{"collection":"philosophy-ethics","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_45959/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_45959","id":"gutenberg_45959","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/45959","summary":null,"tags":["Books and reading","Category: Essays, Letters & Speeches","Category: Philosophy & Ethics"],"text":"Produced by Al Haines.\n\n\n\n\n\n                            OPEN THAT DOOR!\n\n\n                                   BY\n\n                        ROBERT STURGIS INGERSOLL\n\n\n\n                         PHILADELPHIA & LONDON\n                        J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY\n                                  1916\n\n\n\n\n              COPYRIGHT, 1916, BY J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY\n\n                       PUBLISHED SEPTEMBER, 1916\n\n\n\n                  PRINTED BY J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY\n                     AT THE WASHINGTON SQUARE PRESS\n                          PHILADELPHIA, U.S.A.\n\n\n\n\n                               *CONTENTS*\n\nCHAPTER\n\n      I. Walled In\n     II. An Open Door\n    III. Reading Fiction with an Eye on Life\n     IV. History and Your Vote\n      V. Clio's Vintage\n     VI. The Poet and the Reader\n    VII. The Children of Pan\n   VIII. Men Behind Books\n     IX. Keeping up with Life\n\n\n\n\n                           *OPEN THAT DOOR!*\n\n\n\n                              *CHAPTER I*\n\n                              *WALLED IN*\n\n\nThe brave man carves out his fortune, and every man is the son of his\nown works.--CERVANTES\n\n\nAn author is of necessity a rather egotistical sort of a fellow, or else\nhe would not trumpet abroad his name upon the title-page of a book.  If\nwe should measure this egotism by the size of the audience to which he\nhopes to appeal, we fear that the sponsor of this little book should\nmake humble apologies in behalf of his phrenological egocentric bump.\nHe who writes upon how to grow fat, modestly limits his audience to\nthose who, from pride of appearance, or upon doctor's orders, desire to\nadd to their avoirdupois.  There is a similar modesty upon the part of\nthose who limit their audiences by writing cook-books for the cooks,\ntemperance appeals for the drunkards, novels for the seminary ladies,\nwar books for the valiant, peace books for the pacificists.  We\n(notwithstanding the fact that he fears to call himself \"I\" in the first\nchapter) acknowledge no such modesty.  Every one wants to get the best\nof life.  This general statement is as true as the more specific ones\nthat every one wants to enjoy his dinner, his work, his family, and his\nfriends. The desire to obtain satisfaction through the passing of the\nyears is the prime motive in the actions of the male and the female, the\nfat and the thin, the long and the short, the stupid and the wise, the\nrailroad president and the ditch digger.  It is for this cosmopolitan,\ndemocratic crowd of you and myself and every one else that there is, or\nis not, a message in the following pages.\n\n\nOne of the most stimulating thoughts to which mankind is heir is the\nrealization of the handicaps under which we are all laboring.  This is a\ngreat thought in that it is so universal, so levelling, so powerful in\nmaking us truly appreciate that we are all brothers one unto another.\nThe millionaire is a slave to his money; another man is embittered by\npoverty, a third carries the burden of an unsound body, a fourth of a\nselfish nature, a fifth of an unhappy family life, a sixth is\noverwhelmed by his own stupidity, a seventh by his sense of duty towards\nothers, an eighth by a sense of duty towards himself, and so it goes\nthrough the rank and file, the humble and the mighty.  How many of us\ntake the bit in our teeth, and have a glorious revel in enjoying every\nfurlong of life's race-course? To run such a race is a hard task, as\nthere is always some handicap hanging on our shoulders.  We are afraid\nto knock it off.  Oftentimes the burden is terrifically hard for the man\nwho carries it to define, and yet, when you look into your inmost self\nyou realize that the precious hours of life are slipping by without your\ncramming into them all the good things that you feel should be offered\nby a world in which there is the romance of other people's lives, the\nblue of the sky, the play of the sunlight, the success of your rivals.\nThere seems too often a wall between ourselves and that romance, that\nsky, that sunlight and that success.  There is indeed this wall between\nus and our ideal.  If we break through it, there is another one that\ndares our courage to the assault and capture of our greater, enlarged\nideal.  This is stimulating and comforting, as each man and woman has to\nmake his own assault; there is no one so lucky as to get the prizes of\nlife without a fight, and no one so unlucky as to be without the desire,\nno matter how deeply it may be buried in his nature, to make that fight.\n\nIn what direction are you going, and what are you going to do when you\nget there?  Are you plugging against an impassable barrier, or is there\na way through for the man who does his best?  Some lie down in the\ntraces and quit.  They have three satisfactory meals a day, work that is\nnot too arduous, a warm bed at night, and, taking it all in all, that is\nsufficient; at any rate, they think it better than the attempt to break\ndown any more walls.  Perhaps they bruised their knuckles at the first:\n\"George Washington, Thomas Edison, and the other heroes were not afraid\nof the blows at the first or at the score that followed, but we all\ncannot be great, and I am willing to subside with what is already my\nportion.\"  Yes, that is the attitude of the slackers.  They are in every\nwalk of life--the stupidly content.\n\nThere are many others who say that if they could only lift the mortgage\noff their house, or buy an automobile, or get into society, or get\npromoted, they could pass untouched through the barrier that crushes\nthem, and be ready to tackle the second with unheard-of power.  They are\nsadly suffering under an illusion.  When you take the spur from a\nlaggard steed, you do not make him a thoroughbred.\n\n\nTwo thousand years ago Christ told us that unless we become as little\nchildren we cannot enter the Kingdom of Heaven.  That was a tremendous\nstatement, and one of infinite truth. To find the reasons for our\nstruggles and the means of carrying our burdens we must go to the boy of\nten.\n\nHe is having a splendid time!  Are you?  From the moment he leaves his\nbed with a whoop and a hurrah, until the evening when he sinks to sleep\nexhausted but happy, he has lived in a turmoil of adventure, wild\ndreams, and imaginings.  The world has been a magic pleasure dome from\nwhich there were countless doors to be opened and beckoning passages to\nbe explored.  We have our troubles and sulk under their weight, he longs\nfor them and so invents the game of Cowboys and Indians and glories in\nthe battle; we become bored with a routine existence, he scorns such an\nattitude and fears that he will miss a great excitement if he but close\nan eye.  If rainy weather or a particular mother prevents him from\norganizing a military campaign, fraught with danger and hardship,\nagainst the enemies in the next block, he stays at home and reads of\nbattling with dragons.  The world is forever a thing of wonder, a\ntremendous feast from which he is forever called before he has had\nsufficient courses.  Hungry for life, he cannot find within the\ntwenty-four half enough hours to fulfil his demands.  A fishing-rod in\nhis eyes is a magic thing with an incarnate life and power of its own;\nthe dark pool contains a possible catfish, and what, by all the stars,\ncould be more wonderful, more inexplicable, more mysterious and awe\ninspiring than a bearded catfish!  Every new friend, old or young, is a\npeculiar individual of which he must ask a thousand questions to find\nout whether he be an engineer, a policeman, or a fireman, or whether he\ncan spin a top or owns a collection of postage stamps.\n\nWhat a lesson in the way of life is a lad of ten!  He sees in life an\nopportunity, a vast opportunity for everything.  No specialist is\nhe--within the month he decides that his career shall lie in any one of\na dozen, from that of the man upon the back of the ice wagon, to that of\nthe President of the United States.\n\nWhy are the young so superior to their elders?  Why, indeed, do we have\nto cast off our years to enter the Kingdom of Heaven?  Ponce de Leon, in\nsearch of the Fountain of Youth, journeyed from Spain to the New World,\nand, weary of the quest, left his body to rot in the American\nwilderness.  He need not have gone so far upon his travels, as in the\npoint of view of the last boy whom he met before embarking from the\nshores of Spain there was this very Fountain which he sought.  To break\ndown all the barriers which hedge us in, to open a thousand doors\nentering upon undiscovered countries of ambition and delight, to forget\ntime, to forget everything but the joy of living, to experience the\nthrill of carrying heavy burdens and the overcoming of obstacles, all we\nhave to do is to see the world through the eyes of the boy of ten.  It\nis the youth's relation to the world as he finds it that makes him\nsuperior to, and a more worthy inheritor of the Kingdom than is his\nfather.  The former's outlook is that of perpetual wonderment, of\nendless romance, of intensive interest, and wide horizons; the latter's\ntoo often is that of a blind man in a picture gallery.  A lad lives\nacutely, never lets an hour \"slip by,\" is ever willing for an assault\nagainst any battlement, and in that lies the secret of life.\n\nMost things, to be sure, are \"easier said than done,\" but after having\nfound that the proper door to open is that which leads to the world of\nfervid expectancies, experienced by the boy, we may at least _attempt_\nto find the key that fits the lock. Perhaps you have already found it!\nThis is a good personal test--do you feel that your mind is a-tingle\nwith the music that is played by the world in which you live?\n\nIt has been said that you can tell a man by the company he keeps--but\nthere are far better methods!  Find out his experiences when he walks\nalong a city street, rubbing elbows with the crowd, dodging motors at\nthe crossings, with every step he takes passing faces, human faces,\npassing windows behind which are woven the webs of human happiness and\ngrief. What are his innermost sensations? Does he feel the throbbing\npulse of men and women, or is his heart and soul dead and forbidding?\nOr else go with him upon a walk into the country--Spring or Fall--Winter\nor Summer--his talk and expression will show the stuff that is in him.\nIs he alive to the multifarious beauties of color, life, and movement\nthat are about him, or is he the same gnarled, twisted parody of man\nwho, when in the office, always thinks himself imposed upon, or in his\nhome appears a misfit, uncomfortable piece of furniture?\n\nYes, there is a sublime religion in the joy of jostling your fellows in\nthe workaday streets, there is a sublime possibility of growth in the\nsoul of him who, when upon a journey in the country, breathes a deep and\nlasting draught of the joyousness of life. And yet, why does this\nreligion slip from us, why at times do we refuse to grow?  Why do we\nlose the tingle of living which is the very essence of the boy's sense\nof life?\n\nOne man will tell you that he is in a rut.  He has worked until his\nyouth is passed, and there is no further chance of promotion.  A second\nhas lost his money, and he is bitter against the world that took it from\nhim.  A third misses the companions whom he used to know, and with them\nwent the color and the value of the world.  A fourth has gambled with\nlife's good things: has wasted his body and mind in his lust for women,\nwine, or food, or in his greed for gold.  Perhaps, although not\nadmitted, with the satisfaction of his desires women have lost their\nbeauty, wine and food their taste, and gold has proved tarnished metal.\n\nWhat is, at bottom, the matter with them all?  And what is the matter\nwith the men and women who have had worldly success, who have had all\nthe exterior things that life could give them, and yet feel that this\nEarth is an unsatisfactory sort of pasture in which to graze?  Why\nshould there be sighs of discontent when above us the sky is blue, and\nin the world about us children are born of women, heroic deeds are\naccomplished, and tragedies met and defeated by the courage and love of\nour human kind?\n\nThe answer is in the fact that many of us lose the blessed heritage that\nwas part of our youth: our sense of wonderment, our breadth of sympathy.\nTo the youth, every moment of every day meant an awakening to new\nthings, an introduction to strange, exciting mysteries, whereas there\nare no such awakenings for the man who finds not the wonder in the\nwindows bordering and the faces passing on the crowded city streets, or\nfeels not, in the country, the subtle magic of Nature's workings.\n\nYou say the world grows stale; it is not the world grown stale that\ntakes the lustre from life, it is your own sleepiness, the profound\ndrunkenness of the lazy and the cold heart.  It is the loss of a\npersonal sympathy with God and man.\n\nA loss of sympathy is a horrible thing.  The loss of that sympathy which\nholds your heart engripped, and makes you feel part and parcel of this\ngreat, moving, turbulent, sorrowing thing we call the World, is as\ngrievous a loss as can befall any man. It is worse than a separation\nfrom money, friends or family--it is the loss of an individual's\npersonal stake in the world.  And yet, we see men who have lost and are\nlosing it.  In them we see die that spark of life which has made them an\nintegral part of all that lives.  We see smothered the divine fire of\nhumanity and godliness.  If we consider Nature, including man, as one\ngreat spirit, we feel that those who have lost an embracing sympathy are\napart from that great spirit, are drifting off into the barren deserts\nof bewilderment and decay. If we consider men as individual souls\nplotting their own destinies, we must see in those who have lost their\nintimate touch with the surge of their fellows' labors, and their\nsympathy to the power of beauty, pariahs, true outcasts, apart and\nalone.\n\n\nHow great is your appetite for life? How great is your willingness to\nbreak the shell of your prison and liquidate your heart?  What prevents\nyou from throwing open your arms to the universe, accepting and\nwelcoming the embrace?  The embrace of humanity is a glorious thing!  It\nis the nectar of the gods.  Be one with the world, be not a pariah; be\npart of the great wave, be not a stagnant pool.\n\nBut one hears answers, \"I can't,\" \"I don't want to,\" \"I'm apart and will\nnot mingle.\"  Why can't you? Why won't you?  Why are you apart? Is it\nbecause you are old and mummified?  Have you lost your vision, have you\nlost your heart, has the world beaten you back, and does life roll too\nfast a pace?  Has your understanding become blunted?  Are you a snob\nupon a pedestal of derision?  Are your eyes blind to the colors, your\nears deaf to the music, your voice bitter in your companions' hearing?\n\nAh, let there be a way out of the prison--there is a door that will lead\nyou to your youth.  Within a man there is always the spark that can be\nmade to brighten and to break into living flame.  There is no\nunderstanding so dense, no spirit so sordid that it cannot be stirred to\nawaken to that sympathy for man and nature that is the pass word to the\nKingdom of Life.\n\n\"The Kingdom of Life.\"  Those are perhaps hackneyed words, and yet how\nmany of us seem to be the inheritors of the Kingdom of Death.  Live\nbodies find no value in dead souls, so let us make our souls aflame and\nattain to a realization of life.  Where is the match to strike the\nlight, the key to open the door?\n\nThrough all the ages there has been a medium through which the hearts of\nmen have been revealed.  There has been one cauldron into which the\nriches of our richest and most godlike minds have been poured.  It is\nthe melting pot that has purified the sorrows and joys of men, since man\nhad wit enough to know his pangs and jubilations.  There is a vehicle\nwhich will bring us to a universal sympathy, if not an understanding, of\nour human kindred.  There is a powerful tool, welded by man, with which\nwe can awaken ourselves to an appreciation of our universe, from which\nwe can obtain consolation in our difficulties, stimulus for our\nambitions, tonic for our depressions.  The medium, the cauldron, the\nvehicle, the tool is Literature.\n\nSome men are afraid of books, and some are afraid of life; some do not\nunderstand books, and some do not sympathize with, nor care to\nunderstand life.  Literature is the key to the door of life for those\nwho wish to open!  There is no wall cramping the ambitions, blinding the\neyes, deafening the ears of those who seek their nutriment in the\nspiritual messages and solemn understandings of the greatest minds of\nthe ages.  