thing is 
 there for a distinct purpose ; to tell the gondolier whether 
 his little black cabin can go under doubtful objects (low 
 arches, etc.), or whether it can't - the top of the blade 
 corresponds with the top of the cabin. The blade is the 
 blade of a halberd. Originally somebody chopped off the 
 staff of a halberd to the proper length and stuck it on the 
 bow of his gondola to serve as a gauge ; others observed 
 that it was ornamental as well as useful and adopted it." 
 
 There are various and numerous lares in my garden, 
 but once in the house, there one finds his fill. In the front 
 door is a small leaded glass section that recalls the terrific 
 bombing that England suffered in World War II. One is 
 a section of blue glass that was bombed out of a church 
 far down in Penzance, Cornwall. Then there is a beauti- 
 fully designed green leaf section that came out of the fine 
 old cathedral in the much bombed city of Coventry. It 
 was presented to me by the bishop. These are possessions 
 that recall many sad memories. 
 
 In the little room we have just entered, a sort of vesti- 
 bule, is one of the most cherished of all lares I have. It 
 constantly refreshes my admiration and happy memories 
 of my favorite author, Robert Louis Stevenson. 
 
 17 
 
SHARING MT NOTE BOOK 
 
 When Mrs. Stevenson passed away in 19 14 in Monte- 
 cito, California, twenty years after her husband had died 
 in Samoa, Isobel Strong, her daughter, came into posses- 
 sion of R.L.S.'s library and his many literary treasures. 
 They were consigned for sale to the Anderson Galleries in 
 New York. I bid on several things and procured two items 
 which I am proud to possess, and cherish to this day. 
 
 The choicest is a little chest which the natives rudely 
 constructed for R.L.S., and presented to him when he 
 went on a cruise of the South Sea Islands accompanied by 
 his wife, his mother, and R.L.S.'s stepson, Lloyd Os- 
 bourne. The chest is made of white cedar with crude 
 brass joints and hinges. It is now serving me as a deposit- 
 ory for many letters, pamphlets and oddments relating to 
 Stevenson. 
 
 Another cherished memento that I bought at the sale 
 is an etching of an English country estate. It is in a cur- 
 ious cross-bar frame made of innumerable small pieces of 
 cork, giving it a very oldish appearance, and quite in 
 keeping with the picture. On the lower left corner appears 
 the signature, "A. W. Henley". This picture for many 
 years has hung just above the desk at which I type my 
 letters. 
 
 The signature aroused my curiosity. I knew that Wil- 
 liam E. Henley was one of Stevenson's bosom friends. I 
 had been corresponding with Lloyd Osbourne in London, 
 and I ventured to inquire of him, if he remembered the 
 picture and who might be the artist. Very promptly came 
 this reply from Mr. Osbourne: 
 
 "All that I can remember of the picture you describe is 
 that there was such a picture. A. W. Henley - Anthony - 
 was W. E. Henley's brother. I remember him as a sad and 
 unsuccessful man, but very likeable." 
 
 These two choice mementoes of Stevenson occupy a 
 secure place in my home here at Thatchcot. They are an 
 unfailing source of pleasure to me as well as to my friends 
 and visitors who enjoy seeing them. 
 
 18 
 
 , 
 
NO MORE DOGS 
 
 No, there will be no more dogs at Thatchcot. This 
 was a decision reached many years ago. 
 
 The little Scottie pup with a neat trim head like that of 
 a young fox, looked up and rolled her pretty, begging 
 brown eyes, and the resolution so faithfully made and so 
 religiously kept all of these years vanished completely. 
 
 We had another dog before we realized it. Bonnie Lass 
 we christened her. The daughter brought her just as 
 spring came traipsing north again, handing the dog to the 
 mother with almost the caress due a bambino. A big plac- 
 ard about her neck announced, "I am your valentine; 
 hope you like me." 
 
 Bonnie Lass soon took over at Thatchcot. She meshed 
 her life into ours. In no time she was mistress of the entire 
 household. She took charge of the big yard and all of the 
 big trees in it. She gradually assumed jurisdiction of all 
 her surroundings, lifting her complaining voice when the 
 postman made his rounds, when the paper boy rattled by 
 on his wheel, and when the garbage man passed down the 
 alley in his chugging and snorting old car. She was both 
 king and queen, judge and jury, lord as well as lady of the 
 manor. Her abusive damnations irritated not a few, but 
 to us she was always rightfully in her domain. 'If you love 
 us, then you must love and tolerate our Bonnie,' became 
 almost a requirement of our guests, and we usually backed 
 her up in all of her noisy carrying on. 
 
 Then we went away for a few days. At our hotel one 
 morning a letter came from home. We opened it glee- 
 fully, hoping to read good news. Bonnie had passed away 
 under the vet's knife. What we hoped would be a simple 
 operation for a growth that had developed on her shapely 
 little neck, proved to be a string of tumors. 
 
 19 
 
SHARING MY MOTE BOOK 
 
 Not for years had we so painfully and tearfully choked 
 down as tasteless a breakfast as we did that sad morning. 
 What thoughts flooded our mind as we recalled the many 
 happy days we had lived together! Bonnie, the first to 
 greet us when we came home; the last to watch us go; 
 never forgetting, always forgiving. Who now would lie 
 guard at the bathroom door while we shaved and then 
 escort us, like a sentry, to the breakfast table each morn- 
 ing? 
 
 Twice we had caressed her pretty little head with a 
 farewell pat and then went sailing away to distant shores, 
 and each time she lifted her pretty face understandingly 
 and seemed to bid us Godspeed and a safe and early re- 
 turn. In distant lands we had thought of her ; thought of 
 her in the dark of night in mid-ocean as the mate on 
 watch broke the silence with his call of bells and his song- 
 ful "all's well". And every time we saw a dog of her breed 
 on foreign soil, it gave us a spell of homesickness. And 
 when we came sailing home, she was the most excited to 
 see us, wagging her cute black tail and lolling her red 
 tongue out for joy. 
 
 A volume could be easily written of this little Scottie 
 that dwelled so long and so happily at Thatchcot. Those 
 who belong to the great circle of dog-lovers will under- 
 stand. 
 
 No, we will never have another dog. They are too hard 
 to give up. But this is what we said when a professor once 
 brought to us Old Tarn O'Shanter, the Airedale, that 
 grieved himself to death when we went away on a long 
 trip. 
 
 We said it when little Trenchwire, a wire-haired fox 
 terrier, placed out on a farm, was mistaken for a mad dog 
 and shot. Again we said "no more dogs" when the pretty 
 Samoyed died of worry one hot August day. Southern 
 Illinois heat was too much for this native of the frozen 
 Siberia. 
 
 There may be some dog somewhere that might replace 
 
 20 
 
 
NO MORE DOGS 
 
 Bonnie in our hearts and home, but of that we cannot just 
 now be at all sure. Henri Murger in his book, "The Latin 
 Quarter", has Rudolphe, the poet, striving to sympathize 
 with the artist, Jacques, who bitterly mourns the death of 
 little Francine - 
 
 "You will be kissing her on another's lips," says 
 Rudolphe. 
 
 "Ah, if only I could meet with a girl like that," retorts 
 sad Jacques. 
 
 We have our doubts in our present mood of ever meet- 
 ing again with a dog like Bonnie. She was a bonnie buddy. 
 Nine years with any sort of living creature as a constant 
 companion makes it a part of one, and so a man's love for 
 his dog sends out tendrils, entangling his heart strings, 
 and like a climbing vine, cling there for a lifetime. 
 
 If there be anything in some philosophers' teachings 
 that when the life of a dumb animal passes out, it may 
 reappear in human form, what an ungrateful creature we 
 would be to let our love for Bonnie go unsung ! Even for- 
 giving as she was, this would be too much for her to bear. 
 
 Silly thing, isn't it, to spend so much time, space, type, 
 paper and ink to write our admiration for a small dog 
 with four little pattering feet, two little ears that easily 
 pricked up, and a pretty head that tossed so coquettishly 
 when she was addressed ? But love of man for beast is a 
 queer thing and plays many quirks. 
 
 A book was put out a little while ago, bearing the title 
 "All Dogs Go To Heaven." If that be true, then Bonnie 
 surely made it. We will just have to think of her as having 
 gone "up stairs", but this time she'll never come down 
 again, and that is the sad part of the pretending. And 
 should she appear "at the gate at the end of things", as all 
 living creatures must in time, and there scratch for admis- 
 sion at the pearly portal that leads into the city whose 
 streets are paved with gold, then we have this tip to give 
 to Old Saint Peter - stand by and give her wide berth and 
 let her pass in unmolested, for she comes out of an excited, 
 
 21 
 
SHARING MY NOTE BOOK 
 
 impatient, and mad world. Yes, don't question her, but 
 bestow upon her your blessings, for she has been an 
 honest little soul and she brought down to us here on 
 earth a little bit of heaven for awhile - and if you don't 
 let her in, if you don't, mind you, she'll nip you in the 
 ankle just as sure as there's a hell below you. 
 
 No, we say it again, we'll never have another dog at 
 Thatchcot - not unless we again change our minds. 
 
 Well, you can't always sometimes tell. We did change 
 our mind. Little Bambi, the Chihuahua, later became 
 mistress of Thatchcot, believe it or not. 
 
 22 
 
BELLS LN MY LIFE 
 
 It was not until I joined that select little group of 
 bell collectors, known as the American Bell Association, 
 that I realized how great a part bells play in our everyday 
 life. Their voices, sometimes sweet, sometimes sad, are in 
 our ears morning, noon and night. From our days as 
 babes-in-arms until the pallid messenger appears with the 
 inverted torch to summon us to our long sleep, the sound 
 of bells is heard. 
 
 The bell has long served as a voice of warning. It was 
 on duty before steam gave utterance to the whistle, or the 
 motor car alerted. The restless wave-rocked bell buoys 
 that warn the ships caught in a wild sea, and the exciting 
 clang of the fire engine rushing to save life and property, 
 are all in the province of the bell. It speaks a universal 
 tongue on land and on sea. It is among man's most duti- 
 ful and useful servants and it is ever at his command. 
 
 Inspired by the bells, how beautifully the poets have 
 sung of them ! Thomas Moore thought of 
 
 "Those evening bells! those evening bells! 
 How many a tale their music tells, 
 Of youth and home and that sweet time 
 When last I heard their soothing chime." 
 Another poet who dwelt on the Auld Sod, Father 
 Prout, sang of the bells of Shandon in pretty rhymes : 
 " With deep affection and recollection 
 I often think on those Shandon bells, 
 Whose sounds so wild would, in days of childhood, 
 Fling round my cradle their magic spells.''' 
 Tennyson connected bells with death: 
 "Twilight and evening bell, 
 And after that the dark!" 
 
 23 
 
SHARING MY NOTE BOOK 
 
 In his famous Elegy, Gray mentions the bell in the 
 opening lines, 
 
 "The curfew tolls the knell of parting day." 
 In my mind I hold many pleasant pictures envisioned 
 by the sound of ringing bells. I believe I have enjoyed 
 their music more on distant soil than on my own. Charles 
 Lamb reminds us that the sound of bells is the ''music 
 nighest bordering on heaven". 
 
 I recall a romantic evening I spent in a quiet Cornish 
 fishing settlement where the music of the bells rang out 
 from the old gray steeple so clearly on the balmy air of the 
 night as the stars looked down with a thousand twinkling 
 eyes. Again vividly comes to mind a sojourn in an old 
 Italian village in Lombardy. The bells in the piazza were 
 the commanding voice of the town. Early in the morning, 
 at noon and at eventide, they spoke from their lofty 
 tower, high above the huddled little gray homes of the 
 God-fearing peasants. 
 
 In a cathedral town far down in western England, I 
 once heard those "sweet evening bells" ring out at twi- 
 light in an old world garden filled with sweet fragrances 
 as the kind old Bishop took me on an Enoch's walk just as 
 the peal of the bells struck up and reverberated across the 
 meadows from the green copper spires miles away, re- 
 minding me of Poe's golden bells : 
 
 " What a world of happiness their harmony foretells, 
 Through the balmy air of night 
 How they ring out their delight." 
 Byron tells of probably the most welcome bells, dearest 
 to both ear and heart: 
 
 "That softening, overpowering knell, 
 The tocsin of the soul - the dinner bell" 
 In most of the homes there is another bell, unique and 
 full of surprises. It is the bell that a modern poet has 
 spoken of: 
 
 "Doorbells are like a magic game 
 Or the grab-bag at the fair - 
 
 24 
 
BELLS IN MY LIFE 
 
 Tou never know when you hear one 
 Who may be waiting there" 
 
 In many lands and on many occasions I have listened 
 to bells. They have put me in various moods. Usually 
 they have brought good tidings and happy thoughts. But 
 there are bells that I have travelled miles away and over 
 rough and sickening seas to hear. But their peals never 
 fell upon my ears. These are the traditional bells in the 
 steeples of the one hundred and forty churches of the vil- 
 lages of the lost land of the Lyonnesse which according to 
 legend, went to the bottom of the sea in that fateful year, 
 1099. And even to this day, the honest, patient blue-eyed 
 fishermen off Land's End and the Scillys declare that the 
 bells ring out to them clearly, as they pass over these wild 
 waters. 
 