The symbol of a man walking down the street with no heart to\nfeel, nor mind to understand the happenings about him, is the\nrelationship between two stones.  To our knowledge there is no known\ncommunication between one and the other.  Literature is the great\ncommunicator, the powerful disseminator of sympathies, the magnificent\ndoorway through which we can pass to other men's hearts, and obtain\nwarmth for our own in case ours are cold and comfortless.\n\nGod said, \"Let there be light,\" and there was light.  Perhaps there is\nnot enough, for we all walk in partial darkness, but the tremendous\nsunburst that is here to lighten and revive is the lasting, printed\nword, handed on from generation to generation.\n\n\n\n\n                              *CHAPTER II*\n\n                             *AN OPEN DOOR*\n\n\n  This world's no blot for us,\nNor blank; it means intensely, and means good:\nTo find its meaning is my meat and drink.\n    FRA LIPPO LIPPI\n\n\nThere is the Rub!  Of how many of us can it be said that the World\n\"means intensely and means good\"? Do we unsatisfactorily stutter, and\nstumble, and barely exist through the three score years and ten that is\nour portion, or do we find in life a splendid activity that gladdens our\nheart and fills us full of the thorough-going ecstasy of living?\n\nI have a friend who is a great athlete,--an oarsman, mountain climber,\nbig game hunter.  He exults in a life of action, of doing big things,\nand yet withal, he is a tremendous reader and one of exquisite taste and\nwide knowledge in books and authors. I asked him of the value of\nreading.\n\n\"Every time I read a great book,\" he answered, \"I feel as if I had\npunched a hole through the wall,\" and so saying he crashed his large\nfist against a buttress of reinforced concrete.  \"I feel that my world\nhas been made larger; where before I had only seen a blank space, now I\nsee a new world, the world in which the author lived.  I am that much\nmore alive to my own.\"\n\nHe applied his reading to his daily life, and the world became for him a\nricher, more exciting place in which to live.  No one wants to plod\nthrough the world in a blind, sleepy fashion. We all want to live as\nkeenly, as vitally as possible.  The roots of the present are buried\ndeep in the past--to appreciate and have understanding of the present\nyou must appreciate and have understanding of the past--to realize how\nsmall and one-sided is your own point of view, you must appreciate the\nthousand and one viewpoints that have appeared through the ages to the\neyes of other men and women.\n\nIn beginning to form the habit of reading, the first thing to be\nrealized is that books are intimately connected with the world in which\nwe live.  Their true value does not come from the pleasure you\nexperience during the actual hours in which you are turning the pages,\nbut (and this point cannot too vividly be borne in mind) in the reaction\nof you upon the world and the world upon you after having read them.  If\na book does not influence your point of view towards God, your fellow\nmen, and your daily tasks and ambitions, you may feel assured either\nthat the book is one of little worth, or that you have not absorbed its\ntrue meaning.  When you hear someone say that reading is an excellent\nway to pass the time, you may feel sure that he knows little about\nbooks.  The poem, the novel, the history, the philosophy are not to pass\nthe time, they are to make more vital the hours of life.  A book that is\na book becomes part and parcel of your being, and you must of necessity\nmake it part of your life.\n\nAuthors are not for the library, they are for the street, the railroad\ntrain, the office, the open fields.  Read them in the library, or even\nin bed, but live them in the city thoroughfares, or country roads or\nworkaday places in which you make your life.  No man can read the\nJournals of that mystic, nature lover, Henry David Thoreau, without\nhaving his next trip to the country one of greater pleasure.  The colors\nand the sounds of the fields, the woodlands and the brooks will bring a\nnew joy to his spirit.  No man can read the novels of some great gobbler\nof life, such as eighteenth century Tobias Smollett, without finding the\ncity life of our twentieth century more human, more satisfying, more\nexciting.  No man can seriously read a religious poet such as Whitman or\nWordsworth without becoming more deeply religious, more keenly conscious\nof the wonders of God and Man. And the Bible--surely no one can read the\nmagic beauty and truth in the Prophecies of the Old Testament without\nfeeling that he has met and talked with giants.  These books bear\ndirectly on life--they make us think, love and experience in a way that\nwe have never done before.  The world becomes more thoroughly a magic\nplace in which there are a thousand things to make life one glorious\nescapade, through which we may be thankful for the opportunity of\nliving.\n\nAs some people believe reading to be a pleasant method of passing the\ntime (without realizing that time is in truth passing them), so others\nbelieve that being \"well read\" is some sort of a social advantage.  It\nis difficult to determine which is the more stupid and superficial point\nof view, that of regarding books as time-killers or as useful topics of\nconversation. The latter is probably the worst, as, in addition to its\nsuperficial aspect, there is its insincerity.  The man or woman who\nreads a great book because it is \"the thing to do\" is not only a weak\nfollower of fashion but a waster of valuable time.  It is far better\nnever to have read a book than to have read it stupidly and begrudgingly\nwith the thought in mind that it will be a feather in your cap to be\nable to boast of having read it.  Needless as it may seem to make a\npoint of this, it is, nevertheless, the idea in the mind of many a man\nin college, and many a woman who joins a reading circle.\n\nSome misguided supporters of the study of the ancient classics use as a\nplea that \"every gentleman should read Greek.\"  The insincerity of this\ndefence can only be compared to the sighs of the woman who attempts to\nconvince her neighbors that the beauty of a sunset appeals to her as it\ndoes to no one else, or the ecstatic murmurings of the young man at the\nart exhibition, who is arousing within himself a false enthusiasm, for\nsome artistic cult that in truth means nothing to him.\n\nWe see this type of man or woman all too often.  They are usually\ngushing about their latest emotional experience, when in fact they are\nincapable of having any.  It is an insincere attempt to be the highest\nof the high-brows.  Let us have none of this!  Let us realize that\neducation and culture are splendid things to be highly prized, but only\nin that they make the individual who possesses them a richer, deeper,\nmore sympathetic person.\n\nA hobby, which has to-day become a fashion, is bird study.  Far be it\nfrom me to disparage the movement seemingly alive in all our suburban\ndistricts, but let us make short shift with those who ogle knowingly\nthrough field glasses, when the motive behind the action is that in\nselect company it is considered \"the thing.\"\n\nIt is a safe warning never to read a book because it is fashionable.\nNever read a book because you think it will form an engaging topic of\nconversation; always read because you want to derive a sincere\ninspiration, an enlarged point of view.  Within a library is encased the\nsoul of the past, the meaning of the present, the promise of the future.\nFrom it we derive the entire tradition of which we are inheritors, the\ndeeper movements of which we are a part, the prophecies of the future in\nwhich we and ours will live.  This treasure is more worthy of respect\nthan to be treated as the devourer of an idle hour, or the means whereby\nto keep \"in the swim.\"\n\nThe cultured man is a man of broad understanding, of deep sympathies.  A\nfisherman who knows his boat, his line and the bay in which he makes his\nlivelihood may be a cultured man.  He may have derived from his way of\nlife and the tools of his trade the solemn truths that give him an\nunderstanding of the ways of men and the needs of the human heart; but\nanother man who has gone through the University, \"machinely made,\nmachinely crammed,\" may be totally without culture in that he has never\ndrunk at those well-springs of living which teach the mind the great\nunderlying sentiments that rule the world.  One may well be educated and\nyet uncultured, \"well-read\" and yet without the vision that may be\nderived from books.  It is not the word but the spirit of the word that\nmust be taken to heart and lived.\n\nMatthew Arnold defined culture as a knowledge of the best that has been\ndone and said by man--but the one who _opens that door_ must have more\nthan that knowledge.  It is not enough to cram away facts in the corners\nof your brain.  These facts must have a direct bearing upon your life.\nTo have knowledge of the best that has been written, you must not only\nread a great poem but you must allow the thought or fancy to sink into\nand become part of your personality; of the best that has been done you\nmust not only have knowledge of the courage and wisdom of the early\nAmericans who broke the yoke of Great Britain, but you must apply their\ncourage and wisdom to your daily life; of the best that has been said\nyou must not only read one of Abraham Lincoln's great speeches, but\nabsorb the quiet spirituality of the man who uttered them, and allow his\npersonality to become part of yours.\n\nFarcical moving-picture shows and talking-machine rag-time surely have\ntheir place, but can they enter the soul of man as can \"the best that\nhas been written, done and said\"?  The plays of Euripides and the words\nof Marcus Aurelius have for many centuries given deeper understandings\nand wider horizons to a multitude of readers, and it is probable that\nthe intensity with which they have acted upon the individual is\ncommensurate with the length of time that they have acted upon the mass.\nWe do not believe that this can be said of the time-killing \"movie\" or\nthe rag-time song of yesterday.\n\nLet us enter the world of living through the world of books.  It is from\nthe printed page that we can best equip ourselves for a rich life of\nvalue to ourselves, our family and our neighbors.  If you do not believe\nit, read some book that the world has acknowledged great.  Having read\nit, live it in your eternal self, and you will have passed through the\nOpen Door.\n\nIt is a rainy day at the seashore; I am writing in the reading room of a\nsummer hotel.  Without, the rain is sweeping across the bathing beach,\nthe tennis courts are flooded, the golf course, without a doubt, is a\nswampy morass.  It is a dreary sight for one who looks through the\nwindow pane. Our little world is upon a vacation, and all but the few\nwho wish to tramp the beach in raincoats and gum boots must stay\nin-doors.  And yet there is happiness, and I believe greater promise of\nthe morrow.  In one corner of the room there is a stripling of about\nthirteen, curled in a chair, absorbed in his book, which from the cover\nI know to be \"Treasure Island.\"  He is with Old Pew, John Silver, and\nthe cut-throat buccaneers. On the morrow the sand-dunes for that boy\nwill be places of mystery where weird and exciting fairy deeds might\nhave been accomplished.  The commonplace bathing beach will have new\nmysteries, as the waters that splash at his feet are the same that\nsurround some sunbaked, South Sea Treasure Isle.\n\nAt the desk opposite me, a student with furrowed brow reads a calf-skin\nvolume.  I have noted the title: \"The Speeches of Henry Clay.\"  Perhaps\nthis fellow is a young lawyer or an aspiring politician.  He wishes to\nabsorb the ideas of the silver-tongued \"Harry of the West,\" the popular\nidol of seventy years ago, and to consider their bearing upon the tariff\nquestions of to-day.  He must agree with Napoleon Bonaparte: \"Read and\nreflect on history; it is the only true philosophy.\"  And there is a\ngirl reading the poetry of Alfred Noyes, and a bespectacled, bearded old\nman with a volume of Pope.  They have both turned to poetry to find the\nbeauty and truth those poets have seen.  How much will their spirits be\naffected, the one by the lyric note of our contemporary singer, the\nother by the didactic moralizing of the philosopher wit?\n\nSo it goes!  The boy sees visions of pirates and adventure, the old man\ndreams dreams and seeks new truth; the young man desires armor for his\nlife's battle, the girl finds beauty, a refreshing and invigorating\ndraught.  It rains to-day but they will all be more richly endowed to\nwelcome the sun and sea breezes of the morrow.\n\n\n\n\n                             *CHAPTER III*\n\n                 *READING FICTION WITH AN EYE ON LIFE*\n\n\nThe world and life's too big to pass for a dream,\n  *      *      *      *      *\n    you've seen the world--\nThe beauty and the wonder and the power,\nThe shapes of things, their colors, lights and shades,\nChanges, surprises,--and God made it all!\n      FRA LIPPO LIPPI\n\n\nOur good Brother, Lippo Lippi, has started off two of my chapters, and\nit is well that he should, as no artist had a keener appetite for life\nthan had he.  He grasped all there was of the best in life--color, love,\nwork--and he enjoyed it.\n\nLibrarians, booksellers, and blatant advertisements assure us that we\nare a novel-reading public.  The number of copies sold of this and that\nbest seller are at first sight staggering, and even more so after having\nread the book! A certain novel becomes the fashion in the same\ninconsequential manner as does an especially uncomfortable type of\ncollar--another season both are forgotten and something new is taken up.\nThe writing, publishing and advertising of such books have become a\npurely commercialized art upon the part of the authors and booksellers.\n\"Where are the snows of yesteryear?\" sighed Francois Villon, \"Where are\nthe masterpieces of last summer?\" sighs the meditative consumer of\nfiction.  Almost every novel which has those qualities which publishers\nbelieve will appeal to an idle, amusement-loving populace is proclaimed\nin display advertising as \"the greatest novel of the decade,\" \"the great\nAmerican novel,\" or in some other equally false manner.  The author, the\npublisher, and even the readers know that such statements are utter\nfalsities and yet the sale goes up into the hundreds of thousands. I\noften wonder what has become of the stupendous number of copies of a\ncertain book the World was reading some ten years ago.  It is never\nmentioned; it is never read; it is seldom seen on anyone's bookshelves,\nyet the material volumes must be lying about somewhere.  Perhaps such\nbooks are indeed as \"the snows of yesteryear\" and melt away when their\nday is done. One who wishes seriously to acquire the riches there are in\nbooks might well make it a rule never to read a novel until it has stood\nthe test of time.  What, bye the bye, is the use of reading, unless you\nmean to get the best out of it?  Walking is better exercise,\nconversation more sociable, gambling more risky and therefore more full\nof zest!  Any story worth reading this summer must surely be worth\nreading five years from now. Life is too short, there are too many great\nbooks that are eminently worth reading, to spend our time wading through\nthe ruck of tastefully bound, hurriedly illustrated, widely advertised\nnovels that greet us every season. I repeat--Do not read a book that you\nmay be in the swing of up-to-date conversation.  If you do, you prove\nyourselves the gull of everyone concerned. Let time do your winnowing,\nand if after five years the people of taste are still talking of the\nbook, you may turn to it and probably find something of true merit.  You\nmay say that with such a plan you will read but few modern novels.\nQuite true, there will be but few that stand the test of even five\nyears, but how much better it is to conserve your energies and time for\nreading the great works of fiction that have stood the test of\ngenerations.\n\nAs in all other reading, novels should awaken you to a new life.  You\nshould choose those that have the truest effect upon your goings and\ncomings after you have put them aside.  You must agree that those\ntreating of an impossible, untrue social condition, as some\nmoney-grabbing manufacturer of stories pretends to see it, will not have\nthis effect. Neither will those of untrue chivalry and sentiment in\nwhich untrue ladies weep unnatural tears, and untrue heroes do\nimpossible deeds.  Such trivial falsities merely chew up the all too few\nhours allotted mortals upon this good ship, the Earth.  Which then are\nthose novels that are to be read not for the purpose of passing the\ntime, but of holding up the time, and of making every minute more real,\nmore full of meaning,--for that is the function of all great books?\n\nThere is a poem of John Keats beginning,\n\n    Lo--I must tell a tale of chivalry;\n    For large white plumes are dancing in mine eye.\n\n\nPerhaps these lines to every one do not carry the same magic beauty and\npromise of long-dreamed-of things that they do to me.  The poem was\nnever finished, and I, for one, deeply regret it, as surely we would\nhave had a tale to set our hearts afire with the clangor of the\nmediaeval tournament, or the lone quest of a golden armored knight.\n\nSir Walter Scott told such tales in prose and his novels are of the\ngreatest in literature.  Honore de Balzac told stories of French life in\nwhich there is nothing specially chivalric, nothing in that sense\nbewitching, and yet his tales, too, are of the greatest in literature.\nThe terms Realism and Romanticism are used to describe two different\naspects of art, music and literature.  We will use them in considering\nthe relation of novels to life.\n\nBalzac is considered the father of modern realism.  This is partly due\nto the fact that he presented in a forceful manner the principles upon\nwhich he worked.  He desired to put the life of France, city,\nprovincial, military and official, within the covers of his books.  It\nis interesting to remember that he wrote at a period in which men were\nperhaps more interested in the reason and purpose of human life than\nthey had ever been before.  Those scientific discoveries, which were\nfinally to lead the way to our present theories of evolution, were\nbringing men to a realization that the religious dogmas upon which they\nhad founded their faith were weakening.  It was difficult for a thinking\nman to believe that the world had been made out of whole cloth, but a\nfew thousand years before.  Science was in the air; faiths were\nshattered.  Balzac turned to man to determine anew his nature.  His was\nthe huge task of presenting man in all his loves and hates, purposes and\nmotives, works and joys.  He attempted it, and there has been a great\narmy of writers following in his footsteps.  Their aim has been to give\na realistic cross section of certain aspects of life, allowing the\nreader to draw inferences as to its meaning and his personal relation to\nit.\n\nThis is realism.  It is most unfortunate that in our country the word\nhas become synonymous with books of a sordid and erotic nature.  Realism\nin literature should show us life as it is, and as life is neither all\nsordid nor all erotic, neither should literature present only those\naspects.  The function of this type of literature is a great and\nimportant one.\n\nThe supreme realist has a God-given power of seeing and feeling the\nforces and emotions that make up human living.  He sees and examines\nlife as if under a microscope, and with this peculiar power he must have\nthe faculty of expression.  You may ask how we can apply the words\ncontained in such a novel to our own life?  We all feel that there is a\ngreat advantage in \"understanding life.\"  We try to analyze our own and\nour friends' ways of living.  Let us go to great novels and see what we\nfind there.\n\nWas it a child who said, when going through the British Museum, that he\nliked the sculpture better than the paintings because he could walk\naround the sculpture?  He spoke more wisely than he knew.  The same\nsimile may be applied to the realistic novel. In reading it we may walk\nabout and examine life.  From day to day, as we live things happen so\nrapidly, the world is passing before us so fast that, unless you have a\nsupreme intellect, it is impossible to examine the pageant but from one\npoint of view.  You can but look at the front of the picture. It is\nflat, there is but little perspective.\n\nThe genius with the gift for fiction such as had Tolstoy, Balzac or\nSmollett can encase civilization within the covers of a book.  You may\nread and understand.  There is something static.  You live a thousand\nlives by proxy, you enter a hundred homes and have converse with the\nhearts of men and women.  Instead of seeing but the front of things, we\nwalk behind and take in life from every angle. The characters in the\ndrama of life are under a microscope through which we are privileged to\nlook.  Tolstoy presents life as it was in Russia forty years ago, but\nhuman hearts that are cosmopolitan and eternal, Balzac, the France of\nthe forties, Smollett, England of the eighteenth century.  We learn the\nideals, the struggles, the way of life of different civilizations, of\ndifferent ages.\n\nWe find that our point of view is a narrow one, that our place in the\nSun is perhaps a very small corner, and our hearts and minds are\nenlarged to a deeper sympathy with all men, a finer understanding of all\nideals and practices.\n\nInstead of living in the little village of our own outlook, instead of\nweighing all experience and action by our own, we arrive at a higher,\nmore cosmopolitan point of view.  Whereas we might think that ours is\nthe only century in which people flock to the cities and live material\nlives of rush and money-grabbing, we find the same thing true of\nSmollett's England of one hundred and fifty years ago; instead of\ncondemning the woman who cannot get along with her husband we have a\nbroader sympathy for having followed the career of the splendid Anna\nKarenina in Tolstoy's novel of that name.  We break the shell of our\npetty selves which has made for so many misunderstandings and\nprejudices.  We must not pride ourselves upon our own motives and\ncivilization, until we have at least made an attempt to understand those\nof others.\n\nSince the days when Nathaniel Hawthorne condensed the spiritual aspects\nof New England in his immortal \"Scarlet Letter,\" there has been a\nscarcity of American novels of any high realistic calibre.  Ernest Poole\nhas recently done brilliant work in \"The Harbor,\" in which he presents\nthe ideals that have guided a young man of our day and generation. Yet,\nhere we are, in a strange world indeed--the greatest spirits hurling\nthemselves into the strife of ninety-mile-an-hour living, only to be\ntossed aside to make way for younger and harder workers, more efficient\nthinkers.  The strange growling beast of a great American city, the wide\nacres of efficient irrigated farming, with the workers in each, have yet\neven partially to be interpreted by the genius of fiction.  When it has\nbeen done by the great seers, we will find answered many questions which\npuzzle us to-day.  Not the mirror but the cosmic microscope must be used\nas the tool.  It will not be done by one man; it will take a literary\narmy--let the advance guard come with our generation!\n\nAnd of Romance--what will we say of the tales which take us away from\nthe dusty world of every-day duties and responsibilities, into a magic\nturmoil of brave deeds and devoted lovers?  We must not forever be\nmuddling about in the mundane sphere in which we make our bread and\nbutter--we must at times for wealth and happiness gaze through\n\n    Charm'd magic casements, opening on the foam\n    Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.\n\n\nWe of the Anglo-Saxon race have a glorious heritage in the Waverley\nNovels.  Sometimes, we are told that Sir Walter Scott is becoming a\nmemory, and that of the past generation; but many feel, and I am of that\nnumber, that the author of \"Ivanhoe,\" \"Kenilworth,\" \"Quentin Durward\"\nand the score of other yarns which have charmed youth and age for now\nwell-nigh a century has a permanent place in our literature, perhaps\nonly surpassed by William Shakespeare.  Lucky is the boy or girl who has\ngrown up, and the older persons who still sojourn with the Knights and\nLadies, the Kings and Queens, the Highland Fairies, the human serfs who\nmarch in an endless, enduring procession through the pages of the Prince\nof story tellers. For such readers the Past is hallowed with a magic\ncircle that defies tawdriness. How pleasant it is for one who lives in a\nroaring city to be able by reaching to the book-shelf to forget the\naffairs of the day and to live in the pomp and pageantry, the heroics\nand devotions of the Past.  The lover of Romance may well say to the\nreader of modern realism, \"Why read of slums, of offices, and city\nsuburbs when you may ride out with Prosper l'Gai in Hewlett's 'Forest\nLovers' or be partner in countless intrigues of love and swordsmanship\nthrough a dozen of Alexander Dumas' yarns'?\"  Why indeed?--we sometimes\nwonder.\n\nIt is a marvellous gift, that of the man who can look back into the past\nand make it alive and breathing for the readers of the present.  It is\ndangerous to take Dumas and Scott for our guides to true history, as\nthey have too often twisted the facts in order to spin a good tale, but\nas revealers of the atmosphere of history, they are unsurpassed even by\nthe greatest historians, and if we have the atmosphere we have a rich\nand splendid background in which to place the facts.  We may sojourn in\nancient Carthage by reading Flaubert's \"Salammbo,\" in Rome by\nSienkiewicz's \"Quo Vadis,\" in Pompeii by Bulwer Lytton's \"The Last Days\nof Pompeii,\" in early England by Scott's \"Ivanhoe.\"  Even those scornful\nindividuals who pride themselves upon being \"men of the world\" have\nsomething to learn if they have only studied their own time as it goes\nfleeting past. For facts let us turn to the scientific historians, but\nfor life to the historic romances.\n\nLet us find justification of each tale, not in its historical accuracy,\nbut in the fact that \"it helps the ear to listen when the horns of\nElf-land blow.\"  It is for this that we will read them,--that we may\nawake refreshed as from a plunge in the springs of Mount Olympus.  If\nthey do not revivify our jaded senses, and awake our tired vision to the\nbeauties of character and nature of the world in which we live, we may\nlay them aside and be sure that the author does not measure up to the\nproper standard. The love of a story is deeply ingrained in the human\nheart.  The baby, before he can read, listens, fascinated, to the\nparaphrase of some classic fairy tale related by his mother; the\nminnesinger of old in the mediaeval castle charmed the tired fighters\nwith tales of greater love and chivalry; the medicine man recounted to\nthe savage tribe the sagas of their ancestral struggles and triumphs; we\nall love to hear the man talk who has been to strange lands and seen\nstrange peoples.  It is the cry of human nature for accounts of the\ndoings of men in worlds in which we live not that makes the tremendous\ndemand for the novels of the day.  Let us remember, however, that the\nold story tellers, the medicine men and the mothers with their infants\nat their knees told tales that really fed souls in warming the hearts\nand awakening the intellects of their eager listeners.  The plumed\nknight buckled on his armor with more vigor, and attempted, the next\nday, to outdo the deeds of the minnesinger's hero; the child lived in\nfairyland and found a background for his playing and dreaming; the\nsavage warrior felt more keen to go upon the warpath to uphold the\ntradition of his ancestors who were watching him from their places in\nthe Happy Hunting Ground.\n\nThese stories were of the staff of life to their hearers.  How many of\nthe novels you read bring nothing but the means of wasting an hour?\nGrown people to-day must find their stories in books: there do not\nfrequently come in our way travellers who have been overcome with the\nmystery of far-off places; we have no longer medicine men who sing of\nthe glories of our ancestors; we perforce must turn for our minnesinger\nto the printed page.\n\nLet that page be worth while! Insist upon reading a story that means\nsomething; either that gives you a more sympathetic understanding of\nyour fellow men, or an inspiration and refreshment by allowing a glimpse\nthrough that \"magic casement\" which opens to the world of Kings and\nPrinces, Castles and Feudal Keeps, or to the mountain where dwelt the\nGiant or to the seas upon which sailed the Pirates of your boyhood.\n\nWhen novels reveal unknown vistas of beauty and delight, or present\nideas that jog our thoughtless complacency, they are of the stuff that\nintensifies and glorifies existence.  They keep a man's mind from being\ncommonplace and mongrel.  Let us all be Kentucky thoroughbreds in the\nway we look upon the world.  Chafe at your bit, stamp the ground and be\neager to get away at the front when the barrier goes up.  Anyone can be\nan \"also ran.\"  A good story is often tonic enough to turn an \"also ran\"\ninto a winner!\n\n\n\n\n                              *CHAPTER IV*\n\n                        *HISTORY AND YOUR VOTE*\n\n\nWe are much beholden to Machiavel and others, that write what men do,\nand not what they ought to do.--BACON\n\n\nOne of the greatest evils into which a democracy may inadvertently slide\nis an indifference upon the part of the populace to the political issues\nof the day.  We have upon several occasions in our history passed\nthrough periods of almost unlimited commercial prosperity during which\neveryone has been too much absorbed in the pursuit of power and riches\nto give a thought to the affairs of government, with the result that our\nstate and national affairs have lapsed into disgraceful conditions of\ninefficiency and moral laxity.  Such periods have paved the way to\ncorrupt boss rule and throttling machine politics.\n\nIgnorance, which always comes with indifference, and yet is most\npernicious when most active, is another extreme and vital danger.  It\nmust be evident to every thinking man or woman, that a nation whose\npolitical destinies are in the hands of the people with their almost\nuniversal franchise should be made up of voters who are alive and\nthinking.  \"Read and reflect on history; it is the only true\nphilosophy,\" wrote Napoleon Bonaparte in his instructions pertaining to\nthe education of his only son, the King of Rome.  The great Emperor must\nhave realized that his phenomenal success in ruling men and establishing\nlaw had as an important part of its foundation his knowledge of the\naffairs of men in the past. Without suggesting that we should all be\nNapoleons, it seems true that our political fabric would be infinitely\nmore stable, if the rank and file of American citizens should feel it a\nduty \"to read and reflect on history.\"\n\nWith our ever-increasing number of ignorant Southern European\nimmigrants, who have come from countries where republican forms of\ngovernment are practically unknown, it seems that our inherited\ntradition of a republican democracy will be undermined through\nignorance, unless, indeed, these new citizens be given an understanding\nof our history and the meaning of our systems.\n\nTo-day many specious types of radicalism, that are for the most part\npleasant Utopian dreams of the future, standing upon no foundation and\ndrawing no nutriment from the past, are thundered about most seriously.\nIn life and in statecraft there is one great teacher,--Experience.  A\nman weighs the advisability of a certain step by his past experience,\nand this must be the basis of thought when determining matters of\npolitical science.  A reader of American History may find food for\nthought in comparing the manner in which the half-baked political\ntheorists of to-day come to their conclusions with that of the great\nAmerican statesmen of the past.  To-day we are opportunists.  Instead of\nweighing experience and testing the future, we jump helter-skelter at\nwhat seems of temporary value.  In dreaming of the future you must\nremember the past or your dreams are futile.  Emerson somewhere tells\nus, that when you are drawn into an argument upon moral values, you\nshould always ask your opponent whether he has carefully digested his\nPlato.  If he has not, you may placidly refuse to continue the\naltercation, as he to whom Plato is unknown is unfit to talk with a\nthinking man upon problems of higher morality.  I believe that in like\nmanner we could close the mouths of many trumpeters of social uplift\nthrough sumptuary legislation.  Ask them if they have carefully read\ntheir histories.  If they have not, and probably the accent will be on\nthe \"not,\" you may safely snub them, by insisting that they turn to the\npast, before they have the right to ask people to listen to their talk\nof the present and the future.\n\nAt the time of the founding of our Republic, in Thomas Jefferson, James\nMadison, and Alexander Hamilton we had three supreme _students_ of\ngovernment.  Perhaps more than to any other one cause the success of our\n\"American Experiment\" is due to the profound knowledge and scholarly\nattainment of those three men.  Upon them rested the responsibility of\nfounding a government \"of the people, for the people, and by the people\"\nthat would neither be subverted by the wiles of a demagogue or the power\nof an oligarchy, nor become chaotic through the unrestrained influences\nof the proletarian populace. To Jefferson we owe the Declaration of\nIndependence, to Madison a great part of the thought and the wording of\nthe Constitution, to Hamilton the body of the Federalist Papers.  Their\nthought was not the thought of the minute, but of all time.  In all\ntheir writings we can see their thorough grasp of the faults and virtues\nof the governments of almost every nation in past ages.  They knew, as\ntoo few of our public men know, that the future cannot be made out of\nwhole cloth, but must evolve from the past. They had studied men and the\npolitical needs and powers of men.  The result has been the\nestablishment of a government that has stood the shock of almost a\ncentury and a half, a period during which almost all other civilized\ngovernments have been the prey not to peaceful but to violent evolution.