 But of all to which I have listened, on land and on sea, 
 in village, city or in the countryside, the bells that I would 
 like most to hear ring, the same bells that all of the world 
 now stands wearily waiting to hear, are the bells that 
 Lord Tennyson spoke of, the bells that will 
 "Ring out the thousand wars of old, 
 Ring in the thousand years of peace." 
 
 25 
 
TOBACCO 
 
 A young man's use of tobaggo in my early boy- 
 hood was put down as a sinful practice. It was a live, pub- 
 lic issue in many communities, and was kept so by the 
 churches here in the North and aided by the Anti Cigar- 
 ette League. The fight was as fierce and bitter as the 
 liquor movement in the hectic days of the Volstead Act. 
 
 I grew up in a quiet little village. It was settled by 
 people from the tobacco country of Kentucky, Tennessee 
 and the Carolinas. They had been born to the custom of 
 tobacco, and for its use, they offered no apology. It was 
 to them natural to use tobacco in its various ways. 
 
 Really, I should be a devoted patron of Lady Nicoti- 
 ana, but I am not. I could claim to have inherited a love 
 for "the weed", as it was often referred to. My grand- 
 mother smoked a clay pipe; my mother "dipped" snuff, 
 using a brush made of hickory bark; and my father was a 
 slave to the habit. He smoked; he chewed; and he virtu- 
 ally ate the stuff. The long and constant use of tobacco 
 soon affected his nerves, and eventually brought about a 
 condition that helped to hasten his death. He battled the 
 habit for many years, finally resorting to the popular 
 treatment known then as the Gold Cure, at five dollars a 
 bottle. Watching his struggle, and witnessing the long 
 losing fight he made, led me to shun the use of tobacco in 
 any form. 
 
 I have never regretted my decision. It was as good a 
 resolution as I ever made. A little while after leaving col- 
 lege, I found that I had saved sufficient money, which 
 otherwise would have gone for tobacco, to make a trip to 
 Europe. So I have always felt that my decision has paid 
 off. 
 
 26 
 
TOBACCO 
 
 World War I probably produced the greatest harvest 
 for the use and sale of tobacco up to that time. I was on 
 the local war board, and of the hundreds of young men 
 sent to war, I can recall only three or four who came back 
 non-smokers. Few of the packages fixed up by the good 
 mothers and dispatched to the boys "over there" failed to 
 contain cigarettes. "Smokes" became the most wanted 
 gift from home, aside from loving letters from sweethearts 
 and families. 
 
 In my reading and observations, I find that writers, 
 and the literary folk as a class, are pretty well entrenched 
 and safely fortified on the side of Lady Nicotiana. Kipling, 
 in a rather odious comparison, says "A woman is only a 
 woman, but a good cigar is a smoke". On a visit to Venice 
 once, Tennyson hurriedly took his departure from the 
 charming place. When he was asked why, he replied: 
 "They had no good cigars there and I left in disgust." 
 
 Most of the army generals have been smokers. Bis- 
 marck, once facing a great battle, said: "The value of a 
 good cigar is best understood when it is the last you poss- 
 ess, and there is no chance of getting another." The story 
 of General Grant might have read differently had he run 
 out of cigars. On the other hand, if he had got out of to- 
 bacco, or used less, he might have lived longer. 
 
 It is quite surprising that one does not find any mention 
 of "divine tobacco", as Spencer always referred to it, in 
 any of Shakespeare's works. 
 
 In condemnation of tobacco, many voices have been 
 raised. John Ruskin heaped his scorn on those who "pol- 
 luted the pure air of the morning with cigar smoke". Back 
 through the ages, the debate over the use and effect of 
 tobacco has raged, especially in England where smoking 
 first became popular and stylish. 
 
 Old Billy Bray, the miner preacher of Cornwall, fre- 
 quently ranted about the evils of tobacco. "If God intend- 
 ed men or women to take snuff", he once said in a ser- 
 mon, "their noses would have been turned upside down. 
 
 27 
 
SHARING MY NOTE BOOK 
 
 And if the Lord intended men to smoke. He would cer- 
 tainly have made a little chimney at the back of their 
 heads for the smoke to pass through. But as He has not, I 
 don't think He intended men to smoke." 
 
 Then there was James I (1566- 1625), of England and 
 Ireland, who as far back as 1604 blasted the "stinking 
 habit", as he called it. In his eyes, it was a filthy custom, 
 and he once wrote: "It is a great iniquity, against all 
 humanity. The husband shall not be ashamed to reduce 
 thereby his delicate, wholesome, and clean-complexioned 
 wife, to that extremity that she must also corrupt her 
 sweet breath therewith, or else resolve to live in a perpet- 
 ual stinking torment ... A custom loathsome to the eye, 
 hateful to the nose, harmful to the brain, dangerous to 
 the lungs and in the black stinking fume thereof nearest 
 resembling the horrible Stygian smoke of the pit that is 
 bottomless." 
 
 A century later we read a tolerant opinion from a dis- 
 tinguished English satirist, Thomas Brown (1663- 1704), 
 sending an exhortatory letter to an old lady who smokes, 
 commending her in the habit and pointing out its virtues. 
 Here are his consolinsf words : 
 
 "Though the ill-natured world censures you for smok- 
 ing, yet I would advise you, Madam, not to part with so 
 innocent a diversion," and he cited four virtues to the 
 credit of Lady Nicotiana : 
 
 "A sovereign remedy for the tooth-ache, the constant 
 persecutor of old ladies." 
 
 "Tobacco, though it be an heathenish weed, is a great 
 help to Christian meditations." 
 
 "It is a pretty plaything: a pipe is the same to an old 
 woman that a gallant is to a young one." 
 
 "Fourthly, and lastly, it is fashionable: at least 'tis in a 
 fair way of becoming so: cold tea you know, has been this 
 long while in a reputation at court." 
 
 Tobacco has been with our civilization now exactly 
 four centuries, as of this writing. All of that time it has 
 
TOBACCO 
 
 been a controversal issue - whether it be a benefit or a 
 harm to the human race. At the moment, the medical 
 group has that phase of it in hand. So here and now I 
 close the discussion and content myself to take my stand 
 with the angels, but not until I leave with those who are 
 on the other side of the argument the beautiful tribute 
 once paid Lady Nicotiana by Charles Kingsley (1819- 
 1875), English poet and novelist, and son of a noted 
 divine : 
 
 Tobacco, he held was: "A lone man's companion, a 
 bachelor's friend, a hungry man's food, a sad man's cord- 
 ial, a wakeful man's sleep and a chilly man's fire." 
 
 29 
 
ONE OF MT FAVORITE WRITERS 
 
 To Thomas B. Mosher, publisher of The Bibelot, go 
 my everlasting thanks for bringing me many years ago to 
 Alexander Smith, author of Dreamthorp, a book of essays 
 written in the country. From my earliest days, I had been 
 haunted by a tempting desire to introduce Alexander 
 Smith, the kindly Scot, to my book and garden friends. 
 
 The essay I selected from Dreamthorp was entitled Books 
 and Gardens. It is a delectable sample of the writings of this 
 apostle of the philosophy of quietude. It induces the sol- 
 ace that comes from reading good old books and tending 
 peaceful gardens. For as Crabbe once described a happy 
 man, it fittingly applies to Alexander Smith, "a wise, 
 good man, contented to be poor" - that is just what he 
 was. 
 
 His quiet voice was heard in an age that was as dis- 
 turbed and full of troubles as our own today. But he dis- 
 covered amidst it all, peace, patience, and contentment 
 and preached their blessings to the meek of his 'Auld 
 Lan\ At the very time he wrote, his own country was in 
 the midst of the Crimean War. When death stilled his pen 
 at the early age of thirty-seven, America was in the midst 
 of its Civil War and England was also much disturbed. 
 But these conflicts did not invade or soil the quiet soul of 
 Alexander Smith, if we may judge from the thoughts and 
 observations he recorded so gently. 
 
 Many years ago while in Scotland, I went out to the 
 University of Edinburgh to talk to the librarian about 
 Alexander Smith, who, for the last few years of his life, 
 served as secretary of the university at a salary of one 
 hundred and fifty pounds a year. The librarian did not 
 seem to share my enthusiasm for Smith, although he is 
 
 30 
 
ONE OF MT FAVORITE WRITERS 
 
 supposed to have been the forerunner of Robert Louis 
 Stevenson, another famous child of that country and that 
 institution. In fact, the librarian appeared rather unwil- 
 ling to discuss the earlier essayist. 
 
 My love and respect for this essayist, who has brought 
 me much pleasure, led me one day to attempt a senti- 
 mental pilgrimage to Warriston cemetery, half way be- 
 tween Edinburgh and the sea. I wished to look upon the 
 spot where "a kindly Scot lies", but the runic cross mark- 
 er, which I had been told was easy to find, lay hidden to 
 my eyes, although there were many other Alexander 
 Smith markers all about. When a chilling breeze laden 
 with smoke of peat came drifting in from the sea, I put 
 back to the city with much disappointment. 
 
 At another time in Edinburgh, I took a trip to Linlith- 
 gow, the village some eighteen miles out which is sup- 
 posed to be the actual hamlet, prototype of the Dream- 
 thorp of Smith's writing. 
 
 I was anxious to find out just how its people felt about 
 Alexander Smith, three quarters of a century after he had 
 advertised the little town to the world so intimately. I 
 called at the town hall and there found a portly, proud, 
 and rather brusque person, the town clerk, with whom I 
 soon fell to discussing the author who had immortalized 
 his town. He quickly became much wrought up and made 
 no bones about expressing himself frankly and sternly, 
 saying that Smith had thrust the deathmask on his town. 
 He gave me a pamphlet containing the official program 
 of "Riding of Linlithgow Marches", in which much space 
 was devoted to disproving the many homely things that 
 Smith said about Dreamthorp. 
 
 What seemed to strike deepest in the pride of the village 
 was the author's statement that Buckle could not have 
 written his History of Civilization here, for the "appurten- 
 ances of intellectual life are not to be procured". Sum- 
 ming it all up, the booklet warned the reader that "you 
 have a fine 'olla-podrida' of fact and fiction in these snip- 
 
 3i 
 
SHARING MI NOTE BOOK 
 
 pets". And so the folk of Alexander Smith's dream village, 
 who even to this day dwell there, have classed him as like 
 unto a prophet and have cast him out in scriptural fash- 
 ion, contending that "one is not without honour, save in 
 his own country, and in his own house". 
 
 Kilmarnock, up Glasgow way in the Burns' country, 
 was the birthplace of Smith in 1830. A little farther north 
 is the world-famous old weaving town of Paisley where 
 his father was a lace designer, a trade Alexander learned 
 and followed for a time. As I motored through these stern 
 old towns with their grim, dull granite homes lining the 
 gloomy hillside streets, I wondered how such rough exter- 
 iors could shelter such kind and gentle souls - Robert 
 Burns, Alexander Smith, and Robert Louis Stevenson 
 who distill for us this life in the spirit. 
 
 On one Linlithgow visit to the enchanting ruins of the 
 castle, or palace, as Smith chooses to call it, I climbed the 
 spiral staircase that leads to Queen Margaret's Bower 
 from which a fine view is obtained of Dreamthorp, which 
 cuddles close to the shores of Loch Linlithgow. It was in 
 this very tower, tradition tells us, that one September day 
 in 1 5 1 4 an anxious Queen sat and watched in vain for the 
 return of her husband, James IV, from Flodden Field. 
 
 We might well have rechristened this reprint "An Es- 
 say on Contentment", for it is a care-free adventure into 
 that delightsome province. May it encourage the reader 
 to pursue such a course in that direction. By making it 
 available to book and gardening friends, I feel that I have 
 in a measure gratified the worldly literary ambitions of "a 
 kindly Scot", who for all his toil said it would be sufficient 
 reward for him "to be occasionally quoted". 
 
 All honour to this meek, unselfish, unsung, and little 
 honoured Scot possessed, as his biographer says, "with all 
 the best virtues of the race in him, and as little as might 
 be of its defects - withal, of such a depth of honest quiet 
 heart and kindliness, as must be rare among men of any 
 
 32 
 
VOYAGING TO NAPLES 
 
 ii In every land how many memories of days in this enchanted 
 city are revived by this scene! sweet Naples, blessed soul! 
 Still over all the world the wandering minstrels sing of thee in the 
 taverns, the restaurants, under windows of inns and on shipboard 
 in distant ports ." 
 
 Naples and her beautiful bay of blue! Who after 
 once having seen them can forget their charms ? All the 
 way across the Atlantic we had talked of them. Even the 
 mightiness of Gibraltar which we had sailed around one 
 moon-lit night did not, with all its grandeur, lessen our 
 anxiety to look upon that fair city ahead and its enchant- 
 ing environs. My big-hearted German cabin boy, Dorsch, 
 who had sailed the seas to everywhere, had painted to me 
 many times in his deep, sentimental language the charms 
 of "bella Napoli". "Wunderschoen, wonderschoen", he 
 would always say when the subject was brought up. 
 
 It was a glorious day in early May that our steamer 
 passed through the picturesque Mediterranean on to 
 Naples. For hours before we came in sight of the bay, the 
 coast of Italy was in plain sight. Along the entire course 
 that day, it was a charming panorama of colorful beauty. 
 
 Long before the city was sighted, every marine glass on 
 board was trained on the bald, gapped summit far over 
 yonder on the distant shore whose outline extended with 
 a graceful sweep in a semicircle. That promontory, quiet 
 and solemn as it looked from the deck of the steamer, was 
 the most famous and ill-behaved mole on the face of the 
 earth. Old Vesuvius - there she stood silently stubborn, 
 defiant, uncompromising, unforgiving, and as if half in 
 the notion of repeating some of her famous historical tra- 
 gedies. Crouched at her very feet, penitently embracing 
 
 33 
 
SHARING MY NOTE BOOK 
 
 the kind, peaceful bay as if it would be a safe protector, 
 was the fair city of Naples. From afar she seemed to cringe 
 at the mere sight of Old Vesuvius who frowned down 
 upon her with centuries of stored up vengeance. The 
 scene was one which could not fail to impress the dullest 
 or least observing mind. 
 
 There were now a hundred other attractive sights that 
 claimed our attention. For we were passing into the beau- 
 tiful Bay of Naples. Steamers, heavily laden freighters, 
 crafts from different ports passed us, some returning home 
 after months of perilous cruises from the other side of the 
 world; others were just setting out to face the uncertain- 
 ties of a long voyage to foreign countries. Picking its path 
 among this babel of traffic, our steamer crept proudly into 
 the bay. The waters were alive with boats of every des- 
 cription, and for the first time, the noises aboard were 
 overcome by the busy traffic and the joyous music of the 
 pleasure crafts out in the bay, which, as the steamer bore 
 down upon the city, became a veritable channel running 
 merry with gay life. 
 
 The scene was made still more impressive by the joyous 
 and harmonious music which became more and more 
 audible as we drew closer to the pier. When the vigilant 
 little tug descried our steamer and slipped out into the 
 bay to draw us safely into dock among the innumerable 
 boats and crafts that blocked the course, we were pro- 
 vided with many of those picturesque scenes of Neapoli- 
 tan life as it is really carried on day after day with all the 
 charms of true romance. The artist who has dedicated his 
 life to the palette and water colors has acquainted us from 
 childhood with what one is able to behold enacted here 
 every day in the actual. But a familiarity with the con- 
 ventional scenes of white sail boats, gaily clad maidens 
 with brilliant, colored parasols, a charming Mediterran- 
 ean blue as a foreground, and a background of skies Ital- 
 ian, did not spoil the realistic picture which we could now 
 behold with the detracting canvas displaced by a natural 
 
 34 
 
VOYAGING TO NAPLES 
 
 setting and the youth-inspiring breath of the sea to height- 
 en our appreciation. 
 
 The scenes were pictures of matchless beauty. We 
 glided by many an artist's dream where a loving couple 
 in a little boat was drifting along guided only by the 
 changeable notion of the waves that touched them. He, 
 lounging in one end, picking a lively "bolero" on the 
 mandolin, she, at the other end of the boat, stretching her 
 classic and loosely-clad form idly, and warbling an ac- 
 companiment, never hesitating in her song as we swept 
 by, and only recognizing the many salutes of the admir- 
 ing passengers by a gentle toss of her dainty crimson para- 
 sol. The bay was white in places with frolicking sailing 
 parties who sang and made merry when they caught the 
 attention of the steamer passengers. 
 
 As we approached the pier, the bay appeared to be 
 converted into a busy thoroughfare of traffic, but merry- 
 makers with their lively dance and thrilling song, lovers 
 with their guitar and mandolin were there too plying 
 their way. Occasionally there crossed our path a fisher- 
 man and his whole family of husky, sun-burnt sons and 
 brilliantly-dressed daughters slowly rowing their way 
 home with the day's catch, happy and joyful as any tour- 
 ist aboard. The trip through the entire length of the bay 
 seemed as if passing over a vast playground where only 
 mirth, laughter, music, song and joyous life prevailed. 
 
 Getting docked was a spectacular experience. Anxiety 
 to step foot again on solid earth where there is not that 
 sensation of it slipping from under you as when you walk 
 the swaying deck, grew into an enthusiasm that was 
 pleasantly exciting. The noises that broke in all about us 
 were a babel different from anything that I had ever be- 
 fore heard. The hurrying about of passengers, the shouts 
 of impatient children mingled with the many diverse 
 tongues on the pier, the cry of fishermen, the songs and 
 momentary tinkle of the mandolin that echoed back from 
 the pleasure boats now far out at sea - all these orchestral 
 
 35 
 
SHARING MY NOTE BOOK 
 
 noises of the busy port were commingled into one har- 
 monious concord of enchanting music. It was a medley of 
 sounds and noises such as I had never experienced, and it 
 fell upon my ear in strains very bewitching. 
 
 This, indeed, was Italy, the first shrine of my pilgrim- 
 age, and yonder before me spread out in all its sparkling 
 splendor "bella Xapoli", picturesque, romantic and en- 
 chanting. 
 
 (Author's Note:-The foregoing story from JVeapolitan Vignettes 
 was written in the spring of 1908 of my first trip to Europe. It 
 was not published in book form until 19 13 and was among the 
 first books to come from my press. The edition was limited to 
 197 copies which were distributed among friends with Yuletide 
 Greetings.) 
 
 36 
 
WALKING IN WATERLOO PLACE 
 
 There are very few journeys as enjoyable as strol- 
 ling all alone on a peaceful summer Sunday afternoon 
 along the deserted streets of a great city. The quiet of the 
 places is in marked contrast to the rush and hurry of six 
 days and nights when the great flow of faces pours in and 
 out and across the busy streets and passage ways. 
 
 But come the day of rest, the scene is entirely changed. 
 Quiet settles on these thoroughfares and puts one in a pen- 
 sive and pleasant mood. It is best that you travel alone 
 and are not interrupted, for one needs to meditate. If it 
 be a large city holding many historic memories, the jour- 
 ney is all the more enjoyable. 
 
 This sort of carefree adventure was mine not so long 
 ago. The famous place I visited held probably more 
 memories of great happenings than one could find any- 
 where else in the world. They were memories of events 
 that had contributed much to the civilization we enjoy 
 today. The setting was wonderful old London. "When a 
 man is tired of London, he is tired of life, for there is in 
 London all that life can afford," Dr. Johnson reminds us. 
 
 I had lunched at a hotel in Piccadilly. It was a beauti- 
 ful day. The refreshing out-of-doors invited me with ir- 
 resistible temptation. All alone, just as I wished to be, I 
 set out for Lower Regent Street. This is the most attract- 
 ive view looking toward Waterloo Place. For some reason 
 I seemed to be drawn or rather beckoned in that direc- 
 tion. 
 
 I left Eros standing, as he has for many years, in the 
 famous circle, with drawn bow ever aiming the arrow of 
 love at a naughty world filled with much hate and greed. 
 I proceeded down Regent Street toward the mighty im- 
 
 37 
 
SHARING MY NOTE BOOK 
 
 posing granite column surrounded by many illustrious 
 monuments erected to preserve valor and to keep alive 
 the memory of the nation's warriors whose swords and 
 guns had kept this mighty nation on top of the world for 
 many centuries. 
 
 It was a short and easy walk to Waterloo Place. I met 
 only one person on the pleasant journey. That was a 
 pretty little maiden with rosy cheeks and quiet eyes. I 
 guessed her to be a Scottish lassie. She was much in keep- 
 ing with the peacefulness of the place that I was ap- 
 proaching. When I reached my destination, my mind was 
 hungry to explore the various denkmals that proclaimed 
 the exploits of England's honored heroes. 
 
 Here in this little hallowed spot much of the history oi 
 this mighty commonwealth is unfolded. The quiet, medi- 
 tative moments spent here gave me ample time to leisure- 
 ly admire the several statues and monuments. With keen 
 interest, I read the commemorative mottoes - Edward 
 VII mounted on his high stepping steed in bronze; the 
 laurel-ladened figures recalling the Crimean War; Field 
 Marshall Sir John Fox Burgoyne with the inscription re- 
 cording how "youngish he began to serve his country ;" 
 and other tributes of praise spanning many periods of 
 England's fierce and bloody warring. 
 
 Of the patriotic markers there stood out far and above 
 them all, in my estimation, the modest tablet that record- 
 ed the ill-fated adventure of Captain Robert Falcon Scott 
 to the Antarctic in the spring of 1 9 1 2. In brief and modest 
 lettering, these words contained the farewell message he 
 left the world from his unfortunate adventure : 
 
 "Had we lived I should have had a tale to tell of the 
 hardihood, endurance and courage of my companions 
 which would have stirred the hearts of every Englishman. 
 These rough notes and our dead bodies must tell the tale." 
 
 I had long wished to see and read these words. A lady 
 in Boston had asked me to find them if ever I should visit 
 Waterloo Place. That is why I copied the exact words 
 
 38 
 
WALKING IN WATERLOO PLACE 
 
 into my note book. This final note made in his diary was 
 found by a searching party in the fall of 191 2, together 
 with dead bodies of Captain Scott and his two faithful 
 companions. 
 
 Had I my choice of a qualification for greatness, as 
 those honored here in Waterloo Place, I think I would 
 prefer to appear at the gates leading to the golden streets 
 of the Eternal City in the shoes worn by this brave and 
 venturesome patriot, Captain Robert Falcon Scott, rather 
 than risk passport to heaven with a sword strapped to my 
 belt and a pistol in my holster. 
 
 39 
 
MENTAL CLIMATE OF CATHEDRALS 
 
 In the few great cathedrals of Europe that I have 
 been in, God, it seemed to me, was hard to find. The 
 strange, mystic spirit of the spacious places ; their won- 
 drous, mighty arched ceilings ; the paintings on the walls ; 
 that deadly silence that pervaded everything, every- 
 where, seemed to transport me into an unearthly and un- 
 familiar world. Feelings heretofore unfelt came creeping 
 over me. Twilighted figures appeared to step out from 
 another world. It is not a place in which to dwell com- 
 fortably alone, not for me. 
 
 But here to these dimly candle-lighted places, flock 
 many troubled souls from the outside world, like sheep 
 seeking shelter. They seek surcease from their worldly suf- 
 ferings. What a study are those who come to the cathe- 
 dral from day to day to kneel and pray, and then return 
 to the outside world again refreshed and comforted ! 
 
 Once I ventured into the magnificent cathedral of St. 
 Mark in Venice. While the two men in bronze atop of a 
 building in the piazza were hammering out the noon 
 hour, as they have been doing now for more than four- 
 and-a-half centuries, I watched the people who meekly 
 entered to kneel and pray. One was a beautiful little slip 
 of a girl with rosy cheeks and black hair. What was the 
 wickedness of her soul, I wondered, so fair, so chaste, she 
 appeared ! 
 
 In striking contrast along came an old man. He was 
 bent with age and his face deeply wrinkled, revealing 
 that he had long dwelled in a troubled world and that 
 life had always been rugged and full of suffering. This 
 man, whose days were surely numbered, fascinated me. 
 Many years ago I read a poem written by an Italian 
 
 40 
 
MENTAL CLIMATE OF CATHEDRALS 
 
 peasant girl and this must have been the very man she 
 had in mind when she composed the poem. Looking 
 through my library later, I came upon this poem and I 
 here repeat the opening stanza: 
 Thou art alone here - Pray, 
 O pale old man. What sad thought guided thee ? 
 What made thee turn this way ? 
 The God, who sent thee joy and sorrow, here 
 Within the dark church speaks to thee maybe, 
 The mighty Lord that filleth thee with fear ?" 
 
 Strange feelings filter into one's mind in such places. 
 They are momentous thoughts. 
 
 The strangest feelings I ever experienced in my cathe- 
 dral visiting happened far up in W T estphalia, Germany, 
 just ten years after World War I. I was being shown 
 through a beautiful little cathedral by the brother of a 
 good friend priest whom I knew back in my home town. 
 It was on a Sunday afternoon. The church was filled 
 mostly with women who had come there to pray. We 
 came up from behind the pulpit and walked toward the 
 front of the church with the congregation facing us. 
 
 Occasionally a woman would raise her head and our 
 eyes would meet. A very queer and accusing feeling came 
 over me. These were devout mothers, there praying no 
 doubt for husbands and for sons who never returned from 
 the fields of battle. They had come to seek comfort from 
 a sorrow that they could find consolation only here. It 
 seemed as if there was an inaudible voice crying out as 
 our glances met. 
 
 "You are of those who killed my son, or my husband. 
 That is why I am here praying for their souls." 
 
 It was a very terrifying moment for me. I was able to 
 console myself partly by recalling a portion of Paul's ad- 
 vise to the Romans: "Dearly beloved, avenge not your- 
 selves, vengeance is mine, I will repay, saith the Lord." 
 
 4i 
 
STORMY NIGHT ON THE LIZARD 
 
 I had never been to the Lizard Head in Cornwall, 
 but I had ofttimes longed to go there. It is that cliff land 
 that embows into the choppy English Channel, making it 
 the most southern portion of England. The name had al- 
 ways intrigued me. It has nothing to do with the little 
 animal we know as the lizard and it simply means "rockv 
 height". 
 