\nUpon the passing of the great Revolutionary triumvirate we were\nfortunate in having men of the intellectual calibre of John C. Calhoun,\nHenry Clay, and Daniel Webster. They were thinkers as well as great\norators, students of the past as well as guardians of the present.\n\nIt is a profitable study to read of the youth of great statesmen.\nAlmost invariably you will find them as young men such as would to-day\nbe sneered at as \"book-worms.\"  Napoleon, Pitt, Gladstone, Cavour,\nMirabeau, the great Americans and many, many others before they entered\npublic life were profound followers of the goddess of learning.  It is\nnot surprising to find that many of them obtained wisdom and enthusiasm\nfrom the pages of Plutarch's \"Lives of the Ancient Greeks and Romans.\"\nIt was in Greece and Rome that we find the origins of most of our laws\nand institutions, and in the lives of the men who helped to establish\nthem we may read of the tests and needs in their development.\nConsidering the studies of great men it is always amusing to read the\ncalendar which, upon the request of Mr. Madison, Senior, it is said,\nJefferson arranged for the working hours of James Madison, Junior.\nPlease note that Madison's health broke down from overstudy while at\nPrinceton, and it is not to be wondered at, for here is the schedule:\nuntil eight in the morning he should confine himself to natural\nphilosophy, morals and religion; from eight until twelve, read law and\ncondense cases, \"never using two words where one will do\"; from twelve\nto one, read politics in Montesquieu, Locke, Priestley, Malthus, and the\nParliamentary Debates; in the afternoon relieve his mind with history,\nand when the evening closes in, regale himself with literature,\ncriticism, rhetoric, and oratory.\n\nIn those days they indeed believed in thoroughly equipping themselves\nfor public life!\n\nA few years ago there was an agitation afoot in favor of establishing\nthe systems of the Initiative, Referendum, and Recall.  In the North,\nthe South, the East, and the West it was hailed by the spellbinders as\nthe cure-all for corrupt legislation and undesirable laws.  It was\nargued that citizens, who did not have enough political acumen to elect\nhonest and efficient representatives, would have enough to become their\nown law-makers.  In the height of the political campaign Nicholas Murray\nButler, the President of Columbia University, published a small book\nentitled \"Why Should We Change Our Form of Government?\"  The author\npresented the hazardous risk that our profoundly important\nrepresentative system would run of being subverted into a chaotic\nabsolute democracy by instituting laws that would deprive the executive,\nlegislative, and judicial departments of their independence and\nprestige.  The republican forms would lapse back two thousand years to\nthose democratic systems of the Grecian states that too invariably paved\nthe way to the despotism of tyrants or the chaos of mob rule.\n\nThe title of the essay was rather startling to those who had been\nadvocating the new measures without having thoroughly analyzed their\ntrue meaning and import.  The distinguished scholar brought clear\nthinking to bear upon the situation, whereas before it had been befogged\nin the spread-eagle oratory of demagogues, and the catch-as-catch-can\nsubtleties of ignorant theorists.  Clear thinking, President Butler's\nand that of others, won the day and the measures are now well-nigh\nforgotten.  I mention this as but an instance of the value to our nation\nof men who have political and historical knowledge with the ability to\nthink clearly upon the important points of our social progress.\n\nI heard President Wilson, some months before he entered upon his\ndistinguished political career, address in an informal manner a group of\nUniversity students.  He said in part (my quotation is rather a\nparaphrase, as I would not dare to transcribe from memory the words of\nthe most perfect stylist of our time): \"Gentlemen, in many European\ncountries in times of national crises and disturbances the nation looks\nto the Universities and the question is asked, 'What do the young men of\nthe Universities think?'  In America unfortunately this question is\nrarely asked, as all realize that the men at the Universities _do not\nthink_.\"\n\nThis is a bitter arraignment of the intellectual life at our\nuniversities, and if the speaker's conclusion was correct the same must\nto a great degree be said of the intellectual life of our nation.  The\npublic's antipathy to broad political matters is the most dangerous vice\nthat can undermine a republic, and it is the one that is most seriously\naffecting ours.  It would be extraordinary, if it were not so pathetic,\nthe way in which, without taking toll of the experience of the past,\nwithout drawing analogies nor seeking wisdom, we go muddling, blundering\non into the future.\n\nThat there is nothing new under the sun is perhaps more true in matters\npertaining to political problems than in any other branch of affairs.\nHistory repeats itself, repeats itself, repeats itself, as if it never\ngrew tired of begging the world to learn true lessons. In proportion as\nthe number of our citizens appreciate that truism and sincerely pursue\nits corollaries, we will have a sound political condition.\n\nWhen Aristotle, a wise man in his generation, said that it was in the\nnature of human institutions to decay, he knew whereof he spoke.  It is\npainfully apparent to the student of history and governments.  What were\nthe seeds of decay that smouldered and finally undermined the Grecian\ndemocracies, the power of Carthage and of Tyre, the world-embracing\nRoman Empire, the Venetian Republic, the Holy Roman Empire, proud Spain\nof Charles V, and France of the seventeenth century?  Has the English\nEmpire run its course to make way for the more vital power of the\nGermanic People?  In each and every one of these decadences, if we wish\nour national life to retain its pristine spirit, there are lessons to be\nlearned by the United States of America.  Our experiment has not\nnecessarily met the test of time.  Our nation is not liable to be the\nexception from those that have slid down the path to ruin.  There is a\nGermany, despotic yet powerful, that perhaps must some day be met in\nmortal combat; if the danger lies not there, perhaps it will be another.\nIn any case our loins must be girt with power and strength, our\ncitizenship must be hardy, our political fabric solid.\n\nTo retain our virtues, to preserve our national life from decay, is the\nresponsibility upon the shoulders of our generation.  It is for this\nthat we must \"read and reflect on history\" and apply it directly to\nlife.  What an analogy may be drawn between the Roman Usurpers in the\ntime of the Empire's decadence throwing money at the street crowds to\nobtain their support, and our modern politicians bidding for the old\nsoldier vote by passing absurdly extravagant pension bills! This mulct\nof the treasury is now on the wane, but is the new power in politics,\nthe labor unions, going to obtain legislation and favors because it can\npoll a large vote upon election day?  Such things are signs of\ndecadence.  Must we not learn from the French Revolution that its\nfailure as a constructive force was due to an attempt to legislate\nmorality into existence--and yet we continue to pass as laws measures\nthat have truly been dubbed \"amendments to the Ten Commandments.\"  How\nmany of the great nations and institutions have had their backs broken\nthrough too excessive centralization, yet, to-day there are but few\nindividuals and no political party that stand in opposition to our\never-increasing tendency towards federalism, in contradistinction to\ncommunity government.  Until the outbreak of the World War, England,\nGermany and Russia each had a terrible internal problem: England\nattempting to Anglicize Ireland, Russia to Russianize Poland, Germany to\nGermanize Alsace and Lorraine. There was this thorn in the side of each\nnation: by brute force they were trying to denationalize another\ncountry.  England was failing after three hundred years of wasted men\nand resources, Russia was covering a volcano that had smouldered for\ngenerations, after over forty years Germany had as ugly a wound to nurse\nas in the beginning.  Yet with these examples, good Americans, with\nconfident smiles, for three years have been laughing at the Democratic\nadministration on account of their Mexican policy.  \"Conquer Mexico,\"\nthe wiseacres say.  Yes, conquer Mexico the way England has tried and\nfailed to conquer Ireland!\n\nThe political value of history lies in its disclosures of the defects\nthat have brought on decay, and the stumbling blocks that make trouble.\nIn reading history we must keep our eyes on the present.  It is\nunreasonable to believe that our government is an infallible one, or\nthat our national existence, maintained with the most stable\ngovernmental authority, combined with the widest possible latitude for\nthe liberty of men, is any more infallible than the many other systems\nthat have met with disaster in the past.  The reading of history is\nvaluable, in that it enables us to have those visions of the future that\nwill be fruitful in that they are moulded by our experiences in the\npast.  Such visions, inculcating power of judgment, are never more\nrequisite than in these days in which the blind pacifist, the quack\nreformer, the misguided theorist, and the wide-promising demagogue are\nabroad in the land.  We must study our lessons of the past that we may\nspurn those governmental cure-alls evolved, according to Alexander\nHamilton, \"in the reveries of those political doctors, whose sagacity\ndisdains the admonitions of experimental instruction.\"\n\nAmerican history properly forms the most fruitful subject of study for\nAmericans, and yet one must have a wide background to obtain the proper\ncrop.  One must soon be led to the investigation of our legislative,\nexecutive and judicial functions as they developed through the evolution\nof constitutional government in England. The democratic models traced to\nthe Grecian states, the seeds of \"sans-culotte\" philosophy that\nJefferson and Tom Paine brought from France, the thought of political\nscientists such as Plato, Machiavel, Locke, and Montesquieu open fields\nin which every reader may learn lessons that will guide his judgment in\nthe ever-important problems of the day.\n\nA citizenship educated to a knowledge of the past is a bulwark that will\ndefend the integrity of our nation. Such a citizenship is in truth an\nideal in that it is unobtainable, but it is a splendid ideal and one\nthat should be our guiding star.  In a government such as ours it is\nintolerable that an educated man should cast his vote by habit, and yet\nhow often do we hear the opinion expressed that such and such a man\nwould vote the straight Democratic or Republican ticket no matter what\nthe platform, no matter who the candidate?  This study of political\nparties is itself fruitful.  One hundred years ago the Democratic party\nwas the party of decentralization and \"laissez-faire,\" but to-day, since\nthe Bryan influence has had such sway, it eclipses the Republican party\nas the exponent of centralization and paternalism.  There are, however,\nthousands of voters who continue to vote the straight Democratic ticket,\nbelieving that the party stands for the same principles as it did when\ntheir fathers first voted.  This is but an incident of man becoming an\nindifferent, incapable political animal.  Too much of such indifference\nis a fatal disease to a country of universal franchise.\n\nHistory has no business in the closet!  \"History and your Vote,\"\ngentlemen,--and now, in several states, you of the fairer sex,--is a\nphrase worth remembering upon election day.\n\n\n\n\n                              *CHAPTER V*\n\n                            *CLIO'S VINTAGE*\n\n\nHistory after all is the true poetry.--CARLYLE\n\n\nTo the one who drinks of the wisdom of Clio, the Muse of history, there\nwill come manifold riches other than the accrued satisfaction of\nwell-weighed political judgment.  A knowledge of history, in its\nbroadest sense, may well be said to be the essential foundation of all\ncultural education. The movements in science, philosophy, music,\nliterature and the plastic arts are all inseparably intertwined, and\nthey have as their controlling background the political actions of men\nand the economic forces that move peoples.\n\nIt is as impossible to thoroughly understand the poetry of Wordsworth,\nShelley or Byron without having an appreciation of the political and\neconomic events of the French Revolution and Napoleonic Era, as it is to\nconceive of the Epics of Homer without the Trojan War.  The music of\nBach and Haydn has as its foundation the reasonableness in religion,\nphilosophy and political thought of the eighteenth century, as the music\nof Wagner and Chopin the unreason and rampant individualism of the early\nnineteenth.  The books of the Cromwellian period reflect the\nilliberality and severity of the Puritan parliaments: the books of the\nRestoration reflect the French upbringing of Charles II.  Wars and\nrumors of war, famine and years of plenty, new discoveries and great\ninvasions make up the life of the world, and it is of this life that\nliterature and music are made.  We could indefinitely cite instances of\nthe influence that history has had upon the arts, but in this chapter\nlet us consider history as an art, history as literature.\n\nNo historian who deserves the name should write \"dry\" histories.  The\ngreatest historian is he who has an inspired passion for delving into\nthe past, and the ability to interpret it in its living, human aspects.\nThe \"scientific\" student who considers his mission that of arriving at\nthe precise facts is not an historian but a \"dry-as-dust\" recorder.  He\nis useful, however, in providing the material that will enable the true\nhistorian to cast illuminating spotlights upon the centuries that have\ngone before. Mr. William Roscoe Thayer, one of the most distinguished of\nour American historical writers, tells us that \"Hi'_story_'--let us not\nforget--is five-sevenths _story_.\"  The historians whom we want to read\nare those who tell us the dramatic _story_ of the past. Two-sevenths of\ntheir ability should, perhaps, be their infinite patience and\nintellectual honesty in gathering, sorting and weighing documents and\nother sources of information, but the other five-sevenths must be that\nability which is the genius of the story teller. Someone has said that\nevery historian must be his own \"dry-as-dust,\" his own bespectacled\ninvestigator of authentic facts,--if the rest of him is an impassioned\nteller of tales we have a supreme historian.  Gibbon, before the days of\nelaborately prepared source books, before the days of thoroughly indexed\nlibraries, ransacked the learned treasuries of Europe and Asia Minor for\ninformation; to this infinite patience there was added in his character\nthe gifts of the artist and the dreamer.  The result, after ceaseless\nlabor, was the monumental, yet fascinating and comparatively reliable,\n\"The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,\" a book that is acknowledged\nthe acme of historical perfection.\n\nA few months ago, a woman of intellect, a wide traveller, an omnivorous\nreader, a mother of a large family, an efficient manager in whatever she\nundertook, was asked the name of the book that had made the most\nimpression upon her life.  Without a moment's hesitation she replied,\nCarlyle's \"History of the French Revolution.\"  Upon questioning her, we\nfound that she had read the two large volumes three times, and with each\nrereading there had awakened in her the sentiments aroused by the\ngreatest dramatic tragedy, the most intense human story.\n\nCarlyle was not a scientific historian, he did not write histories for\nother historians; he wrote as one whom God directed to put upon pages of\nflame the characters, the drama, the magnificent incidents, the\ncruelties, the braveries, the cowardices, the heroisms of \"the truth\nthat is stranger than fiction.\"  It is indeed more interesting to read\nof what men have done as depicted by the historian, than what they might\nhave done as depicted by the second-rate novelist!\n\nIf you have not read the \"French Revolution,\" read it at once!  The\nauthor has taken the most dramatic period in modern times and he has\ntreated it as it deserves.  It has the power of tragedy, whose mission\nis, according to Aristotle, \"to purify the soul through fear and\nterror.\"  Your soul will be enlightened, you will be made to feel, as\nall great history makes you feel, that life is played upon a wondrous\nhighway, and that the sights and works upon the way are of the sort to\nmake you live in a trembling condition of wonder and expectancy. The\ncity crowds will have new meaning: men and women, for having once been\nparticipants in the terrible cataclysm of one hundred and twenty year\nago, are still of the stuff to accomplish strange deeds, and to fulfil\nundreamed-of destinies.