 High above the sea, atop the cliff, stands the big, brown 
 stone hotel. Close by, on an adjoining cliff, is the famous 
 lighthouse whose mighty fifteen million candle-power 
 electric flashing lights safely guide the inbound steamers 
 to the southern ports of England. Skippers claim that they 
 have picked up the light at a distance of one hundred 
 miles. 
 
 For more than two hundred years this watchful moni- 
 tor of the sea has served to preserve life and property ply- 
 ing these perilous waters. The new and very modern 
 lighthouse has now been in service for close to sixty years. 
 
 One beautiful day in June, I realized my longing for a 
 visit to the Lizard. I motored from Penzance into this 
 charming and picturesque region of Cornwall. June is a 
 time when nature appears to be at its best and fully a- 
 bloom. Such was surely true the day I put off for the 
 journey. The golden gorse covered the downs and per- 
 fumed the fresh and invigorating air that swept in so 
 clean and pure from the blue waters of the Channel. It 
 was as delightful a motor journey as I have ever exper- 
 ienced. 
 
 I had an appointment with a London newspaper friend 
 who had come down to the Lizard for his vacation. For a 
 long time I had corresponded with him, but I had never 
 
 42 
 
STORMY NIGHT ON THE LIZARD 
 
 met him. No sooner had I been shown to my hotel room, 
 than a rap came on my door. It was my friend, Kenneth, 
 and I familiarly welcomed him by that name, for I felt 
 that I knew him quite well by the many letters we had 
 exchanged over the years. With him was his pretty little 
 wife, Elizabeth. He had written many poems about her 
 when he was away at war, and occasionally posted me 
 one. 
 
 Like most English people, especially those from Lon- 
 don, they wanted to go for a stroll. As it was sometime 
 before lunch would be called, Kenneth suggested that we 
 take a jaunt over to Lizard Town, a little straggling vill- 
 age not very far away. Agreed, we set off on the journey. 
 Upon reaching the quiet place, we had a round or two of 
 "bitters" at the pub, and after a brief rest returned to the 
 hotel in convenient time for the noonday meal. 
 
 That afternoon the out of doors was too tempting to 
 resist. Kenneth and I walked out onto the terrace just to 
 loll upon the green, drink in the cool refreshing breath of 
 the sea, and enjoy a real Cornish potpourri that seemed to 
 perfume the entire surroundings. 
 
 Across the way, a party of joyous girls and boys in 
 swim suits were diving from a high ledge of rock down 
 into the swirling waters. It looked to be a most perilous 
 exercise, but it was just venturesome fun for those of their 
 age and daring. 
 
 How charming a view was the seascape from this vant- 
 age point ! We were looking toward the long ago lost land 
 of the Lyonnesse. Over these choppy waters travel the 
 great ocean steamers to and from the southern ports of 
 England. These ship-lanes are nearly always filled with 
 craft of various sizes, from fishing boats, sail boats to the 
 mightiest of ocean liners. 
 
 On a calm summer day, such as this afternoon was, 
 there is nothing more delightful and completely satisfying 
 than just to sit and rest, relaxing completely and forget- 
 ting the busy work-a-day world, and look into the blue 
 
 43 
 
SHARING MY NOTE BOOK 
 
 sky watching the foamy white clouds lazily drift across the 
 heavens. It is a care-free and happy dwelling in the "land 
 of the sweet do nothing". 
 
 We reluctantly quit this restful spot and returned to the 
 hotel, for there were faint signs of a storm brewing. The 
 skies became overcast, the tide whipped up and rolled in 
 with a crash, and splashed noisily against the cliffs. A fog 
 began to gather and soon draped the Channel, stealthily 
 moving inland. How ill-tempered the weather in this 
 region can quickly become! 
 
 When I had dined, we all gathered in the lounge and 
 chatted for a while. I went to my room much later than 
 my customary hour to retire. I could still hear the dash- 
 ing of the angry waves in their assault to climb the un- 
 yielding steep cliff-lined shores. The wind was growing 
 stronger. The air was beginning to chill. 
 
 There was every indication that a frightful night was 
 ahead. A stormy night on the Lizard - just what I had 
 been waiting for! To allay my fears, I consoled myself 
 that I was to have an experience I had longed for. And 
 with this thought in mind, I prepared to contentedly seek 
 my bed, not, however, until I had taken a peep out the 
 window, which faced the Channel. 
 
 What a sight it was - what little I could see at intervals ! 
 The sky, the ocean, the jagged coast line were dimly re- 
 cognizable only when a great flash of lightning illuminat- 
 ed them. It was a horrible thought with which to retire, 
 that the storm was just arriving and that the worst was yet 
 to come. But I managed to get to bed and sleep for 
 awhile. 
 
 How long I slumbered, I do not know, but the mourn- 
 ful mooing of the great siren on the lighthouse finally 
 awakened me. At any time, this would have brought me 
 out of sound sleep, but on such a wild night with so many 
 other accompanying noises, no one could have slept out 
 the tumult of the storm. So I got up and pulled my chair 
 over to the window just to sit and watch. 
 
 44 
 
STORMY MIGHT ON THE LIZARD 
 
 I lifted the blind with an unsteady hand and stealthily 
 peeped out. The black bat of night had completely taken 
 over. I think I had never seen darkness apparently so 
 thick and inky black. It was mystifying. 
 
 To add to the impressiveness of this stormy night, the 
 great lighthouse atop the adjoining cliff, three hundred 
 feet above the Channel, was in full operation. Every three 
 seconds it shot out a mighty beam of light that swept the 
 black waters in a twenty-five mile arc. 
 
 This illumination was frequently intensified by a flash 
 of natural lightning and often accompanied by terrific 
 peals of thunder. Then there was the mournful and mono- 
 tonous mooing of the mighty fog siren. I doubt if I shall 
 ever get its lamentations out of my ears. All of these 
 strange storm noises made me imagine that they might be 
 likened to the mighty crashing of the world's end. They 
 gave a definite sense of finality. 
 
 Morning came. It brought a beautiful day though born 
 of a storm. The maid ''knocked me up" a bit late. She 
 probably thought that after so terrible a night, I needed 
 to sleep late. I deemed it kind and thoughtful of her. 
 
 I peered cautiously out upon the sea. What a perfect 
 day it was, to have been whelped by such a terrifying 
 night ! The Channel waters were placid, untroubled, in- 
 viting; the sky a baby blue; the wind had completely 
 quieted to a gentle, caressing breeze and fragrances from 
 many blooming fields perfumed the air. All was well with 
 the world. 
 
 I had now seen the Lizard in various moods of beauty 
 and in contrasting moods of ugliness and distress. Now I 
 was satisfied to continue on my way. 
 
 45 
 
SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY 
 
 To enjoy true happiness, we must 
 
 travel into a very far country, 
 
 and even out of ourselves. 
 
 - Sir Thomas Browne. 
 From the last of May until the first of October in 
 1 950, I was off American soil. I spent most of that time 
 in England reading in Britain's famous libraries -Bodleian 
 at Oxford, University Library at Cambridge and the 
 British Museum at London, where its nine million vol- 
 umes provided literary enthusiasm which will have to last 
 me the remainder of my allotted years. Altogether it was 
 as enjoyable and as mentally stimulating a journey as I 
 have ever made. 
 
 In England I saw many of her shrines, beheld the ugly 
 marks of war, spent some days in the countryside and 
 sauntered through many quiet, thatched-cottage hamlets 
 that squat so contentedly throughout the empire ; stood in 
 prayerful silence in her little sequestered churches where 
 only the sound of a lonely cricket, hiding in a dark corner, 
 or the occasional creak from an aged beam dared to break 
 the frozen quiet. 
 
 What was going on in the outside world I did not know, 
 nor wish to know while on this trip. I insulated myself 
 from all worldly disturbances and excitements by never 
 buying a newspaper and only by occasionally peeping 
 over the shoulder of a London "tube" commuter did I 
 get a look at headlines of the news. Once I did venture 
 into a picture show. My ears were closed to the blare of 
 the radio. I was not looking for excitement. That is the 
 very thing I had run away from - noisy, gossipy, jittery 
 America. I was able to hear voices from within me that 
 
 46 
 
SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY 
 
 had not spoken since I first saw England and the contin- 
 ent when a lad several years ago. What relief, what nour- 
 ishing peace, what a vacation such a "get-away-from-it- 
 all" journey brings to one! 
 
 Many times on this trip I wished the appreciative pat- 
 rons of our press had been along, for they would have 
 reaped the same soul-nourishings as I did. The journey 
 was pretty much a literary pilgrimage rather than a sight 
 seeing tour. I had in previous trips seen many of the 
 shrines and sights that England has to show aside from 
 war ruins which were too sad and awful to look upon. 
 
 Landing In Liverpool 
 
 Upon landing at Liverpool, from the Empress of France, 
 on June the second, I found a letter from my dear old 
 friend John Gowper Powys, writer, critic and philosopher, 
 inviting me to his hilltop home in the village of Corwen, 
 North Wales. The next morning I was knocking at his 
 hospitable door and was provided with a satisfying late 
 breakfast. He suggested that I meet his friend and neigh- 
 bor, J. Redwood Anderson, retired professor of literature 
 at Hull University, and a recognized modern poet. I had 
 a pleasant visit with him. He was much interested in our 
 press and the books we had published. 
 
 After leaving Corwen I dropped off at Llangollen close 
 by and spent the Sabbath. I wanted to see the wonderful 
 old 1 5th century bridge over the Dee, one of the finest in 
 all England, and to visit again the mansion of Plas 
 Newydd where once the famous "Ladies of Llangollen" 
 resided and entertained such celebrities as Scott, De 
 Quincey, Wordsworth and the Duke of Wellington. This 
 old house is on the Holyhead Coach Road leading from 
 London to Ireland. 
 
 From North Wales I took the train "up to London", 
 and found that it was more severely bombed than I had 
 been told. The gruesome scars of war were partly con- 
 cealed by bill-boards and covered with gardens blooming 
 
 47 
 
SHARING MY NOTE BOOK 
 
 with pretty flowers. The world's metropolis with its nine 
 million souls, like any other big city, did not have any 
 charms to hold me long and after getting comfortably 
 settled in the Hotel Russell which is close by London Uni- 
 versity and the British Museum library where I was to 
 read, I set out to visit for awhile England's inviting 
 countryside. 
 
 My first trip was to Fenny Gompton, a pretty little vil- 
 lage near Banbury, to call on a little Welsh lady whom 
 Violet and^I had traveled with in Sweden many years 
 ago. She took me in her car all about the place, visiting 
 Chipping Campden and the hamlet of Ebrington that 
 artists have so often painted. 
 
 Upon my return to London, I was off for Suffolk where 
 I visited in the home of G. E. Fussell in the very aged 
 Norman village of Fressingfield. He is an agricultural 
 writer, author of several books dealing with the history of 
 agriculture. He came up here from London where he 
 would have quiet surroundings for his work. 
 
 With him and his wife, I visited in Norwich on my way 
 to Cambridge and at Norwich went into the cathedral, 
 the largest Norman church in England. Here I saw the 
 tablet placed there to the memory of Sir Thomas Browne, 
 author of Religio Medici. He is buried in another church 
 in the city. 
 
 I missed seeing G. M. Trevelyan, O. M., master of Trinity 
 College, whom I made the trip purposely to Cambridge 
 to see. He had asked me to come early in the week, but I 
 failed to get his letter before I left London and he was 
 leaving the next morning on his vacation. All through 
 World War II, we carried on a correspondence. I did so 
 much want to talk to him before I made my trip to Corn- 
 wall, for being of a Cornish family, he knows much of the 
 history of that region and I was intensely interested in the 
 subject. 
 
 My stay in Cambridge was very pleasant, however. 
 Dr. Brittain of Jesus College secured for me permission to 
 
 4 8 
 
 
SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY 
 
 see the display of fine press books at the University Lib- 
 rary where I was treated most courteously by everyone. 
 
 Seeing The Countryside 
 
 While in England I took many pleasant week-end trips 
 with friends out into the countryside and to pretty villages 
 not far distant from London. One of these visits was to the 
 fine old 15th century manor house of Idbury in Oxford- 
 shire, home of The Countryman magazine, edited then by 
 J. W. Robertson Scott, its founder. I missed seeing him as 
 he was out of the country that summer, but his two ac- 
 complished sisters-in-law, the Misses Keith, very cordial- 
 ly received me and showed me about the place and then 
 motored me to Stow-on-the-Wold and Chipping Camp- 
 den where I got a train back to Oxford. 
 
 A motor trip one week-end through beautiful Kent 
 with friends who were quite familiar with many places of 
 interest showed me several pretty old villages, a well-pre- 
 served castle and a fine moated country house, as well as 
 a number of old inns, among them The Mermaid at Rye, 
 and we got a peep into several very old churches. 
 
 I stayed in Oxford more than in any other city save 
 London. John Johnson, retired printer to the university, 
 secured for me a reader's ticket at Bodleian, and I spent 
 much time in that old place where I found several long 
 out-of-print old garden books of which I had photostatic 
 copies made and may reprint some of these days. My 
 good friend, Sir Basil Blackwell owns one of the finest 
 bookshops in the Empire, here in this famous old city. 
 