\n\nHas it occurred to you what a relatively small and insignificant number\nof familiar acquaintances we are able in our daily life to have?  How\nmany men and women do you know who have guided the destinies of nations,\nled great armies into the field, or are to meet death in their attempts\nto overthrow the tyranny of a despot or a bigot?  In history we may meet\nthem, and become acquainted with their problems and struggles.  The past\nis a select drawing-room into which we all may enter.  We may derive\ninspiration from the same wells that prompted the Crusaders to set out\ntime after time in their well-nigh fatal effort to drive the Moslems\nfrom Jerusalem; we may absorb the spirit that moved Cromwell's\nIronsides; we may appreciate the pettiness of our own weaknesses and\nvexations in comparison with the odds against which some of History's\nheroes have fought and conquered.  It is pleasant to live in the court\nof Louis XIV and to talk with kings and princes through the pages of St.\nSimon's \"Memoirs\"; it is a spiritual tonic and excitement to follow the\ncareers of the Indian Missionaries through Parkman's glowing pages!  It\nis in truth more downright \"fun\" than doing most things!\n\nUndoubtedly it is true that Napoleon's ruthless ambition brought\ndevastation to the lands that he conquered, and sorrow to the nation\nwhose young men he led to the cannon's mouth, and yet I sometimes think\nthat greater than the Code Napoleon, which he instituted, is the\ninspiration that his career has been to the young men of all countries.\nHow many boys have dreamed their vision of the future when following the\nwork of the little Corsican, who at the age of twenty-seven led the\narmies of France across the Alps to crumple in a series of whirlwind\ncampaigns the proud power of Austria.  And there was William Pitt, the\nYounger, who at twenty-four became Prime Minister of England, one-armed\nand half-blind Nelson at Trafalgar Bay, Lincoln, the rail-splitting\nPresident, Olive, Garibaldi, Hampden, and how many another has been a\nlight that beckons our future soldiers and statesmen?\n\nIn every epoch of history we will find new horizons opened that will\nenrich and broaden our daily life; in every vital struggle we will find\nindividuals and peoples who have acted in such a way that we should hope\nto be guided by them in our struggles and ambitions; in the failures of\nthe past we may obtain moral lessons for the present and the future; in\ncooerdinating our forces and forming our judgments we will obtain a\ntraining for our minds which will be of use to every man in carrying out\nthe enterprises in which he is engaged.\n\nDr. Johnson well said that the traveller brings from his journeys that\nwhich he brings to them.  It is indeed pitiful to be in Paris and to see\ncountless American tourists rushing about \"seeing Paris.\"  What a\ndifference there is between those who bring to the storied city on the\nSeine a familiarity with her past, and those who bring nothing but time\nand money to spend.  For the first, there are human dramas lurking in\nthe shadows of Notre Dame; Quasimodo, the strange dwarf in Hugo's great\nromance, still swings on the bells of the belfry; the narrow streets and\nturbulent cafes may still contain the instigators of the Reign of Terror\nand their shouting mobs of \"sans culottes\"; Camille Desmoulins may still\nbe visualized in the Cafe Royal plucking the leaves to make his tricolor\ncockade.  At every turn, in every ancient building, there are rich\nhistoric memories that may feed the traveller who has prepared himself.\n\nAnd the others, to whom history is a closed book!  How barren and\nincompetent are their wanderings in Paris, London, Vienna, or any other\nold world city!  To think that one can appreciate the historic gathering\nplaces of the human race without having knowledge of their past is as\nabsurd as to believe one knows the woods when one cannot appreciate the\nbeauty and wonder of the wild life that makes of the woods its dwelling\nplace.  Go among the trees some day with one who has studied and\nabsorbed \"the woodnotes varied\"!  Wander about the Quais of Paris, or\nthe Temple Inns of London, with a man who has read history with a human\ninterpretation, and consider upon your return the increased wealth, you\ncarry in your mind!\n\nWe cannot all be travellers, but it is always safe to store up material\nagainst a possible future; although I have never read far into the\nhistory of China, and though there is little possibility of my ever\nvisiting the land of ancient civilizations, I am sure I could derive\nmuch pleasure and obtain a better understanding of our Occident if I\nfollowed a course of reading upon the varied fortunes of the different\ndynasties that have ruled the richly storied Eastern nation.\n\nOur history books teach us valuable lessons in the art of living,--and\nthis is assuredly the most important of the arts!  As a man who brings\nsomething upon his travels besides his pocket-book and luggage comes\nhome with rich experiences and memories, so does the man who approaches\nlife with something more than a hungry stomach obtain from life more\nthan he otherwise would.  The greater variety of experiences we have,\nthe more we know of the affairs of men, the richer our understanding of\nthe forces that have ruled the world, the more replete with ecstatic\nliving is our daily life.  If the best of life is to be won by living in\nthe world keen and alive to everything that moves, or thinks, or\nglitters, a great share of riches must go to the man who has studied and\nthought in other realms than those which immediately surround his own\ndwelling house.\n\nIn Philadelphia I sometimes watch the hurrying crowds of business men go\nscurrying underneath the shadow of Independence Hall.  I wonder if these\ncrowds are in any true sense aware of the important and heroic deeds\nthat were accomplished in that building.  I am sure that if they did\ntheir movements beneath that shadow would be rich in living experience.\nAt political conventions, I sometimes wonder whether the delegates are\naware of the vast consequence of the long governmental tradition which\nthey, as delegates, have been called upon to uphold, and I feel sure\nthat those who do, fulfil their responsibilities with a quickened sense\nof their weight and human moment.\n\nOn the observation car of a twentieth-century flyer the road-bed is so\nsmooth, the rails so even, the power so terrific, that the past as an\nindustrial development that has cast aside the stage coach, the prairie\nschooner, the pony express, makes one alive to the romance of the\npresent.  Down on the beach of a popular New Jersey summer resort when\nthe water is dotted black with bobbing civilized bathers, look out over\nthe waves and wonder at the change of but four hundred years.  In a\nmoment your mind can travel back to the Spanish castle and see Columbus\nbegging the gold that would enable him to equip his ships to sail\nwestward into the unknown sea.  Romance cannot be dead so long as men\nwork, and strive, and play.\n\nThere is an art in reading history as there is an art in writing it.\nThe writer who tells us of a battle with the same lack of imagination as\nthe recorder who prepares mortality statistics must be compared to the\nreader who crams his mind full of dates and uncooerdinated facts without\ndrawing from them the riches and lessons of experience.  The true\nhistorian and the proper reader of history must find in the past a world\nof enlightenment, an enrichment that magnifies, clarifies, and makes\nliving the present.  It is better to have studied a minute epoch, the\nhistory of your county or town, with a human understanding than to have\nunintelligently digested the careers of a hundred heroes, the military\nmovements in fifty campaigns.\n\nDo not turn from the eight bulky volumes of Gibbon's masterpiece with\nthe fear that they are dry and useless, but begin them with the\ndetermination of finding an enlightenment to your vision of inestimable\nvalue in \"the art of living.\"  The dates of battles, the names of\nindividuals, the data about which life revolved, are only of value in\nthat they are the framework upon which you can hang the true meaning of\nthe past--the evolving germ of the present.  The Song of Solomon is not\nto be read because it is the Bible, but rather because it is a love song\nof which the world can never grow weary; Motley's \"History of the Dutch\nRepublic\" is not to be read because it is recommended in the schools and\ncolleges, but because in it you will find the unrolling of a human drama\nthat will quicken your pulse and strengthen your faith in men.\n\nRead the record of the past with the desire of obtaining a deeper\nunderstanding, an enlarged vision, an inspired ideal, a rich experience,\nand you will have become proficient in the art of reading history.  You\nmust have often thought upon the difficulty of determining exactly what\nyou want. What do you desire life and your exertions to give you?  In\nreading history perhaps you will be helped by finding out what Christ\nwanted when he died upon the cross, what the Pilgrims wanted when they\nleft comfort and sailed to strange lands, what Stanley wanted when he\nburied himself in darkest Africa.  Clio has had many wooers, from\nThucydides to Carlyle and George Trevelyan, and their offerings form a\ntreasure trove which must not be neglected.\n\n\n\n\n                              *CHAPTER VI*\n\n                       *THE POET AND THE READER*\n\n\nI myself but write one or two indicative words for\n       the future,\n\nI but advance a moment, only to wheel and hurry\n       back in the darkness.\n\nI am a man who, sauntering along, without fully\n       stopping, turns a casual look upon you, and then\n       averts his face,\n\nLeaving it to you to prove and define it,\n\nExpecting the main things from you.\n       WALT WHITMAN\n\n\nWhat is poetry to you or me, as we rush to make the trolley car or\nsuburban train?  To get to the office on time seems the main chance, and\nyet returning home in the evening are we so tired that the funny page of\nthe evening paper fulfils our entire intellectual and spiritual need?\nIn asking this let me ask another question.  Day in and day out, in work\nand play, in sorrow and anxiety, in pleasure and enthusiasm, what is\nlife worth to you and me?  We Americans are not much given to\nphilosophizing about life, we prefer to live it.  Whereas the\nintelligent Russian argues about the reason for and the meaning of\naction, Americans are prone without thought to throw themselves into the\nmill of violent living, to go at top speed until the gears break down,\nand then sometimes to say with Kipling's Galley Slave,\n\n    --whate'er comes after, I have lived and toiled with Men!\n\nOur answer to the question \"What is the meaning of life?\" is simply \"The\nliving of it.\"  \"Work while you work, and play while you play\" may be\nconsidered our national motto.  In short, for every minute of our\nexistence we want to have \"sixty seconds' worth of distance run.\"  To\nlive acutely is our pleasure, to work our hearts out and revel in the\ndoing of it is our end.  It is thus, to use an expressive phrase of the\nvernacular, that \"we prove something.\"  And it is this fact which\nstrengthens the paradox that the American, the man of action and bustle,\nmust draw his greatest source of living in the realization of the spirit\nof singers.\n\nThe poet is he who has drunk more deeply at the well of experience than\nhas his fellow men.  Many a profound poet never writes a verse, for when\na man of temperament is deeply moved he writes a poem within his own\nheart. It is for some to transcribe their emotions into words whereby\ntheir feelings may be communicated from one man to another; but it is\nfor others to be without the gift of verbal expression and the poems\nmust remain within.  How many times in life is your soul afire with\nenthusiasm, drunk with beauty, stricken with sadness, or overflowing\nwith the meaning or portent of experience?  At those times you are a\npoet, whether or not you transcribe the reflection of your heart upon\nthe written page.  The man who sings within is a singer whether or not\nhe gives his song verbal utterance.  These hours of poetic ecstasy make\nlife a thing to be cherished.  The sources of such ecstasy are\nmanifold--the love of man and woman, or parent and children, religious\ncommunion with the Spirit, comradeship, work, pursuance of duty, speed,\nhealth, beauty, the joy of the builder or artist, attainment to a higher\nunderstanding, sadness, hope,--from such springs come the bubbles of the\nwine of life, heartening the cherished hours.  Our greatest poems are\nthose that have never been written--true experience is poetry, and\nexperience is an open door to life.\n\n    Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough\n    Gleams that untraveled world, whose margin fades\n    For ever and for ever when I move.\n\n\nThe poetry found in books is experience, directly or indirectly, through\nthe agency of verbal expression, transferred to the printed page. The\ngreat writers of poems are those who have undergone spiritual\nexperiences of greater intensity than those which come within the range\nof us lesser mortals.  In their poems we partake of their life, of their\necstasy in the presence of beauty, of the richness of their imaginings,\nof the depth of their spiritual natures.\n\nYou and I, when we hear the wood thrush sing, are moved with the music\nof the notes, and are possibly carried away into the bosky woods where\nthe richly patterned bird in his evening song pours his heart to Heaven;\nbut when Keats hears the melody of the nightingale, his nature so\nacutely attuned to the harmony, the message of peace and solitude, is\nswept away in such an ecstasy of heartfelt longing for that same peace,\nthat same solitude, that his own heart pours forth his song, in words no\nless musical, in cadences no less rich than the notes of the feathered\nsongster.  His experience is preserved for us in \"The Ode to a\nNightingale\" and we may read and derive the same fascination that he\nfelt.\n\nMatthew Arnold somewhere tells us that all great poetry has one or both\nof two attributes: \"Natural Magic\" and \"Moral Profundity.\"  Whatever\nthese two phrases may mean upon first sight, after examining their true\nimport it will be appreciated that the greatest English critic did not\nconsider poetry a thing for the closet, or sentimental matter only to be\nread by the melancholy lovelorn to his sentimental maid.  The effect of\nthe natural magic of a summer's night, of the sea breaking upon the\nwind-swept coast, of the sea gull's flight, is apparent and valued by\neveryone.  What are most holidays other than periods during which we\nabsorb appearances and sensations, that enter our personalities and\nremain part of ourselves during the succeeding year of work? \"Natural\nMagic\" is that which acts upon us as a holiday influence, compounded\nperhaps of beauty, mystery, fear or sentiment, which for the moment or\nfor eternity gives our minds entrance into a realm of new and\npleasurable things.  Read Samuel Taylor Coleridge's \"Kubla Khan\" and you\nwill find the essence of natural magic.  You enter a realm, indeed, of\nmagic and witchery, for\n\n    In Xanadu did Kubla Khan\n    A stately pleasure-dome decree:\n    Where Alph, the sacred river, ran\n    Through caverns measureless to man\n    Down to a sunless sea.\n\nDo those lines charm you?  They charm most of us and the cadence of the\nwords, the confused picture of Xanadu, have become our own,--riches with\nwhich we would not care to part.\n\nEvery time I read them the blunt edge of life is worn off, living\nregains its sharpness, I have to an extent experienced an ecstasy, taken\na holiday.\n\nIt is hard to define the exhilaration of a canter across the meadows\nupon a crisp October day, or the impulse that surges through you as you\nlook to the ocean breathing the sea breeze, or the sense of religious\ncomradeship that grips you when in the midst of a crowd, great with a\nsingle purpose,--but this is all of the true stuff of Natural Magic.\nYour sensations are not of the minute, but of all time, as they have\nvivified your soul and become part and parcel of your personality.\n\nIt is so with the poets who sing you a song or breathe a sentiment that\nis not oral, not didactic, not purposeful, but of the stuff that thrills\nthe spirit of man,--their charm is impossible to define, it must be\nfelt, and for having felt it, your spirit is of a color different from\nwhat it was before.  As Corot's landscapes painted in the forest of\nFontainebleau are said to express the emotion of the painter when in the\npresence of nature, so does the lyric poet of magical gift express his\nfeelings, lay bare his soul with its emotions and vacillations.  The\nsadness and sensuous mystery of Edgar Allan Poe, the marvellous ability\nof Tennyson to fit the most exquisite words to the most subtle\nincantations of beauty, the thrill of romance in Shakespearean England\nas depicted by our contemporary, Alfred Noyes, the appetite for sensuous\ndelights of Keats, the tuneful, heartfelt songs of the Cavalier\npoets--these are of natural magic, of delight to the human soul, of the\nspirit of art.