 Irresistible Bookshops 
 
 Who roves London streets and ventures not into some of 
 its thousands of old bookshops misses much. To the biblio- 
 phile they are harder to pass up than are the pubs for him 
 who drinks. They provide a little world of their own and 
 the intense interest with which one pulls down the worn 
 volumes from their dusty berths is surpassed not even by 
 
 49 
 
SHARING MY NOTE BOOK 
 
 the prospector dipping the mountain streams for specks 
 of precious metal. For to find a long-sought rare book is 
 indeed a gold strike for a book-lover. 
 
 If there is one of the old book shops along Charing 
 Cross that I was not in, then I should like to know what 
 one I missed. In Chancery Lane, in Piccadilly, and the in- 
 teresting shops in the neighborhood of the British Museum 
 and London University, I spent hours browsing about 
 digging out long looked-for books. Coming out of the 
 shops, I looked as if I had been harvesting a potato crop, 
 so dirtied were my hands and soiled my clothes. 
 
 War, which spares neither life nor property, dealt 
 cruelly with bookshops and libraries in London. An at- 
 tendant at the British Museum told me that some three 
 hundred thousand of the nine million books were lost 
 when the bombers fired the Museum. Among the loss was 
 a large file of very old newspapers. That was the time 
 when the Germans tried so hard to burn London - and 
 all but succeeded ! 
 
 A fortnight was spent in Cornwall. I visited St. Ives, 
 Land's End, Mousehole, Newlyn and went across the 
 channel waters to St. Mary's and Tresco in the Isles of 
 Scilly. Finding that Kenneth Hopkins and his wife Eliza- 
 beth, London newspaper friends, were at the Lizard, I 
 motored over to visit with them for two days. We all made 
 an auto tour of the region, visited Polperro, Fowey, and 
 Truro, seeing many other charming places along the 
 Cornish coast. 
 
 Another delightful trip with the Hopkins' was to his 
 native city of Bournemouth in Hants. Although it drizzled 
 much of the time, we took in a number of sights and 
 shrines in that section and got over into Dorset and the 
 land of Hardy and the Powyses. 
 
 No Tolling Bells For Me 
 
 My trip from Land's End in Cornwall over to St. Mary's 
 in the Isles of Scilly was rather a disappointment. The 
 
 50 
 
SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY 
 
 mighty wrestling waters that cover the Lyonnesse were at 
 their fiercest struggles when I boarded the Scillonian craft 
 in Penzance for the short but rough voyage. A drizzly rain 
 was falling. Soon out to sea, the mainland was veiled in a 
 mist, beautifully mystifying the pretty little fishing vill- 
 ages clinging along the granite coast-line looking like an 
 old faded etching done in tones of indistinct gray. 
 
 The toss and roll of the little boat gave me that old 
 dreaded feeling. I was soon a complete patient of mal-de- 
 mer, just as I had feared I would be when first I looked at 
 the greenish waters all stirred up ready to initiate me. I 
 was far too ill for even imagining that I could hear those 
 tolling parish church bells that over a thousand years ago 
 went down to the bottom of the sea on this Lost Land of 
 the Lyonnesse, as the traditional story goes. But I was not 
 entirely disillusioned, for I knew that my sickness would 
 soon pass. I had to believe that the Cornish seamen who 
 fish these waters always hear these bells and deep down in 
 my own heart, I kept the belief faithfully that the tolling 
 was still there sending up their warning that life is short 
 and death is sure and that all things must sometime come 
 to an end. 
 
 It was noon when I landed at Hugh Town on St. 
 Mary's, largest of the islands, and was soon safely under 
 the comfortable roof at Tregarthen's Hotel beside the sea. 
 My temporary illness had left me. The hotel was a famous 
 place as a plaque beside the door of the Tregarthen an- 
 nounced that Lord Tennyson once stopped here and 
 wrote most of his Enoch Arden in the garden. Surely here 
 in this far-removed place is a refuge where one can easily 
 unloose all the faculties of wild imaginations and create in 
 a make-believe world almost any sort of a romantic story. 
 
 I took a stroll one moonless night through the deserted 
 streets of the little town. The old stone buildings that had 
 weathered many a cruel wind-beating winter were silent 
 in the dark with few signs of life about except that which 
 came from the sea. Atop the garden wall that enclosed a 
 
 5i 
 
SHARING MY NOTE BOOK 
 
 cottage, a prowling cat cautiously and softly made its way. 
 Occasionally breaths of fragrance off blooming gardens 
 drifted in with the mist from the sea. There was the con- 
 stant mooing from light-houses with their great swiftly 
 flashing scythe-like beams slicing through the darkness, 
 warning the ships far out at sea of the many death-hidden 
 dangers along this treacherous coast. 
 
 What a region for the imagination to create its myster- 
 ious castles, people them with strange folk, all unspoiled 
 by the sordid world we live in ! Indeed, it is a little dream 
 world in which the Scillonians dwell - a far removed 
 place where one finds much of the beauty the poet seeks, 
 and feels keenly the thrilling pleasure of complete detach- 
 ment from a troubled world out of which many of us 
 would like to escape. 
 
 Some Gardens I Saw 
 
 If there be one dominant trait that marks the English- 
 man, whatever be his station in life, I would say it is his 
 inherent love for flowers and gardens. A ride through the 
 countryside reveals this strong interest. It is evident in the 
 grounds of the great manor house and down to the 
 humble cot of the poorest laborer beside whose door al- 
 ways are blooming flowers. 
 
 The most unusual garden I saw was the Abbey Garden 
 of Tresco in the Isles of Scilly off the coast of Cornwall 
 across the waters of the Lost Lyonnesse country. Here is 
 found rare plant material gathered from all corners of the 
 world. This very old garden was started by the Lord Pro- 
 prietor of the Isle over a century ago and is kept going to 
 this day by Major Arthur A. Dorrien-Smith who is in 
 residence most of the time. 
 
 In Penzance, Cornwall, there is the Morrab Garden 
 that runs down to the sea and amid its enchanting frag- 
 rances one can look across the blue waters of the bay and 
 see St. Michael's Mount rising out of the sea like a vision 
 dropped from the heavens. Here my departed, good Corn- 
 
 52 
 
SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY 
 
 ish friend, Daniel Watson, has spent a lifetime collecting 
 all plant life that will thrive in this region which is the 
 farthest west in England. 
 
 A charming little spot with an old sundial in focal posi- 
 tion is the lovely old garden of Lis Escop, presided over 
 by my dear friend, the late Right Reverend J. W. Hun- 
 kin, Bishop of Truro. I shall never forget the stillness of 
 that June evening when he led me through its fragrant 
 paths. At the moment we entered, the bells of his cathe- 
 dral back in the city of Truro began to pour out their 
 vespers on the cool of the approaching night. Into just 
 such a garden as this must have walked Thomas Edward 
 Brown, the Manxman, when he wrote that beautiful 
 poem that graces the wall of our garden shelter at 
 Thatchcot : 
 
 "The Garden is a lovesome thing, Got wot! 
 
 Rose plot, 
 
 Fringed pool, 
 
 Fernedgrot- 
 
 The veriest school of peace; and yet the fool 
 
 Contends that God is not - 
 
 Not God! in gardens! when the eve is cool? 
 
 Nay, but I have a sign; 
 
 'Tis very sure God walks in mine." 
 It was really an Enoch's walk to stroll the paths of the 
 vicar's garden. 
 
 Off For The Riviera 
 
 The sun, cloud-hidden for days and days in England, 
 finally drove me to the land of sunshine and bright cheer- 
 ful skies. I crossed the channel from Dover to Calais in 
 France late in July and took the through "Blue Train" to 
 Monte Carlo. In this delightful land of sunshine, I found 
 perfect photographic conditions, but soon ran out of 
 colored films. Here in this beautiful French Riviera where 
 every view is pleasing, the bright blue skies above, the 
 blue Mediterranean stretching out below and the colorful 
 
 53 
 
SHARING MY NOTE BOOK 
 
 flower-draped Corniche that corkscrews its course up the 
 Alpes Maritimes studded with pink tile roofed houses 
 made of the whole an enchanting picture that resembled 
 a gorgeous tapestry. 
 
 Those pretty places along the Cote d'Azur, as the region 
 is called - Nice, Villefranche, Monaco, Monte Carlo, 
 Roquebrune, La-Turbie, Eze, Cannes, Cap Martin, and 
 the immortal village of Vence were places hard for me to 
 pull myself away from and when I did depart there was 
 a feeling that I had left behind a casket of precious jewels. 
 As some one has truly written about this heavenly region, 
 "There are in one lifetime few hours when the contented 
 body, the rewarded eye, the light heart, almost empty, 
 gather up in a moment all they can possible hold, and 
 these hours I'll remember." And so shall I until my dying 
 hour. 
 
 Away to Genoa along the coast eastward into the Ital- 
 ian Riviera, the beauty takes on a different style, but the 
 charm does not lessen. With a two-day tarry in Genoa, I 
 put out for the usual round of the tourist cities of Italy - 
 Florence, Rome, Verona, Padua, Venice, Milano. All of 
 these I had seen before, but one never tires of seeing them 
 again and again. Their attractions are imperishable, their 
 memory enduring. 
 
 The Hill Towns Of Italy 
 
 Of all the interesting places I saw on the continent, no 
 one will likely guess what most took my eye and fancy. 
 Not the grandeur of Rome, neither the beauty of Venice 
 nor the charm of Florence - it was none of these. It was 
 something very old, something worn, weather-beaten and 
 long ago outmoded. It was the quiet, contented and un- 
 assuming little hill towns of ancient Umbria and Toscana. 
 They are scattered all through the center of Italy between 
 Rome and Florence. They stand today just where they 
 stood centuries ago back in the Middle Ages, atop the 
 peaks of the Apennines, high above the planted fields. 
 
 54 
 
SENTIMENTAL JOURNET 
 
 They are as close to heaven as they could be built, safe in 
 their day from all powers then known to man, safe from 
 any implements of war that man had devised. Strong, 
 silent, shy - unashamed of their oldness, they stand today 
 shrouded in a veil of unconcernness, and with their backs 
 turned on a world to which they do not belong; their 
 church spires still point heavenward to where they have 
 canied their troubles for generations upon generations. 
 They have seen all, felt all, ruled, conquered, been con- 
 quered, stormed, ravished. They have beheld their women 
 raped and have seen their old and their loved ones 
 slaughtered. These precious little hill towns intrigued me 
 and fed my keenest imaginations. I can still in my dreams 
 tread the slick time-worn stone streets of old Siena, Peru- 
 gia, Assisi, Orvieto and I can lift my eyes to scan the tall 
 towers of old San Gimignano, into the blue of Italian 
 skies. Forget not, nor by-pass the little old hill towns of 
 Italy when you go to that realm of romance. They have 
 a wondrous story to tell of the days when they cradled the 
 Christian culture with which we are blessed in these 
 modern days. 
 
 55 
 
IRRETRIEVABLE MOODS 
 
 "In Reading gaol by Reading town 
 There is a pit of shame, 
 And in it lies a wretched man ..." 
 Moods for writing may be classed with opportunity 
 which, some say, "knocks at the door only once". Fleeting 
 mutations are bothersome to us all. 
 
 Oscar Wilde, wizard in the use of words and invoker of 
 moods, tells us in De Profundis how Lord Douglas, the 
 friend who finally brought his downfall, pestered and 
 bothered him in his writing hours and virtually drove him 
 down a path of thorns. Wilde finally persuaded Douglas's 
 mother to send her son out of England. During his ab- 
 sence, Wilde soon got back to his writing. 
 
 "When you were away, I was all right," wrote Wilde 
 to Douglas from prison in Reading a few years later. "The 
 moment I had succeeded in inducing your mother to send 
 you out of England, I collected again the torn and 
 ravelled web of imagination, got my life back in my own 
 hands, and not merely finished the three remaining acts 
 of An Ideal Husband, but conceived and had almost com- 
 pleted two other plays of a completely different type . . . 
 when suddenly, unbidden, unwelcome and under circum- 
 stances fatal to my happiness, you returned. Two works 
 then left imperfect, I was unable to take up again. The 
 mood that created them I could never recover." 
 
 What a sad story, the fife of this great ai tist ! Had Lord 
 Douglas never returned to England and molested Wilde, 
 it is pleasant, but regretful, to meditate what beautiful 
 things might have continued from Wilde's pen, and the 
 world might have thus been saved the scandalous story of 
 his tragic end. 
 
 56 
 
IRRETRIEVABLE MOODS 
 
 There are many writers who have suffered the pangs of 
 remorse, but very few indeed have told us so feelingly 
 about the miseries they endured. 
 
 Wilde once wrote a little tale of an artist who made a 
 bronze symbol of "the sorrow that endureth forever". 
 Then another idea came to him, but having no more 
 bronze, he melted the statue in order to make out of it an 
 image of "the pleasure that abideth for a moment". It 
 might really serve as a symbol of Wilde's own life. 
 