\n\nWhen Shakespeare wrote,\n\n    Where the bee sucks, there suck I:\n    In a cowslip's bell I lie,\n\nhe had no moral to expound, he merely sung from his heart with the\nbeauties of nature and the ways of fairy-land as an open book before\nhim.  If we wish (and there is no rightful reason why we should not) to\ndrain the very dregs of living for the richest drops of wine, let us\nenrich, make more virile our enjoyment by seeking nourishing draughts of\nexperience from the poets who have expressed those sweetest joys on\nearth in poems that have cleansed the souls of men for generation upon\ngeneration.\n\nThere is the other phrase of Matthew Arnold, \"Moral Profundity.\"  It is\nwhen we seek wisdom from the poets that we find this attribute.  When\nthe greatest of them give us their innermost thought, not the record of\nexperiences, but the essential deductions from all their experiences, we\nhave their true wisdom.  When Wordsworth in \"The Lines Composed a Few\nMiles Above Tintern Abbey.\"  wrote the words,\n\n      Therefore am I still\n    .....well pleased to recognize,\n    In Nature and the language of the sense,\n    The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse,\n    The guide, the guardian, of my heart, and soul\n    Of all my moral being;\n\nor when, in his \"Ode on the Intimations of Immortality,\" he wrote,\n\n    Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:\n    The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,\n    Hath had elsewhere its setting,\n    And cometh from afar:\n    Not in entire forgetfulness,\n    And not in utter nakedness,\n    But trailing clouds of glory do we come\n      From God, who is our home:\n\nand when Shelley wrote,\n\n    We look before and after,\n    And pine for what is not:\n    Our sincerest laughter\n    With some pain is fraught;\n    Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.\n\nor when Tennyson, in \"Locksley Hall,\" wrote,\n\n      This is truth the poet sings,\n    That a sorrow's crown of sorrow is remembering happier things.\n\nthose men formulated in exquisite language truths that have never been\nmore intensively expressed.\n\nProbably most readers of poetry have already considered these two\nphrases, and those who have, I feel sure, will agree that they are\nuseful in making for a clearer understanding in our estimation of\nvalues.  To read intelligently, to get the most out of our books, we\nshould certainly attempt to formulate the various aspects of life the\ndifferent poets represent, their relation to the time in which they\nlive, and their excellencies when they stand before the bar of the\nreader's judgment.\n\nVery few great poets produce poetry of but a single aspect. Shakespeare\nwrote the magical fairy jingles and yet created the stupendously\nprofound character of \"woe-entangled Hamlet\"; Tennyson composed many a\nlilting tune in words, yet as a moralist he presented the most sincere\nthought of his generation. When we feel philosophic and thoughtful, we\nturn to the poems containing solemn truths; when weary, jaded, and off\ncolor, we turn to the honey of romance, the witcheries of sensuous\nbeauty,--and regain our lost edge.\n\nA single phrase may have natural magic, and yet may express a thought\nfor which during years of our life we have been vainly groping.  The\npoetry of thoughtful content is probably that which has meant the most\nto men, as upon the philosophy of such religious poets as Dante or\nWhitman many a man has braced his faith; yet we must remember that much\nof the wisdom of sages is expressed in as magical language as we have in\nour cherished heritage.\n\nLet us not, however, be academic about our poets, let us not balance one\nagainst the other, let us not be carping about metre, subject matter and\ncritical phrases, let us go to them for what they can give towards\nmaking this world a more marvellous place in which to dwell.\n\nIf Kipling makes you feel the glory of work, of the hard, terrific work\nin which we rejoice, if he gives you the call of the road, the\nwanderlust, and you hear,\n\n      --the song--how long! how long!\n    Pull out on the trail again!\n\nif Bobbie Burns with his songs of Scotia gives you a human sympathy with\nmankind, an appreciation that for all his foibles and impossibilities \"a\nman's a man for a' that\"; if Byron fills your heart with the divine\ndiscontent that in a sweep of glory lands you above and beyond the\ncommonplaces of every-day existence; if Wordsworth makes you see Nature\nas you have never seen her before, if he makes a meadow of buttercups\nappear in a new light, with unsuspected meaning, with hitherto unseen\ncolor and grace; if Keats attunes your heart to a deeper appreciation of\na form, a fragrance, a musical harmony; if Milton's solemn cadences\ninspire you with the depth of that great Puritan's spirit; if\nShakespeare unbares your own character in revealing the inner springs of\nhis eternal heroes; if Longfellow in \"My Lost Youth\" brings back to you\nthe home of your boyhood, and you see again\n\n    The sheen of the far-surrounding seas,\n    And islands that were the Hesperides\n      Of all my boyish dreams;--\n\nif you can say with Walt Whitman,\n\n    Logic and sermons never convince;\n      The damp of the night drives deeper into my soul;\n\nor if there is a man unknown except for one poem that still stirs you\nwith the sentiments that you love and honor--if these, I say, have thus\nmet your requirements, each and all of them are _great_ poets to you,\nthey have opened a door to a life richer in content, deeper in import,\nmore vastly worth living.\n\nThere is no danger that the poets will ever be in need of readers.  The\nmusical expression of thought or sentiment is as old and fundamental as\nis human nature.  The sailors singing their chants as they pull in their\nanchor, the negro laborers whom we have seen singing a song as they\nunload the railroad ties, or put the heavy rails in place, the Western\nrange rider calming the steers, and quieting his own nerves through the\nlone night watches, the sagas and harvest songs of simple people in all\nlands, are facts that establish the part that poetry plays in the\nworkings of the human heart.  In reading poetry you will obtain no\ncredit for upholding a tradition, as the tradition will stand of its own\nvitality; but in _not_ reading it you will miss one of the most\nbounteous sources of inspiration, you will pass by the richest treasure\nhouse, you will neglect the supreme opportunity for a thorough life that\nthe art of man has put within your reach.  When you do read, do it for\nall time, not for a moment.  If the muse is to give you of her best, you\nmust feel after sharing her store as did Wordsworth when he heard the\nHighland Reaper singing,\n\n    For old, unhappy, far-off things,\n    And battles long ago:\n\nas he tells us,\n\n    The music in my heart I bore,\n    Long after it was heard no more.\n\n\nThe poem but begins after you have read it--the experiences that come\nafter are the ones that count.  Let us remember the simile and hold the\nmusic in our hearts as a reservoir of powerful beauty that will carry us\nover the stupid, the heavy, the unpoetic bumps of the days' doings.\n\n\n\n\n                             *CHAPTER VII*\n\n                         *THE CHILDREN OF PAN*\n\n\nFor I'd rather be thy child\nAnd pupil, in the forest wild,\nThan be the king of men elsewhere,\nAnd most sovereign slave of care;\nTo have one moment of thy dawn,\nThan share the city's year forlorn.\n  THOREAU\n\n\nThe enthusiastic nature poetry of James Thompson, called \"The Seasons,\"\ncame as a shock to that inbred lover of the city streets, the taverns\nand town activities, Doctor Samuel Johnson.  In these poems, the Doctor\nfound that natural objects which before had hardly been worthy of\nattention were made to appear beautiful. We must believe that after\nhaving read \"Spring,\" \"Summer,\" \"Autumn,\" and \"Winter,\" upon his\ninfrequent excursions beyond the environs of the great metropolis he saw\nnew beauties in the hitherto common-place landscapes, responded to the\ncolor in the fields and hedgerows, became interested in fantastic cloud\neffects, heard music in the streams, the waterfalls and in the songs of\nbirds. For how many of us have arisen new sources of joy in Nature's\nbeauteous wonderland at the instigation of poets, essayists and\nnovelists who have seen and read with loving eyes\n\n    Of this fair volume which we World do name.\n\n\nIn an ardent conversation upon the power of certain poets a friend told\nme that the Anglo-Saxon world looked at Nature through Wordsworth's\nspectacles.  He maintained that the reaction of nature upon even those\nwho have never read a poem by this poet was influenced by his poetry;\nWordsworth's interpretation of Nature had so permeated nineteenth\ncentury religion and literature that it was impossible for even the\ncasual newspaper reader to escape it.  We do not directly acknowledge\nour debt, but the garden clubs, the bird-study societies, the\nsurburbanite who throughout the year will spend an hour and a half in\nthe train, in order, on the way to the station in the early morning, to\nobtain the pleasures of Nature's awakening, and her retirement upon his\nreturn at twilight, and the Saturday afternoon golfer who, after holing\nhis ball, looks beyond the course at the green whispering woods and\nrolling hills, expands his chest and murmurs \"This is the life,\" are all\nunconsciously paying part tribute to the poet who wrote,\n\n    The world is too much with us; late and soon,\n    Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:\n    Little we see in Nature that is ours.\n\n\nWe need a love of nature to-day, as we have never needed it before.  In\nthe terrific complexity and speed of our external existence we crave the\nquiet, internal stimulus to meditation and dreams that comes from the\nGreat Mother's intricate, manifold, yet untempestuous method of doing\nthings. From the close hatches of the city where the noise, the smells,\nand the turmoil seem all man-made, we must get away to the fields and\nblossoming pastures to find our souls alone with ourselves and the Great\nGod Pan.  To those who answer the call of the wild, or even the call of\nthe suburban garden, there come new strength and new conceptions of\nbeauty, to apply to the work of the world to which we have lent our\nhand.  The call is being answered,--man goes back to his own. We see it\non every side: no one in any walk of life seems so humble or satisfied\nnot to desire some day to own a farm; most summer resorts where there\nwere formerly many a \"flanneled fool\" have now become \"Adamless Edens,\"\nfor our young men have answered the call of the Red Gods, and have\npacked their kits for the trail that leads to the tall timbers of\nsolitude, of balsam, of camp fires and dreams.\n\nAny book or poem that gives you a keener appreciation of the crimson of\nthe sumach, the whispers of the wild things, the glory of the sunrise or\nof the all-embracing broadmindness of Nature, will have done its part\ntowards bringing literature into perfect accord with life.  If my friend\nspeaks truly in saying that Wordsworth has influenced two nations'\noutlook upon the world, those poems, laughed at by some for their quiet\nsimplicity, have indeed arisen to the highest realm of literature and\nhave become soul of our soul, mind of our mind, flesh of our flesh.\n\nThere are others--Wordsworth is not alone in his glory.\n\nHenry David Thoreau, the perfect child of a cross country ramble, is my\nfavorite.  To write immortal words, it is said that a man must have an\nimmortal passion, whether it be for beauty, or his God, his neighbor,\nhis country, his lady, or himself.  Thoreau sunk the love of all else in\nhis passionate devotion to Nature.  His Journals, kept year by year with\never a spontaneous freshness, are little else than an ecstatic love song\ndedicated to his mate,--the lake, the woods, the fields, the apple\norchards, the winds, the colors, the birds, and all that lived and grew\nabout his haunts near Walden.  A lover sees a beauty in his lady's eye\nto which all the world is blind, and Thoreau senses a magic in an\nawakening Spring to which the senses of us lesser mortals are\ncomparatively blunt.\n\nHis sincerity of appreciation was one with his marvellous power of\nobservation.  He did not have the scientific attitude of mind as had\nthat fascinating Frenchman, Fabre, who wrote the biographies of insects\nin a way that makes you tremble at the wonders that go into the making\nof the life of a fly.  Thoreau would have scorned the aquarium and cage\nmethods of Fabre, not because of the lack of interest in the results,\nbut rather on account of his love of Nature, naked, wild, and free.\nUpon the shortest ramble he saw myriad happenings, from the unusual\nfrost crystal upon the web of a spider to the most subtle changing with\nthe varying temperature of a bird's note; but it is all discovered\nwithout the microscope, without thought of entomological or\nornithological records.  A man should be afraid to say that the woods\nare a dreary place in which to walk upon a winter's day--let him read a\npage from the Winter Journal of our author and he will find that the\nbook of Nature is never closed for him who has an eye in focus for her\nmystic letterings.\n\nI say that Thoreau is my favorite and how could I deny it, since there\nis many a winter's day in the city when I am sick of the asphalt and the\nbricks, and yet unable to leave them, that I can turn to any one of his\npages and be carried by his words to my favorite woods or stream, to the\nlonged-for fields and roadways?  And in other seasons when time is more\nprodigal, and nature so bounteous that there seems to be a glut upon the\nmarket, my senses, that might grow befogged, are given a tonic in a\nparagraph that makes the drowsy summer atmosphere seem pregnant with\nbeauty and fascination.  If you are cooped among the chimneys and\nelevated trains, Thoreau will bring you to the country--if in the\ncountry, he will multiply the pleasures of your walk, your ride, or\nfishing trip.  He stimulates the best of life that is in you, and that\nis all we can ask of any literature.\n\nNature from one point of view or another has always been one of the\nchief inspirations of the poets.  If you examine the literature of the\nhuman race since the days when Solomon sang \"And the voice of the turtle\nis heard through the land,\" you will find the various aspects of the\nseasons, the songs of the individual birds, the beauty and sentiment of\nflowers, and even the habits of the different species of fish,\ncontinually reflected in prose and verse.  America has been especially\nblest with men we must term literary naturalists.  We have spoken of\nThoreau, but there are also Audubon, Wilson and our elderly\ncontemporary, John Burroughs.\n\nWilson and Audubon are especially famous for their magnificent colored\nplates of the birds of North America, but I ask all nature lovers to go\nto a public library and secure the prose works of these two great\nornithologists. There you will find as interesting reading as will come\nto your hand in many a day.  They were both pioneers in science, art and\nexploration; both children of nature, more at home in the forest than in\nthe city; both enthusiastic, thrilled worshippers of their feathered\nfriends whom they have so brilliantly preserved in their cherished\nportfolios.  Because their work was accomplished one hundred years ago,\nbefore our birds were charted and when journeys of scientific\nexploration, even into the mountains of Pennsylvania, were made with\nalmost the same difficulty as is now caused in the exploration of the\nmost jungled South American river, the naive spirit of the explorer, of\nthe elemental pioneer, is in their every page.  There is ever the\nsurprise, the uncertainty, the joy of life and study among unknown and\nuntrammelled things.  Theirs was the joy of children who for the first\ntime discover a blackbird's nest in the far-off meadow and their joy is\ncommunicated to us; we become children of delight, as when lying upon\nbur backs on the edge of a flowery field of clover we watch with\nfascination the darts of kingbirds dashing from the top of the nearby\nchestnut after the myriad insects.\n\nJohn Burroughs, whose essays have been a joy upon many an evening and a\nstimulating remembrance upon many a tramp, with a similar freshness and\nunworldliness carried on the tradition of the earlier men.  From his\nfruit farm upon the Hudson he continually sends us messages to forget\nour tea parties, our moving pictures, our country clubs, and really to\nfind ourselves in the discoveries of beauties and life in the growing,\nnesting, and flowering things about us. One of the happy thoughts that\nwe derive from him is the knowledge that to obtain the beneficence to\nsoul and mind we (poor suburbanites tied to the necessity of earning our\ndaily bread in the city) need not follow the \"Long Trail\" to the ends of\nthe world of the furious globe trotter, Rudyard Kipling, but must only\ntake store of the things at hand, find the same happiness in the quiet,\ncivilized, thoroughbred-cattled meadow as we would hope to find up\nagainst a rugged blow in the Northern Seas off the coast of which\n\"you've lost the chart of overside.