 In the times I have passed through Reading, a little 
 way out of London, on my trips to Oxford, I have always 
 thought of this gi eat artist lying there for two miserable 
 years in His Majesty's prison, his soul virtually rotting 
 away. What a terrifying thought! 
 
 Hilaire Belloc has a delightful little essay on the pleas- 
 ure of taking up one's pen, and the necessity for solitude 
 in writing. He says : 
 
 "You are alone. Even if the room is crowded, you must 
 have made yourself alone to be able to write at all. You 
 must have built up some kind of a wall and isolated your 
 mind. You are alone then; and that is the beginning." 
 
 57 
 
PRATERS 
 
 "More things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams 
 of." - Tennyson. 
 
 It seems to me that the importance of prayer cannot 
 be over estimated. It is the sustaining element of faith and 
 hope in life. A noted Divine briefly sums it up in this 
 sentence : 
 
 "Real prayer always does one of two things: it either 
 frees us from the troubles we fear or else it gives us the 
 strength and courage to meet the trouble when it comes." 
 
 Dr. Samuel Johnson, who gave us our great English 
 dictionary, was a faithful believer in prayer. Some time 
 ago I came onto a neat little volume that contained 
 many of his beseechings. They dealt with various matters 
 and among them this one on bodily enjoyments : 
 
 "O God, grant that I may practice such temperance in 
 Meat, Drink and Sleep, and all bodily enjoyments, as 
 may fit me for the duties to which Thou shalt call me, and 
 by Thy blessing procure me freedom of thought and 
 quietness of mind, that I may so serve Thee in this short 
 and frail life, that I may be received by Thee at my death 
 to everlasting happiness. Take not, O Lord, Thy Holy 
 Spirit from me, deliver me not up to vain fears, but have 
 mercy on me, for the sake of Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen." 
 
 Those who have been in Old Chester Cathedral in Eng- 
 land probably remember this prayer inscribed on the wall : 
 "Give me a good digestion, Lord, 
 And also something to digest. 
 Give me a healthy body, Lord, 
 And sense to keep it at its best ; 
 Give me a healthy mind, Lord, 
 To keep the good and pure in sight, 
 
 58 
 
PRA TERS 
 
 Which, seeing sin, is not appalled, 
 
 But finds a way to set it right. 
 
 Give me a mind that is not bored, 
 
 That does not whimper, whine or sigh; 
 
 Don't let me worry overmuch 
 
 About that fussy thing called l P ; 
 
 Give me a sense of humor, Lord, 
 
 Give me the grace to see a joke, 
 
 To get some happiness from life 
 
 And pass it on to other folk." 
 Years ago I met an author who had a five-word prayer 
 she bestowed on those to whom she bade a farewell. It 
 was not only brief but hopefully sufficient. She said it was 
 an old Celtic prayer: 
 
 "God between you and harm." 
 The prayer uttered by Anne Boleyn just before her exe- 
 cution has always appeared to me as one of the most 
 dramatic petitions that could be offered. Before the heads- 
 man, who was brought over from Calais, lifted his axe to 
 sever her head, she asked permission to make a speech, 
 which was in fact a prayer : 
 
 "I am come to die," she began, "and according to law, 
 and by law, I am judged to death; and therefore I will 
 speak nothing against it. I am come hither to accuse no 
 man, nor to speak anything of that whereof I am accused 
 and condemned to die. But I pray God save the King, 
 and send him long to reign over you; for a gentler and 
 more merciful prince was there never ; and to me he was 
 ever a good, a gentle and sovereign lord. If any person 
 will meddle of my cause, I require him to judge the best. 
 And thus I take my leave of the world and of you ; and I 
 heartily desire you all to pray for me. Oh, Lord, have 
 mercy on me. To God I commend my soul." 
 
 Of the many prayers that Robert Louis Stevenson 
 wrote while spending his last days in Samoa, this one en- 
 titled At Morning seems to me most fitting; 
 
 "The day returns and brings us the petty round of irri- 
 
 59 
 
SHARING MY NOTE BOOK 
 
 tating concerns and duties. Help us to play the man, help 
 us to perform them with laughter and kind faces, let 
 cheerfulness abound with industry. Give us to go blithely 
 on our business all this day, bring us to our resting-beds 
 weary and content and undishonoured, and grant us in 
 the end the gift of sleep." 
 
 Prayers sometime take on an insincere form and are 
 rather selfish in their petitions, as this one ofttimes attri- 
 buted to the Cornish: 
 
 "God bless me and my wife, 
 My son and his wife, 
 Us four, no more," 
 
 Coming to the less serious discussion of prayers, there 
 is one attributed to the colored boy in a track meet 
 uttered as he was finishing his final lap : 
 
 "Lawd, you jist pick 'em up, I'll put 'em down." 
 
 Then there was the little boy who carried his school 
 problems to the Lord, with this very desperate request on 
 the evening following his academy examinations : 
 
 "Dear Lord, please bless Father and Mother and make 
 Montreal the capital of Canada." 
 
 Dr. Jowell, Master of Balliol at Oxford, tells of a student 
 who had no capacity for religious matters. He told the 
 learned Doctor that he could not find any signs of the 
 Divine when he looked into his heart. "He just isn't 
 there," the student said, whereupon the professor replied : 
 "You must find Him by tomorrow or leave Oxford." 
 
 
 60 
 
To The Reader 
 u Gentle Reader, read no further than you like. Ifyoufinde any- 
 thing to your content, thinke well of me for my paines . . . So 
 leaving it to your Patience to read, and your Pleasure to esteeme 
 of as you see cause, I rest, to wish you content in the Course of a 
 Happy life, and so remained 
 
 - Nicholas Breton 
 
 61 
 
TAILCORN AND TRIVIA 
 
 As the title reads, I so caption this section of the 
 book. And I fully agree, I believe with most of my readers, 
 that it needs explaining. 
 
 Tailcorn is an English term. I have seldom seen it used 
 in writings by American authors. To me it signifies that 
 there are often fine things in the tail of the threshing. 
 Corn in England means a grain, seed, especially cereals. 
 Here in America corn means Indian corn, of which we 
 raise great quantities. It is used to feed horses, fatten 
 hogs, make home-brewed liquor and thousands upon 
 thousands make a full breakfast meal out of it in some 
 manner. 
 
 The word trivia is a defined dictionary word meaning 
 unimportant matters, trifles and such. 
 
 So the two words might convey the idea that they con- 
 cern matters of more or less importance. I trust that if the 
 following paragraphs of experiences and observations do 
 no more than entertain - and that without offending - 
 then they will have served their purpose. 
 
 There is quite a story about this word trivia. Two or 
 three books bearing the title were brought out back in the 
 twenties and thirties. One was called Trivia, another 
 More Trivia. Logan Pearsall Smith, an American, who 
 did most of his writing and publishing in England, was 
 the author. He received some high praise from prominent 
 writers and literary critics. However, all did not go 
 smoothly. His wealthy aunt, from whom he hoped to in- 
 herit a fortune, did not like the books and failed to leave 
 him any money, as he had expected her to do. 
 
 I hope that no one takes offense at the tailcorn-trivia I 
 have here served up. Should any reader have in mind 
 
 62 
 
TAILCORN AND TRIVIA 
 
 dropping into my lap, at his passing away, a million or 
 two, I trust he finds nothing to cause him to change his 
 mind, as did the wealthy aunt of the creator of the Trivias. 
 
 63 
 
SHARING MY NOTE BOOK 
 
 A MAN, A KITTEN AND A STRING 
 I shall long remember the last night I spent in 
 Rome. It was mid-August and many pilgrims were there 
 for it was Holy Year. Something happened that evening 
 that still clings to my memory. It may seem trivial, but 
 I shall relate the incident, since it persists in puzzling me 
 to this day. 
 
 I had just finished my dinner and set off for a walk. 
 Sauntering up the quiet Via Porta Pinciana, I soon came 
 to the inviting Borghese Gardens. Here I found a con- 
 venient and comfortable bench. It seemed just the spot 
 for which I had been looking. Trees and a thick growth 
 of shrubbery enclosed the sequestered spot, making it an 
 ideal place to rest and meditate and look out upon the 
 great, old city set on the seven hills with its thousands 
 of glittering lights. 
 
 How exciting to tarry and meditate on the dramatic 
 scenes that had been enacted here over the centuries — 
 the joys, the sufferings, the bloodshed and the great 
 historic events that had taken place in this city from 
 which the world had so long been ruled ! 
 
 The silence of the scene was soon broken by approach- 
 ing footsteps. Then a low and consoling voice was heard 
 murmuring caresses in what I judged to be a foreign 
 tongue. Soon the shadowy form of a little man appeared. 
 He was carrying something. It was cuddled up as if it 
 might have been a baby. 
 
 Evidently without seeing me, he passed my bench and 
 found another close by. When seated still murmuring, 
 he carefully unwrapped the small bundle and gently 
 deposited it on the ground beside him. Out crawled a 
 little kitten. Taking a string from his pocket, the man 
 dangled it before the lively creature, continuing to 
 speak endearing words, while the playful kitten toyed 
 with the string. Never once did the mysterious man look 
 in my direction. I do not think that he even knew that 
 anyone was near him or ever saw him. 
 
 64 
 
TAILCORN AND TRIVIA 
 
 Still unnoticed, I took my departure and safely found 
 my way back to my hotel. Until I finally retired, the 
 man and the kitten were still in my thoughts. 
 
 I have often wondered what the real story was. It has 
 puzzled me and oft-times comes to my mind. It has sent 
 my thoughts on various expeditions. My speculations 
 have not satisfied me, and so I consign the incident to 
 the field of presumptions: perhaps the kitten was the 
 only creature the lonely man knew or trusted, upon 
 which to lavish his love; perhaps he was the only one 
 the kitten could love as a protector — two needy souls 
 comforting each other. 
 
 THE UNBESTOWED BOOK 
 
 Books, in a way, are much like faithful friends. They 
 are pleasant and helpful to live among, but hard to part 
 with. There is a certain fascination about them. Some- 
 times this enchantment may be a particular paragraph, 
 even a single sentence or significant phrase, and hence- 
 forth these features assure the volume a choice place on 
 the shelf of our preferred titles. 
 
 Browsing through a bookshop recently, I came upon an 
 attractive bargain table of tempting tomes. They ap- 
 peared to have been well cared for, and gave signs of 
 having been garnered with care and discriminating taste. 
 Then I looked inside the cover of one volume and to my 
 surprise found it marked down so very low, that then and 
 there I decided to buy it. Soon it was safely tucked under 
 my arm and on the way to a shelf in my library. I had 
 only dipped into it to satisfy myself that it was well worth 
 owning. It was a travel book, and I have never thought 
 that I would get too many on that subject. 
 
 This book was about the isle of Sicily. It was beauti- 
 fully illustrated with plates of the charming old ruins of 
 many historic places and revealed the spirit of that far 
 away land of the long ago. 
 
 I was particularly interested at this time in that roman- 
 
 65 
 
SHARING MY NOTE BOOK 
 
 tic region, since I had an English friend who was a pro- 
 fessor in the university in Venice, and he had just written 
 me of the little farm home he owned in Sicily beside the 
 Ionian Sea. That location alone suggested the romance of 
 the place, and whetted my longing to possess the volume 
 all the more. As I finally berthed the newly acquired 
 treasure on my travel library shelf, I got out his letter and 
 read it again. 
 
 "It is just a bit of land nearly two thousand feet up on 
 a rocky mountain side in far off Sicily," he wrote. "Life 
 goes on here as usual. I am fit and full of work with vaca- 
 tions passing in Sicily at my little farm house which now 
 has a pergola with vines climbing up it and inside com- 
 fortable, but as simple as a friar's cell as well. I am gradu- 
 ally discovering the countryside around. We find Greek 
 coins about when the plowing is done and neolithic 
 smooth stone tools and any amount of Greek, Arabic, and 
 medieval pottery in bits lying around." 
 
 His letter recalled George Gissing's impressions of this 
 legendary land when he last looked upon the beautiful 
 Ionian Sea and left us his farewell thoughts that put us in 
 a dreamy anticipation of its imperishable glories : 
 
 "Alone and quiet, I heard the washing of the waves," 
 he wrote. "I saw the evening fall on cloud- wreathed Etna, 
 the twinkling lights come forth upon Scylla and Charyb- 
 dis; and, as I looked my last towards the Ionian Sea, I 
 wished it were mine to wander endlessly amid the silence 
 of the ancient world, today and all its sounds forgotten." 
 
 Entranced in this mood, I picked up the book and 
 started to the wrapping room to prepare it for the long 
 journey to my friend in Sicily. Fingering through the 
 book, I came upon a paragraph that I had marked. I re- 
 read it : 
 
 "It is this quiet that is so impressive here - a quiet of 
 the world forgot, often met with in very old burying 
 grounds. And in a way it is just that." 
 
 That ended all chances of the book leaving the shelf of 
 
 66 
 
TAILCORM AND TRIVIA 
 
 my library for the long voyage to the beautiful shores of 
 the Ionian Sea. No, most assuredly, I would not part 
 company with this book. Those two sentences possessed 
 all of the romance and enchantment of the volume's one 
 hundred and ninety two pages. Positively, I could not 
 bear to surrender such a book with a soul that had so 
 deeply touched me with the peace and quiet to be found 
 in this old and far away land. 
 
 And that's the tale of the book that would not yield to 
 deportation - one of the choice and unbestowable vol- 
 umes that has won security in my little library here at 
 Thatchcot. 
 
 CONVERSATION IN UNDERPASS 
 
 Conversation can be of many sorts. It may be, and 
 usually is, both informative and instructive. It can also be 
 monotonous, uninteresting and at times really annoying. 
 Especially is it tiring and senseless when it takes a revolv- 
 ing course, and like a roulette wheel, goes round and 
 round again without making any progress at all. 
 
 One of the most monotonous conversations I ever list- 
 ened to took place in an underpass in the old port town of 
 St. Ives, far down in Cornwall. It was a glorious mid- 
 summer Sunday - one of those days when the out-of- 
 doors seems irresistibly to draw the people to the sea- 
 shore. As often occurs in this section of Great Britain 
 heavy downpours of rain come up quite unexpectedly. It 
 was on such a day that the vacationists who crowded the 
 sands of Carbis Bay were herded like frightened sheep to 
 take shelter in a viaduct under the railroad. 
 
 Huddled together in this safe place, well sheltered from 
 wind and rain, the crowded people fell to talking about 
 the heavy downpour. It was a noisy and confused jargon. 
 Many voices in many tones joined in. No one seemed to 
 be addressing anyone in particular. The conversation was 
 more like mumbling to themselves, as most of them were 
 not known to one another. 
 
 67 
 
SHARING MT NOTE BOOK 
 
 I could catch only the dialogue of those gathered near- 
 est me. Of course, the topic of discussion was the rain: 
 
 "It's a bit of a nasty day, isn't it?" said one. 
 
 Close bv came a readv response : 
 
 "Tisso." 
 
 "Yes," agreed a third voice. 
 
 "Oh, yes," put in another, spoken by a little old man 
 with a cheerful but squeaky voice. 
 
 And on and on they went, no one making any progress 
 from the original subject - "that it was a bit of a nasty 
 day." 
 
 It was not long until the rain slacked a bit. But it still 
 was drizzling enough to give one a good soaking should 
 he dare venture out. This change in the weather shifted 
 the conversation to an observation that started a new 
 round of agreeable comments. So they were off again on 
 the question of whether to leave or not to leave the under- 
 pass: 
 
 "I shouldn't dare venture out yet," ventured one cau- 
 tious man. 
 
 "Naw, certainly not," chipped in another. 
 
 "Ah naw," spoke a third, also definitely in agreement. 
 
 "But it's clearing a bit, me thinks," came a fresh, new 
 voice. 
 
 "Quite so it is, isn't it?" 
 
 "And there's the coming of a rainbow," a pert and al- 
 together new speaker piped up in gleeful surprise. 
 
 And so it was. Maybe their discoursing on the weather 
 after all had some influence on the elements. At least, 
 everyone evidently got his wish, and happily left the 
 underpass. 
 
 Of all topics for discussion, the weather probably is the 
 most popular. We know that it is an axiom that no 
 matter how much we talk about the weather, we can do 
 nothing about it. Therefore, we might as well content 
 ourselves with the pacifying suggestion of our Hoosier 
 poet who offers this advice: 
 
 68 
 
TAILCORN AND TRIVIA 
 
 "Whatever the weather may be, says he, 
 Whatever the weather may be, 
 It's the songs ye sing, an' the smiles ye wear, 
 That's makin' the sun shine everywhere." 
 
 YULETIDE IN MY TOWN 
 
 Just as Charles Dickens has so beautifully defined 
 Christmas, that most blessed day in the long calendar of 
 the year, as "a kind and forgiving, generous and pleasant 
 time ; a time when men and women seem by one consent 
 to open their hearts freely", so it is in my little town. 
 
 There is a noticeably friendly and charitable spirit in 
 the air everywhere. I start out for the morning trip to the 
 post office, not many blocks from my home. Two aged 
 ladies, who very seldom get out of the house at this season 
 of the year, meet on a busy corner. They stop to chat, un- 
 heedful of the crowd and noisy traffic that passes by them. 
 
 "How are you Mrs. Pengilley, I haven't seen you in 
 ages?" greets one, whose fascinatored, happy-beaming 
 face belies her age by a score of years or more. 
 
 "Well," returns Mrs. Pengilley, "I reckon I can't com- 
 plain." 
 
 That is all that I got of their conversation as I passed 
 by the happy couple unnoticed. It was sufficient, how- 
 ever, to put me in an appreciative Yuletide mood. I felt 
 that if those two old people were content with life and 
 circumstances at their age in these turbulent times, what 
 more could they wish for, and what a perfect mood to be 
 in to appreciate fully the joy of Happy, Happy Christmas ! 
 
 As I reached the post office, I see men stopping to 
 shake hands, some even lifting their arms in salute to 
 friends. It is a time when formalities are laid aside. Every 
 smiling face is an invitation for the exchange of greetings. 
 I meet my friend the judge, a prominent and highly re- 
 spected citizen. He is dressed in work clothes, rather an 
 unusual attire for him. He explained that he had been to 
 his farm "to give his man a lift". 
 
 69 
 
SHARING MY NOTE BOOK 
 
 As we stood talking, a slight little chap, looking a bit 
 undernourished and poorly clad wobbled up to us. He 
 wore a whisky smile that made its cheer contagious. 
 Waiving all ceremony, he broke into our conversation as 
 if he knew both of us intimately. 
 
 "Where you been, a huntin'?" addressing the judge 
 and giving him the answer to the question in the same 
 breath. 
 
 The judge unbended a bit and very courteously gave 
 the little man the same answer he had given me. But that 
 did not satisfy. He was full to overflowing of conversation 
 as well as Christmas spirits and just wanted to gab on this 
 great day of benevolence and goodwill toward all men. 
 
 "You a farmer, eh?" he continued. "Don't look like it 
 in them clothes." 
 
 He didn't wait for a reply to the rapidly fired questions 
 he put to the judge. He was too nervous to stand still and 
 soon rushed away mumbling to himself. 
 
 "W 7 ho is that fellow?" the judge asked me. 
 
 I told the judge that I had never seen him before, and 
 we parted. 
 
 Half an hour later, I came again up the same street. 
 Face to face I again bumped into the little old man. He 
 was still smiling, looking for someone to talk to. The 
 Christmas cheer had not departed from his worn and wrink- 
 led face. In fact, it appeared to have intensified its glow. 
 He stopped me, just as I thought, and started again to 
 chatter. I saw that I might as well grin and bear with 
 him, remembering it was Christmas. 
 
 "Say, Mister," he began, "Who the h--l was that 
 feller I was talkin' to a while ago ?" 
 
 "Why, you must have heard of him. That's the Judge," 
 I replied. "He's one of our very prominent citizens. Every 
 one knows him." 
 
 "Damned if I ever seed him before," he said. 
 
 With that observation, he again wished me a Merry 
 Christmas and went happily on his way, leaving a serpen- 
 
 70 
 
TAILCORN AMD TRIVIA 
 
 tine trail of smiles and Christmas cheer behind him. 
 
 He was "enjoying the happiness of the passing mo- 
 ment", and what more could mortal wish on this most 
 blessed of all days ? 
 
 CHARM OF THE OLD SOD 
 
 In my travelling through the south of Ireland, two 
 episodes won my sympathy for these hard- toiling and long 
 suffering people, if I needed any persuading. It was my 
 first time on the Old Sod. One instance took place when 
 I was on a bus travelling from Dublin to the Killarney 
 country. My seat companion was a native of the country 
 - a tall, slim man who, unlike many others, was not very 
 talkative. He was modest and rather reticent. 
 
 Every mile of the trip presented a series of beautiful 
 colored pictures. We looked out over the restful landscape 
 filled with whitewashed homes covered with bloominsr 
 roses and green leafage, and with pleasant farms which 
 were interlaced with winding white roads like the web of 
 a spider's fashioning. Every prospect pleased. The man 
 turned to me after I had expressed my admiration for the 
 restful scene and spoke in quiet and gentle tones : 
 
 "Yes, it does look beautiful," he began. "But you do 
 not know the hardships that have been suffered and en- 
 dured by the people who live in these idyllic little homes. 
 And what's more, you can never know it unless you have 
 tasted the hard-earned bread that has nourished this op- 
 pressed race." 
 
 I never look upon a beautiful landscape picture of this 
 land of so many sad stories of hardships and oppression 
 that these words do not come to mind. 
 
 Another impressive memory I carried back from this 
 section of the little island, is of the Killarney country. On 
 another beautiful morning when one feels it's good just to 
 be alive, I was taking a drive along the shores of the fam- 
 ous lake. This section of the little island is the legendary 
 home of a thousand and one stories that have our own 
 
 71 
 
SHARING MT NOTE BOOK 
 
 Paul Bunyan tall tales outclassed in many ways. The 
 Devil has probably performed more miracles in this sec- 
 tion of Ireland than in any similar sized place on the 
 globe. 
 
 We were driven along the enchanted lake by one of 
 those chatty cabbies in his "inside-out-side-car' \ He talked 
 the entire distance. But I finally got in a few questions, all 
 of which he readily and willingly answered. 
 
 We passed a beautiful estate with lovely surroundings. 
 It was palatial. Man could not wish for a more heavenly 
 place to dwell on earth. 
 
 "That's a beautiful place," I ventured. 
 
 The driver was instantly ready with his comment. 
 
 "It is a heavenly place, isn't it?" he replied. "But the 
 man who resides there is not a happy man as you would 
 suppose." 
 
 "What has he to worry about?" I asked. 
 
 "He worries about the end," he replied. "Every morn- 
 ing when he gets up, he comes to that front window which 
 overlooks the beautiful estate he is lord and master of. He 
 wrings his hands and almost crying says : Tf I only knew 
 for sure that Paradise was half as beautiful as this fair 
 scene, I would not worry of dying and leaving this place 
 where I now dwell'." 
 
 Thus riches, a palatial home, and such earthly com- 
 forts of life, do not constitute happiness, was the comment 
 of the chatty driver of the "inside-out-side-car". 
 
 THE DOCTOR AND THE CHARWOMAN 
 
 Old Doctor Anpers was an irritable person. He was 
 fussy and rarely had a kind word for those who came 
 under his employment. There was very little milk of 
 human kindness in his make-up. 
 
 The meek old English woman who came each week to 
 his office to clean up and mop the floors was a perfect 
 charwoman. Her husband was a "pay-day drunkard" 
 and a poor provider. The task of keeping meat and bread 
 
 72 
 
TAILCORN AND TRIVIA 
 
 on the table for the big family fell largely on her shoulders. 
 
 One bright spring morning, the doctor had just brought 
 up from the public well a bucket of fresh drinking water. 
 As he entered the reception room, in rushed two men 
 carrying an injured miner who had suffered an accident. 
 The excited doctor set the bucket of water on the floor 
 which the charwoman was scrubbing and hastened to 
 take care of the patient. 
 
 Soon the patient was given attention and was sent on 
 his way. Wiping the perspiration from his face, the doctor 
 returned to the reception room. He dipped into the pail 
 of drinking water and took a long draught. The faithful 
 old woman, unheedful, busied herself with her work. 
 
 A sour expression came over the old doctor's face. He 
 gave a baleful look at the charwoman on her hands and 
 knees scrubbing away, and in very emphatic words, he 
 blustered forth: 
 
 "Mrs. Morrison, did you dip that filthy mop into this 
 bucket of drinking water?" 
 
 "Yes, Doctor," the frightened and trembling old wo- 
 man began, "But I . . ." 
 
 "Damn you, Mrs. Morrison, you're fired," he said. 
 
 Reaching into his hip pocket, he fidgeted from his purse 
 a dingy dollar bill and pitched it to the poor old char- 
 woman. She picked the money up, reached for her hat 
 and meekly departed. 
 
 The fractious old doctor had done his cruel deed for the 
 day, so he took a pill to quiet his nerves with the hope of 
 pacifying his soul. 
 
 CHRIST AND SATAN IN HERRIN 
 
 The good and the evil were pretty much on a fifty 
 fifty basis when I cast my lot in the newly established city 
 of Herrin in Southern Illinois half a century ago. The coal 
 miners and laborers who had drifted into the new settle- 
 ment were from various parts of the world. They repre- 
 sented many nationalities: Lithuanian, Polish, Italian, 
 
 73 
 
SHARING MY NOTE BOOK 
 
 French, Sicilian, Syrian, English, Scots and Welsh. It 
 was a veritable melting pot. Each brought the customs 
 and habits of his native country with him. 
 
 The settlers were mostly Catholics. The basic popula- 
 tion that had sparsely settled the country hereabouts in 
 the early eighteen hundreds before it was a state, were 
 pioneers from Virginia and the Carolinas who had been 
 filtered through Tennessee and Kentucky. This pioneer 
 stock was Protestant and largely of the Baptist faith. They 
 were rather inclined to be a bit "churchy". Many were 
 set against intoxicating drinks. They used the "weed" 
 both for chewing and smoking. The women were "snuff 
 dippers". Tobacco was not only a habit, but for many it 
 was a real necessity. 
 