\"  You do not have to go so far from\nhome to know the world.  Thoroughly know the garden that you cultivate,\nstudy all that happens along the hedgerow upon the way to the station,\nand you will be richer than he who has racketed with half blind eyes\nfrom the Yukon to Patagonia,\n\n    Or East all the way into Mississippi Bay,\n    Or West to the Golden Gate.\n\n\nIn conjunction with the reflection of nature in books, I mentioned our\nscaly friends, the fish, without paying due homage to the king of all\nphilosophic fishermen, Izaak Walton.  How many devotees of the gentle\nart of angling have made of their own the wisdom, the beauty, the\nthoughtful content of the fisherman's classic, \"The Compleat Angler\"?  A\nman once said to me that the next best thing to taking a walk was to\nread the accounts of Walt Whitman's rambles upon Timber Creek.  I\nanswered that upon the days you could not go a-fishing, you had best\nread \"The Compleat Angler.\"  I hold to this!  Will not the men who stand\nby the trout, the bass, the salmon, the weak fish, or the gallant tuna\nand tarpon, and the boys who put their faith in the catfish, the sucker,\nthe eel, or the perch, fall in together and be one in believing as the\nVenerable Izaak believed,\n\n    O the gallant fisher's life,\n    It is the best of any!\n    'Tis full of pleasure, void of strife,\n    And 'tis beloved by many;\n    Other joys\n    Are but toys;\n    Only this\n    Lawful is;\n    For our skill\n    Breeds no ill,\n    But content and pleasure.\n\n\nThere is many another writer who opens the door to the traveller who\nwishes to enrich his enjoyment of Nature as it is to be seen along\nlife's highway.  I mention but a few who may give you new worlds for\nwhich you would not trade a mint of silver. Have you ever gone with\nStevenson upon his walking trips?  If not, do so, and perhaps you will\nagree with him that it is pleasant to have a companion upon your\njourneys; as Lawrence Sterne expresses it: \"Let me have a companion of\nmy way were it but to remark how the shadows lengthen as the sun\ndeclines.\"  If you prefer to be alone, Hazlitt will tell you that no\ncompanion is necessary, as thoughts need no companions: \"I want to see\nmy vague notions float like the down of the thistle before the breeze,\nand not to have them entangled in the briars and thorns of controversy.\"\n\nOr have you read the books of the Homer of the Insects, the Frenchman I\nhave mentioned, Fabre?  There is a treat ahead of you--he wrote of the\ncrawling, burrowing and flying things of his beloved Provence, and if\nthere is anything in this realm more interesting than his records of\nobserving the daily lives of the House Fly, the Praying Mantis, and many\nanother beetle, cricket and creeper, I have yet to find it.  To say that\nyou must immediately line your room with aquariums, jars, and boxes, in\nwhich to preserve and watch the births, loves and deaths of all the\nspiders, whirligigs, and butterflies that come within your reach is\nrelating the result in its mildest form that this author has had upon\nme.  Such books introduce you to a thousandfold intensity of existence,\nas every great book must.\n\nIntensive agriculture is heralded as the saving factor of human\nprogress. Let us make a plea for truly intensive living.  As the crops\nthat come from a rich, well-cultivated soil are bountiful, so is the\nlife that is the product of a fertile mind.  A poor crop is a\nsuperficial existence of discontented pleasures and shallow unhappiness;\na rich crop is a life in which the heart and mind are at least attune to\nthe joy which may be derived from the living of it,--brave when courage\nis needed, patient when patience is a virtue.  The word \"culture\" is\nsometimes derided as a synonym for pretentious high-browism, but let us\nremember that the farmer respects the word \"cultivate,\" as he knows that\nit is necessary if he wishes to make the harvest a season of happiness\nand rich reward. A man's harvest season is his every minute of\nexistence--his bounty is the depth and pleasure of that existence. Our\nfuture life is or is not a \"great perhaps,\" but our present life is\nassuredly a reality.  It is _here_--what are you going to do with it?\nIf you can make every day a day of intense interest you have won the\ngreatest battle!  You have stormed the world's richest citadel!  The\nChildren of Pan, who have loved and written of Nature, charm and\ntransport you to a world of infinite interest.  They offer rich\nfertilizer that gives promise of a bumper crop--Open that Door into\ntheir Realm.\n\n\n\n\n                             *CHAPTER VIII*\n\n                           *MEN BEHIND BOOKS*\n\n\nEvery word man's lips have uttered\nEchoes in God's Skies.\n  ADELAIDE A. PROCTER\n\n\nBooks contain the accumulated store of human thought and scientific\nattainment--this is a treasure without which there would be no\ncivilization--yet in addition, we may say that the most potent\ninheritance, that books vouchsafe, is the personalities of the great\nauthors who have inscribed their souls within them. Personal character\naffects our lives as does nothing else.  In the back of the mind of\nevery one there are men and women who, we appreciate, have been the\nmakers of our souls.  Most often it is a mother or a father, sometimes a\nteacher of our youth, or a friend and fellow worker of whose nature we\nrealize we have absorbed a part. Contact between human personalities is\nthe most profound mover for good and evil.  A preacher may declaim\nagainst sin for ever and a day, but you know that your great friend who\nscorns sin has infinitely more influence upon you. The greatest doers of\ngood are men and women who lead others by the examples of their own\nlives.  It is unfortunately not given to many to come into intimate\npersonal contact with the most supreme human souls, but fortunate we are\nthat many have extended their personalities without limit into the\nfuture, by truly encasing themselves in books that will remain as the\nleaven and inspiration of all ages and all peoples.\n\nI have a number of volumes upon my shelves that I choose to consider not\nas books, but as men.  Instead of printed pages, cloth bindings, and\nlabels, they are living personalities with whom I can pass an evening.\nThe reading is over, and I have within me the character of a great human\nbeing. As have my Mother and Father and the old fisherman, whose\nknowledge of the sea and storm beaten coast fed my boyish spirit, they\nhave become part of me.  The greatest books are those that present the\ngreatest men. It is not the artistry of telling a story or writing a\npoem that really counts; the sincerity and intensity with which a man,\nwhom we may call our \"guide, philosopher and friend,\" is revealed forms\nthe most cherished treasure of our bookshelf.  In sorrow, in dejection,\nin need of mental or spiritual sustenance, when the joy of living is\nblunted, when lazy, discouraged or annoyed, you can go to these great\nfellows, converse with them and return again to the world with a\nbird's-eye view, an enlarged vision, a quickened spirit.\n\nHave you read Walt Whitman? _There_ is a glorious human being--so\nmagnificent, so all-embracing in his love, so turbulent, so large in his\npersonality that to know him, to feed upon him, you must become\nsubmerged in his book, his soul,--\"The Leaves of Grass.\"  Of this volume\ncontaining his poems he himself said,\n\n    This is no book;\n    Who touches this, touches a man.\n\nYou do indeed touch a man!  A great spirit who saw in all things God; a\nDemocrat who saw in all men the spark of the divine; a leader who raced\nout to the farthest reaches of the soul and beckons and begs you to\nfollow; a lover who embraced all, the prostitute, the poet, the lowly,\nthe exultant, Christ himself, in a spirit of human fellowship; a\nphysical giant who gloried in his sex and makes you consider sacred the\nrelationship of the sexes; a nurse who brought upon himself paralysis by\ncaring for the wounded in the Civil War; a prophet who could no more\nbelieve that the spirit of an individual man could die than that it had\nnever been born.  Perhaps you think I write extravagantly--I do not--I\nbut attempt to present what the personality of Walt Whitman has meant to\nme, and to many, many others.  I but ask that you go to the \"Leaves of\nGrass,\" and come in contact with that man to whom so many look and\nsay--\"A great part of myself is you, Walt Whitman!  My life has been\nrenewed since first I touched your hand.\"\n\nTolstoy!  There is another one who believed in humanity and God,--there\nis another who has put a huge, rugged, loving soul within books.\nProbably no one has so influenced the humanitarianism of our day as did\nthis bearded old warrior from Russia; but it was the deep human sympathy\nof the actual living Tolstoy that moved the world, not the arguments he\ndeduced nor the warnings he gave.  He was always a moralist,--even in\nhis masterpiece \"Anna Karenina\" it is not the story he tells, but the\nhuman love which he reveals that has made the eternal monument.  Afraid\nof nothing,--the Czar, convention, hatred, oppression,--he lived his\nlife according to the dictates of his own conscience, the most punishing\nconscience that has ever been the attribute of a master soul.  If you do\nnot know him, read his short story \"Master and Man.\"  There you will\nfind enunciated, in a manner as poignant, as powerful, as even that of\nthe Sermon on the Mount, the doctrine of happiness found in living your\nlife for others. Selfishness, pride, materialism, the sins that spoil\nthe world, cannot stand in the way of the burning words of Tolstoy.\nYour conscience will receive a stiffening medicine, your sympathies for\nthe sins and sufferings of your neighbors will deepen to bed rock, and\nyour life will become proportionately more true, more happy, more\nChristian.  Six years ago in the lowly hut near the Caucasus, when the\nmighty soul of Tolstoy left the body, the World missed a leader, a\nlover, a prophet--but his word still remains, and the doctrine as told\nby him of universal betterment through love and human sympathy will\nreach mankind whilst there are men left to read, and to communicate.\n\nWe all know the poems of Robert Burns, most of us know something of his\nlife.  His life and character are revealed in his poetry.  He too was a\nlover, but a weak rather than a rugged one.  We love him for his very\nweakness.  His heart was his strength and his undoing.  He loved until\nhis heart would break, ruthlessly and impetuously, and of his\nsufferings, his remorses, regrets, and forlorn hopes he sang.  In this\ncruel world, where might so often makes right, what a benediction it is\nto read a poem written from the depth of a simple, sorrowing, yet deeply\nhuman heart upon the suffering that he has caused the \"wee sleekit,\ncow'rin, tim'rous beastie\" in turning up her nest with the plowshare.\nAs with all the personalities that are \"great\" in the deepest sense, his\nwas one that felt a companionship for all that lives upon the earth, and\nfrom his sympathy for the drunken, the heart-broken, and the meadow\nmice, and his joy in patriotism, true lovers, and beauteous roses, we\nderive a depth of sentiment that needs must mellow our hearts.  A brave\nspirit in a weak body had Bobbie Burns--he drank and was unfaithful, but\nhe felt deeply.  We love him for his depth, we sympathize with him in\nhis weaknesses.  As a friend he purifies rather than stimulates our\nsouls, but he is a true friend and a loving one.\n\nFrancois Villon, the greatest ballad singer of all time, the tavern\nlover, the vagabond, the heavy-hearted sorrower, the lighted-hearted\nlaugher, the bosom companion of thieves, cut-throats, chattering\ngrisettes, old courtesans, rioters, and brawlers of the narrow streets,\nCathedral shadows, Seine banks of mediaeval Paris, was another of those\ngreat-hearted human lovers who had the gift of telling his heart secrets\nin words of wondrous beauty.  By twentieth century standards Villon's\nactions, thieveries, and suspected murder, would have been neither moral\nnor proper, but by the standard of all ages, in all true hearts, his\nfeelings towards the people among whom he moved will stand the test of\nthe most austere morality.  He loved all men and women for the best that\nwas in them, he did not scorn them for the worst.  He was unselfish and\ntrue to his friends, and more than that we cannot desire.  Where there\nis hypocrisy there is vice; where there is selfishness there is lack of\nChristianity and humanity; our tavern poet, Francois Villon, had neither\nof these, and if you want a friend who will make you see the good in the\nbad, the beautiful in the ugly, go to your bookshelf and become\nacquainted with the fervid soul of this ancient ballad singer.\n\nWhen you are too contented, when your mind feels squidgy with good\nliving, or sultry from the summer heat, go to another man,--George\nGordon, Lord Byron.  They say that Byron (with Scott) is nowadays out of\nfashion.  \"They\" are mistaken. The author of Childe Harold and Don Juan\nwill never be truly out of fashion, so long as there is a flare in\nyouthful hearts, a discontent in ambitious minds.  He is the poet of a\ngreat revolt, a kicker at the traces, and then again he is the singer of\nthe bleeding heart, of lost causes; he hurries you across the seas upon\nhis speeding bark; he tops the crags of human loneliness and leaves you\ndesolate.  His songs are of the rollicking wine of life with its\nexcitements, its depressions, its sentiments of hatred, beauty, joy.\nFor youth he is the poet of liberty, of intense individualism; for age\nthe poet of thwarted desires, for everyone he has a chestnut burr to put\nbeneath dull content; his mockery is for stupidity, dryness, stagnation.\nGet under the crust of his effusive egotism and you will meet a sombre,\nlonely, sensitive individual, who needs you as a friend and who will be\nto you a hypodermic stimulative.\n\nHow different a one from this poet is his contemporary, the essayist,\nCharles Lamb.  The essays we love the best are those that reveal the\npoint of view, the little personalities of the writer, and no man of\nletters ever had a more magnetic personality, or knew better how to\npreserve himself in little literary gems, than did the author of \"The\nEssays of Elia.\"  Lamb spent his days in the South Sea Counting House\ntransferring figures from one great ledger to another.  But his evenings\nwith his books, his family and his friends!  Ah!--there was a companion!\nA booklover whose enthusiasm, for musty duodecimos has become a classic\nallusion, a punster whose puns are sometimes good and sometimes bad, but\nalways original, a relisher of good conversation, a man of many petty\nweaknesses, a lover of good food, with a taste for old wine, and with an\ninfinite appreciation of the fads and foibles of himself and others, he\nseems to have been altogether the most lovable individual with whom it\nwould be possible to scrape up an acquaintance.  Read but one hundred\npages of his essays and he becomes your chuckling, appreciative,\ninimitable companion.  Every old book shop, every roast pig, every glass\nof rich wine, every threadbare clerk stooping over his ledger--these and\nmany such will take on fresh and romantic aspects for the friend of\nElia.\n\nThomas Carlyle was an historian and philosopher who wrote his name over\nevery page of his work.  His was the voice and the soul of the Old\nTestament prophets, who railed at men from the depths of their bitter\nyet anxious hearts.  The Preacher of the Nineteenth Century, when he\nspoke the world listened!  Have you read \"Sartor Resartus\"?  Among his\nworks this is even the most personal. It is rough and jagged in style,\nturbulent and confused in arrangement, but behind it all, or rather\nunder it all, is revealed the spiritual message to his age.  The message\nis Carlyle's own personality: his bravery, his sincerity, his fine\nhatred of muddle-headed thinking, of credulity, of cant; his love and\nadmiration for the fundamental greatnesses of human nature, his belief\nin an omnipotent God.  He wished men to believe, and the thunder he\nbellowed in his endeavor still resounds.  His soul was a battery of\ntwelve-inch guns directed against the forces of ignorance and hypocrisy.\nIt is to the reading of \"Sartor Resartus\" that many men point as the\nturning stake in their spiritual lives.  It was not in the book that\nthey found their spiritual bulwarks, but in the soul of the great\nScotchman with whom they came in contact.\n\nThere is our own Emerson, whose admiration for Carlyle was probably only\noutdone by Carlyle's admiration for him!  \"Self Realization,\" \"The\nAmerican Scholar,\" \"Friendship,\" \"Politics\"--how many of his essays have\nbecome part and parcel of America's loftiest thought and action. The\nmetallic acuteness of his personality was not of the kind with which you\ncan become familiar, but its very aloofness holds our respect and\ndevotion.  The austerity of George Washington in public life can only be\ncompared with the cold distance at which this philosopher holds us, and\nyet upon their pedestals we recognize them as men from whom the best in\nAmerican character has derived nourishment.  