 There were only three Protestant churches - Baptist, 
 Methodist and Campbellite (now known as Christian). 
 The Catholics had a small church with a large member- 
 ship and most of the Italians were faithful members. The 
 priest was of German descent, coming from Westphalia 
 in northern Germany. 
 
 The four churches were far outnumbered by saloons, of 
 which there were twenty-five, and they served a popula- 
 tion of some 2,500 people. These institutions were of the 
 old "knock-do wn-and-drag-out" type. They would quali- 
 fy as the stage for "Ten Nights in a Bar-room". Those 
 were rough days and frightful nights, especially on pay- 
 days and Saturdays. Never a week passed that someone 
 wasn't shot. A gun on the hip was as necessary as a knife 
 in the pocket. 
 
 On Sunday mornings the bells from the steeples of the 
 Baptist and Methodist churches called the faithful to wor- 
 ship. The Campbellites had no bell. The devout put off 
 for church in their Sunday best. Some of them had to pass 
 right by the "stinking old saloons", as they called them. 
 But they seldom looked toward them, their hatred for 
 such institutions was so strong. To them, they were "hell- 
 holes". 
 
 74 
 
TAILCORN AND TRIVIA 
 
 At church they usually learned whose life had been 
 snuffed out in the fracases and fights of last night. The 
 congregation knew that the good preacher would pray 
 long and loudly for the widows and for the children who 
 had been orphaned. These sorrowing, devoted good peo- 
 ple could always depend on hearing a sermon of damna- 
 tion against "Demon Rum", and those who operated 
 these "hell-holes". Such a sermon restored peace and 
 offered consolation to those who were from drunkards' 
 homes. 
 
 Come Monday, the crow of the cock in the backyard 
 would announce the coming of another day. Would it be 
 a happy day or a sad one ? It all depended upon the early 
 shrill sound of the mine whistle announcing if the mine 
 would work or be idle that day. One long blast meant 
 work, two indicated no work. Work meant meat and 
 bread on the table, clothes for the back, shoes for the baby 
 and all good things that come at a price. But if the mine 
 "blew-all-over", in the miners parlance, that meant a sad 
 and discouraging day ahead. It was as if the sun had 
 passed under a dark cloud, banishing hope and kindling 
 worries for the rest of the day. 
 
 The problem fell hardest on the miner's wife. The hus- 
 band might have a remedy for his being knocked out of a 
 day's work. He might leave home and eventually drift 
 into his "club", as some considered the saloon. There he 
 might solace his disappointment over his cups. 
 
 The faithful little wife in the meantime suffered most. 
 Bent over Monday's washtub on the back porch, rubbing 
 the dirt out of the stiff, smutty overalls of her husband, 
 with an empty cupboard facing her, no money in the 
 house for the baker, the preacher or the butcher, it was 
 she who had by far the heavier load upon her slender 
 shoulders. 
 
 Life was a heavy burden in Herrin in those early pion- 
 eering days. Many asked themselves "Is life worth liv- 
 ing?" But yet there were many who kept faith. They 
 
 75 
 
SHARING MY NOTE BOOK 
 
 learned "to husband out life's taper to a close, and keep 
 the flame from wasting by repose". 
 
 HUNKYDORY, A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE 
 
 It was mid-july and the day was hot. I had decided 
 to take it easy and do less walking. 
 
 Leaving my London hotel in Russell Square, I leisurely 
 strolled to Little Russell Street to take a peep into a book- 
 shop. Yesterday I had seen a book there that had tempted 
 me. It was The Devil's Dictionary. To my sorrow, I found 
 it had been sold. 
 
 Rather disappointed, I sauntered the long distance 
 from the British Museum to Piccadilly Circus. All along 
 the way I peeped into the windows of bookshops. True to 
 my promise, I did not step inside a single one. 
 
 At the American Express office in Haymarket, I picked 
 up my mail, as was my daily habit. As usual, I went to the 
 Regent Palace Hotel where I read my letters and in the 
 commodious writing room answered some of them. I had 
 upon arriving in London tried to get a room there, but 
 the place was all booked up. I felt I was really "a guest in 
 waiting". There I lunched, as I had usually found it a 
 good and very convenient place. 
 
 The afternoon passed away rather quickly, and the 
 evening found me queued up at the popular Lyons' 
 Coffee House behind a bevy of giggling American teen- 
 agers waiting for a table. I soon gave up the waiting and 
 went to dine at a little place just across from Leicester 
 Square, where later I sought a comfortable bench and 
 took a welcomed rest. 
 
 The Square is a famous old place, once a favorite 
 duelling ground. Many distinguished writers and painters 
 dwelt here in the days gone by. It has long been a theatre 
 section. It is now taken over by the movie houses. 
 
 The place was quiet and inviting, and I was very tired. 
 Many persons were strolling into the place just to rest, 
 and the long wooden benches were fast being taken. I 
 
 7 6 
 
TAILCORN AND TRIVIA 
 
 found a bench with only one occupant. He was a very 
 old-looking man. I suppose he had reached the fog-end of 
 life. He was smoking a strong pipe and gazing dreamily 
 into the distance. When I sat down at the other end of the 
 bench, he paid no attention whatsoever. 
 
 After awhile another of apparently lesser years came 
 along. He occupied a spacious place between us, closer to 
 the heedless old man who kept on smoking. No one spoke ; 
 we all just quietly rested. Presently, the last arrival pulled 
 from his coat pocket a small package wrapped in brown 
 paper. Unrolling the package, he revealed a slice of brown 
 bread which he quickly ate. 
 
 From the distance came the peal of church bells. They 
 rang for some time and grew quite monotonous. I was 
 anxious to know what bells they were, and ventured to 
 ask the man next to me who had eaten the brown bread. 
 
 "I think they are the bells of St. Martin's-in-the- 
 Fields," he replied very politely. 
 
 This "broke the ice" between the two of us. The old 
 man at the other end of the bench did not join in the con- 
 versation; he just kept smoking and gazing far into the 
 distance. 
 
 We had a pleasant visit, the man who ate the brown 
 bread and I. I found out that my seat companion was a 
 Scot, born in old Glasgow. That accounted for his fair 
 and pinkish complexion, and for the honest expression he 
 wore which, from the first, had impressed me. His life had 
 been spent in the theatre back in the old days of vaude- 
 ville. Once he appeared in a theatre right here in Leicester 
 Square with the popular American actor, W. C. Fields, 
 so he told me. He had been on tour in America and wrote 
 a play in which he took the lead part. It was called Hunky~ 
 dory, and that is where I got the title for this little story. I 
 had not heard that word since I was a lad using slang. 
 No wonder that he came to Old Leicester Square to eat 
 his brown bread and dream of the glorious days when he 
 was young and gay ! 
 
 77 
 
SHARING MY NOTE BOOK 
 
 The thing that interested me most about this chance 
 meeting was that he was an admirer of my beloved 
 Robert Louis Stevenson, his fellow countryman. Here we 
 met on common ground. 
 
 The crowds soon began to thin out and the seats to be- 
 come vacant. The fashionable lady called her dog and 
 collared him for the homeward trip. The old man who 
 never spoke, knocked his pipe empty and put it into his 
 pocket. Then he quietly slipped away. 
 
 Old Hunkydory and I walked together to the edge of 
 the square. I wondered how he could manage to get 
 along and display such a healthy and happy face on a 
 piece of brown bread which evidently served as his even- 
 ing meal. I sensed that he might relish a more sustaining 
 supper. I handed him a half-crown. He smiled and thank- 
 ed me very generously. I felt that I had performed my 
 good deed for the day, and as I walked across the way to 
 get "the tube" for Russell Square station, the words of 
 our mutual friend R.L.S. came to mind: 
 
 "The best we can find in our travels, is an honest 
 friend. He is a fortunate voyager who finds many. They 
 are the reward of life." 
 
 HOPE SPRINGS ETERNAL 
 
 The first shrub or tree to bloom in the spring at 
 Thatchcot is the magnolia. Beginning in April and con- 
 tinuing into May the garden is a flower show in itself. Its 
 pretty blossoms and its fragrances are good for both sight 
 and smell. 
 
 There are three varieties of the shrub in my garden. In 
 the order of blooming they are, the stellate a creamy 
 white star-shape blossom; the beautiful soulangeana, or 
 saucer-shaped type; and the pinking tulip, so called be- 
 cause its blossoms never fully open and resemble a tulip 
 bloom. Then there is the noble tree type, well named the 
 magnolia grandifolia. It is a southland tree and scarcely ever 
 thrives farther north than my section of Southern Illinois. 
 
 78 
 
TAILCORN AND TRIVIA 
 
 Of all the magnolias, it is the most accurately named and 
 it fully qualifies by its beauty and the precious fragrance 
 it gives off. All of these species, I have in my garden at 
 Thatchcot. 
 
 One beautiful April day when the pink magnolia was 
 gorgeously arrayed in all its glory, the nice little old lady 
 who lived up the street ventured into the garden. I was 
 cutting some blossoms to take into the house. 
 
 "I hope I am not intruding," she began, "but I just 
 could not resist, for I want to know how long I would have 
 to wait for a tree planted now to give me such beautiful 
 blooms as you have?" 
 
 I told her that it might take as many as ten years before 
 a tree planted now would give so prolific a crop of blooms 
 as my tree had produced. 
 
 "Well," she said, "I'm going right home now and 
 order me one." 
 
 And the happy, old soul put off for her home up the 
 street two blocks away. 
 
 A few months later she passed away. In the meantime 
 she had celebrated her eightieth birthday. 
 
 The poet was right when he wrote - "Hope springs 
 eternal." 
 
 79 
 
THIS NOW IS THE END OF 
 
 SHARING MY NOTE BOOK 
 
 BY HAL W TROVILLION 
 
 of which 497 copies were printed in London in the spring 
 of nineteen hundred and sixty on Glastonbury paper from 
 10 point Baskerville type for Trovillion Private Press, 
 America's Oldest Private Press, and all copies numbered 
 and signed by the author. 
 This copy number if. J' 
 
 //+* ss //\ o y/, v_ 
 
 r>i 
 
CHECK LIST OF BOOKS PUBLISHED BY 
 TROVILLION PRIVATE PRESS 
 List of books written or edited by Hal W. Trovillion and pro- 
 duced by Trovillion Private Press, at the sign of the silver horse, in 
 Herrin, Illinois, now the oldest private press in America, opera- 
 ted by Violet & Hal W. Trovillion, follow: 
 
 ESSAYS : Neapolitan Vignettes; The Sundial in Our Garden; 
 Private Press as a Diversion; Christmas Entre Nous; Christmas 
 in Review; No More Dogs at Thatchcot; Christmas at Thatch- 
 cot. 
 
 ANTHOLOGIES: Amphora of R.L.S.; Tussie Mussie; 
 Favorite Fragments; In Casa Mia; Recipes and Remedies of 
 Early England; Flowers from Old Gardens. 
 
 OLD GARDENING BOOKS (Reprinted): First Garden 
 Book - Hyll; Delightes for Ladies - Plat; Books and Gardens - 
 Smith; Country Housewife's Garden - Lawson. 
 
 BELLES-LETTRES and ESSAYS: The Happy Prince - 
 Wilde; Francine's Muff- Murger; Vagaries from Munthe; The 
 Selfish Giant - Wilde; Old English Yuletide - Powys; The Mer- 
 chant Royall - Wilkinson; Success and Failure - Jowett. 
 
 OTHER TITLES: In Country Places - Rae; Kipling 
 Speaks to the Young Man; A Baker's Dozen - Powys; When 
 Lincoln Came to Egypt - Smith; Bibliography of Trovillion Pri- 
 vate Press - Schauinger; Visitation at Thatchcot - Burke and 
 Behymer; Lincoln and Ann Rutledge - Herndon; Passing of 
 Mother's Portrait - Field; A Pony Cart of Verse - Rene'; Lin- 
 coln Fifty Poems - Clark; Deficient Children - Mae Trovillion; 
 No. 5 Cheney Row - Mae Trovillion; Williamson County War 
 History - Trovillion; Franklin County War History - Trovil- 
 lion; History of Johnson County - Chapman. 
 
 BROCHURES and PAMPHLETS: A Keepsake from 
 Thatchcot - Trovillion; An Opinion Journalistic - Trovillion; 
 As a Hobby A Private Press - Trovillion; An English Appraisal 
 of America's Oldest Private Press - Moran; An Adventure in 
 Christmas Cards - Trovillion; America's Oldest Private Press - 
 Thomajan; Books Beautiful - Trovillion; Designing a Book- 
 plate - Trovillion; Flag on the Hilltop - Earle; Lincolniana 
 Brochure - Trovillion; Some Mottoes to Live By - Trovillion; 
 Poems of Egypt - Thomas; Plantings at Thatchcot - Trovillion; 
 Songs of Courage - Gordon; Persuading God Back to Herrin - 
 Trovillion; Newspaper Laws of Illinois - Trovillion; Thoughts 
 from R.L.S. - Trovillion; Two from the Book - Trovillion; 
 Three from the Book - Trovillion. 
 
UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS-URBANA 
 
 3 0112 050750261