In every sentence of his\nevery essay, we feel the soul at peace, the intellect enthroned, the\npower of will predominant.\n\nA man without friends is a man without life, and I have but told you of\nsome of my boon companions. Never to have shared in the fellowship of\nthe great spirits who are preserved for us in books is to cut one's self\noff from the most rewarding of human relationships.  The chums of our\nboyhood, our companions at college, too often drift away to distant\nparts, or diverge from us in pursuits other than our own; although\nremembrances of our times together are sacred and of sweet recalling,\ntoo often they are of the past and renewal forever impossible.  The\nfriends of our books, however, are forever with us, they cannot die,\nthey cannot depart, they remain fresh and vigorous, hearty sojourners\nupon our road, forever willing to lend a hand over the rocks and bumpy\nplaces.  Without disparaging those with whom I sit before the fire, and\nchat, and smoke, I must confess that I value equally with them the\nfriends of eternal character that exist there in the book-case.  They\nlighten the path of life; they are ready for converse when my spirit\ncalls.\n\nGo to the greatest books for your most enduring friends, but upon having\nformed their friendship do not leave them in the study, but carry them\nwithin your spirit to your business and the marts of men, and in holding\ntheir confidences burning in your heart you will find yourself a more\nthorough human being.\n\n\n\n\n                              *CHAPTER IX*\n\n                         *KEEPING UP WITH LIFE*\n\n\nReading is the key which admits us to the whole world of thought and\nfancy and imagination, to the company of saint and sage, of the wisest\nand wittiest at their wisest and wittiest moments.  It enables us to see\nwith the keenest eyes, to hear with the finest ears, and to listen to\nthe sweetest voices of all time.\n\nJAMES RUSSELL LOWELL\n\n\nIf in the minds of some readers this little book has helped to break\ndown the futile distinctions and to show the real relation between the\nman who reads and the one who enjoys life, between the thinker and the\nman of action, it has done all that the author dared hope.  Let us look\nupon our library not as an end in itself, but as a means to an end.  It\nis a mistaken ambition to read as many books as possible within a year,\nor to attempt religiously to read the complete works of a number of\nauthors.  The man who buries himself in his library and exists only in\nthe books therein is an unsocial, stagnant creature; but the one who\nreads as a means of attaining to a more productive life among his fellow\nmen is the one who has gained the true riches of literature.\n\nThe world is a world for workers, not idlers.  We live in America in the\ntwentieth century, and we are of but little use to the general machinery\nif our minds are forever sojourning with the mediaeval knights or\ngossiping in the by-ways of London with Charles Lamb and his\ncontemporaries. Literature for you and me who live, and toil, and hope\nto obtain joy in the doing of it, must be vivifying nourishment to apply\nto our living and toiling.  Great books and all true education provide\nthis nourishment or else they would not be worth the price of a comic\nsupplement.\n\nPoetry, fiction, philosophy and history are not alone for old maids and\nretired business men who desire comforting, amusing solace to while away\nthe hours until the race is run, nor alone for college professors and\nwriters whose business it is to read, abstract, and judge,--they are\ntruly, have been, and always will be for the minds of men and women who\nneed and use the spirit of them in their work, their play, their\nsorrows, and their joys.\n\nWhen Francis Bacon wrote \"Reading maketh a full man,\" he did not mean\n\"full\" to imply a great accumulation of facts and dry-as-dust learning.\nBacon was a philosopher, scientist, essayist, of the first order in\neach, and yet a leading statesman in his age.  His mind was \"full\" in\nthat he had probably as had no other man in England absorbed all the\nliterature and science of all the centuries that had preceded him; his\nwas the fulness of the reservoir from which could be drawn an endless\nstream of resource with which to undertake new political enterprises, of\nstrength to maintain his position and of philosophy in the face of\nlosing it.  He was a literary man in that he knew the literature of the\nworld, a man of letters--he wrote masterpieces, a man of action--he\nvirtually ruled Great Britain.  This is the threefold thread of life\nthat we may all have as our ambition,--the connoisseur, the creative\nartist, the productive worker.\n\nAfter having considered the bearing the reading of books has upon life,\nlet us consider the bearing that living has upon reading and writing.\nElbert Hubbard carried out this thought in his little book upon William\nMorris, the English poet.  Morris, as you may know, was a weaver, a\nblacksmith, a wood-carver, a painter, a dyer, a printer, a furniture\nmanufacturer, a musician, and withal a great poet. Hubbard said:\n\"William Morris thought literature should be the product of the ripened\nmind.\"  We have looked at Bacon as one whose literary output must have\nbeen the product of a mind that had manfully grappled with worldly\naffairs, and here is a further list that the Roycrofter gives us:\n\"Shakespeare was a theatre manager, Milton a secretary, Bobbie Burns a\nfarmer, Lamb a bookkeeper, Wordsworth a Government employee, Emerson a\nlecturer, Hawthorne a custom-house inspector, and Whitman a clerk.\"\n\nThe professional man of letters, except in rather rare instances, is by\nno means the man who erects the most enduring literary monuments.\nLiterature must come from elemental life to have the true relationship\nto the affairs of men.  We could increase Elbert Hubbard's list to an\nalmost indefinite length--the author of the Gettysburg address had the\nweight of a nation upon his shoulders, Thoreau was more interested in\nobserving the changing seasons than he was in writing books, Tolstoy was\na soldier, an economist and farmer, Balzac an unsuccessful publisher,\nBunyan a preacher, Pepys a high government official, Oliver Wendell\nHolmes a doctor, and countless novelists and poets of the nineteenth and\ntwentieth centuries hard-working, hard-driven newspaper men.\n\nLeisure does not make great literature,--all that is effective must come\nfrom interior or exterior experiences, and acute observations.  The most\neffectual reading is that which is done in the light of personal\nexperience, with one's eye upon unliterary activity.  There is an\nendless chain, of which the links are the subject, the artist, the\nreader and his life as reflected by the author's treatment.  To live in\na world of books and to have as their profession the spinning of other\nvolumes is the life of too many of our writers.  On the other side of\nthe shield, we of course see readers whose lives are entirely absorbed\nin the volumes they read without an outlet to the practical activities\nof existence. How tiresome it is to have a bustling man or woman tell us\nthat they have not the time or that they are not literary enough to read\ngreat books. They of course, being good Americans, have plenty of time\nto go through stacks of worthless novels, and absorb a half dozen\ncontinuous serial stories in our monthly magazines.  I say it is\ntiresome, and it is foolish, as with a moment's thought we can realize\nthat books are essentially for the man or woman who is most deeply\nimmersed in life.\n\nBreak down the barrier between literature and life?--there is none!  I\nhave a certain friend who has more to do within the twenty-four hours of\nthe day than has anyone else I know. Politics, municipal corporations,\nrailroads--these are apparently his life--absorbed in men and affairs.\nAnd yet if I run across a book that especially appeals to me, I go to\nhim and ask his ideas upon it.  He has probably read it and with his\ngreater experience in the actual turmoil of living than I have had, he\ncan enlighten me with a dozen new points of view upon the book under\nconsideration.  He interprets it in the light of his experience, as the\nauthor had written in the light of his.\n\nIt was said that during President Wilson's first winter in the White\nHouse, society in Washington was much exercised as to how he passed his\nevenings.  It later developed that those evenings in which he was not\nabsorbed in official business were spent in reading poetry, preferably\nWordsworth, to his family. Washington stood amazed!  Perhaps there is no\ntruth in this story, but the ingredients are certainly there, which, if\nbrought into conjunction, would make a true yarn.  The active helmsman\nof the ship of state, with innumerable matters weighing upon him,\nseeking wisdom and spiritual fibre from a great poet; Washington\nsociety, without much to do, yet frightfully busy, amazed at his wasting\nor dreamily passing his hours of possible recreation!\n\nMany another great public man has well appreciated that books are not\nfor the closet but for life.  Theodore Roosevelt is the apostle of\nstrenuosity, statesman, ranchman, hunter, and yet a writer upon a wide\nrange of subjects and an omnivorous reader.  The plays of Shakespeare\nwere the school books and college education of our rail splitter,\nAbraham Lincoln.  A great English liberal, Charles James Fox, would\ncharm the House of Commons for hours with his oratory, go to Brooks' and\nlose a fortune at cards, and then home to his bed to read the Plays of\nEuripides,--probably to absorb wisdom and courage for his thinking and\ngaming upon the following evening.  Of the men and women to whom books\nmean life, we could go on with our list indefinitely, not only through\nthe ranks of kings and queens, soldiers and statesmen, financiers and\nmerchants, but sea captains, mechanics, farmers, clerks, and coal\nminers.  In every walk of life we find the true philosophers, the true\nadepts in the art of living, seeking sustenance from the printed page.\n\nGo into a public library, and study the faces of those who are reading\nthere--ambition, inspiration, delight will be expressed by those who\nhave found _the open door_, the way to riches and plenty.  Observe the\nhomes of your acquaintances!  Cicero said that books are the soul of a\nroom, and we may expand this epigram in saying that the use of books in\na family brings all the members into a communion with each other,\ncreating an atmosphere far removed from that of the home in which books\nare infrequent sojourners.\n\nOh no, it is not the professed gentleman of literature with the pedantic\nknowledge and bookish phraseology, but the men and women who seek\nexplanation of and relief from sorrow, stimulus to higher attainment,\npleasure that mellows activity, to whom the authors are truly the path\nof life.  Those whom you see on the elevated trains reading Shakespeare,\nthe ranchman with his pocket edition of Dickens, the country doctor who\nhates to buy an automobile as when driving his old buggy he could read\nhis Boswell upon his round of visits,--they are the ones to whom the\npoet can truly say,\n\n    You will hardly know who I am, or what I mean;\n    But I will be health to you nevertheless,\n      And filter and fibre your blood.\n\n\nYou need never be afraid of becoming intellectual.  To be sure it is\nsomewhat the fashion in America to think that a man who reads Meredith\nshould be a college professor or the editor of a book review--but this\nis only a fashion and held to by the most stupid.  It is smart to laugh\nat good books and \"culture,\" but it is the same sort of smartness at\nwhich all Europe has been sensibly sneering for a century.  Reading\nshould not be a profession; those that make it such invariably become\nworld weary, book weary, at sea in an ocean in which life is necessarily\na more vital thing than they are able to swallow.  Do not give your life\nover to your library, but make of it an electric battery with which to\nvivify life.  It can be done, and is done by the great and the little,\nthe sorrowful and the joyful, the leading warriors in the battle for\ncivilized progress.\n\nCall upon the supreme minds of past ages to support you in the strife of\nthis and they will prove stalwart, faithful legions.  Read as is your\nneed and inclination; not as a duty, not as a feat, but as an\nacknowledgment that you are glad to win the best and most helpful of\nfriends.  Aristotle said that all men desire knowledge.  If knowledge\nmeans deeper human sympathy, a more profound enlightenment, a richer,\nhappier, more productive life, let each one of us admit that the\nattainment of knowledge is in truth our endeavor.  Let us try the\nexperiment of finding this knowledge in the volumes of the deepest, the\nmost intensive livers.\n\nMake the book you read to-day play a part in the world of to-morrow, and\nyou will rise above the reader in the closet who carps and criticizes,\nthus cutting himself off from the work of men.  You will disprove all\nstatements about the lack of practicability of education, the\nother-worldiness of books.\n\n                     *      *      *      *      *\n\nThere was a boy who wandered out along an unknown highway into a far\ncountry.  The way seemed sombre, foreign and meaningless.  His questions\nwere unanswered, his desires unsatisfied; there seemed no by-paths into\nwhich he could turn in the hope of finding a solace or a reason for his\njourney.\n\nA never-ending vista without rhyme or reason lay before him of flat,\nuninteresting solitudes, only broken by dark pits or rugged obstructions\nwhich he had either to circle about or climb over or under.  They always\nannoyed and provoked him, as there seemed no set plan for meeting such\ndifficulties, no apparent purpose in wandering on.  He knew, however,\nthat there was no turning back, he had to stagger, and stumble, and plod\nforward, ever forward.\n\nIt was the way of life, and it was a meaningless road, a disappointing\njourney undertaken with great expectations.\n\nAfter a deal of suffering, impatience and profound discouragement, he\ncame upon a great Palace standing in his way.  It was the first that he\nhad ever seen, and he wondered at it.\n\nWith hesitancy he determined to walk about it and to follow the beaten\nroad, uninteresting but familiar, which he felt must stretch beyond. He\nspied, however, a small door at the side of the great barred gate and he\ndetermined to enter and to see what could be found within.  The panel\nyielded to his timorous push, and he found himself in a mighty hall\nwhere there were wondrous things!\n\nMany another wanderer had already arrived, and many others were to\nfollow,--there was a happiness, a purpose, a vitality in life that had\nbeen sadly lacking upon the road of his journeying.  Wisdom, riches, the\nanswers to his questions, the reasons for his arduous pilgrimage lay\nbefore him.  He grasped them and was content.\n\n\n\n\n           *      *      *      *      *      *      *      *\n\n\n\n\n                      *J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY'S\n                          IMPORTANT NEW BOOKS*\n\n\n*Betty at Fort Blizzard*\n\nBy MOLLY ELLIOT SEAWELL.  Four illustrations in color and decorations by\nEdmund Frederick.  $1.50 net.\n\nThis is a straightaway army love story, with the scene laid at a post in\nthe far Northwest.  It is a sequel to the famous \"Betty's Virginia\nChristmas\" so popular a few years ago.  It is realistic and yet as light\nas Betty's laugh,--presented in a delightfully dainty gift book style,\nit makes a charming Christmas present.\n\n\n*Behold the Woman!*\n\nBy T. EVERETT HARRE.  $1.35 net.\n\nA child of the Alexandrian gutter, a redeemed woman seeing a vision of\nChrist upon the Judean hills, and finally a mystic saint upon the\ndesert, was Mary of Egypt, the heroine of this historical novel.  \"From\nbeginning to the end I found 'Behold the Woman!' gripping and\nthrillingly interesting.\"--_Mrs. Minnie Maddern Fiske_.\n\n\n*The Finding of Jasper Holt*\n\nBy GRACE L. H. LUTZ.  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Fascinating, he is adored by all,\nespecially by Lettice Corbin, for whom he saves himself.\n\n\n*The Curved Blades*\n\nBy CAROLYN WELLS.  Frontispiece by Gayle Hoskins.  $1.35 net.\n\n\"As bizarre a mystery as any which she has hitherto provided ... The\nstage is there set for a thrilling and puzzling story ... One worthy of\nthe talents of Stone.\"--_The Boston Transcript_.\n\n\n*The Conquest*\n\nBy SIDNEY L. NYBURG.  $1.25 net.\n\n\"Originality and dramatic strength are marked on many pages of this\nproduction of a promising writer.\"--_Springfield Republican_.  \"Sidney\nL. Nyburg is a man who writes a man's book.\"--_San Francisco Call and\nPost_.\n\n\n*The Strange Cases of Mason Brant*\n\nBy NEVIL MONROE HOPKINS.  Illustrated in color by Gayle Hoskins.  $1.25\nnet.\n\n\"The stories are very entertaining and are more human than the usual\ndetective stories.\"--_New York Sun_.  \"Out of the beaten track of\ndetective stories.\"--_Philadelphia North American_.\n\n\n*Ten Beautiful Years*\n\nBy MARY KNIGHT POTTER.  Net, $1.25.\n\nThose who desire knowledge of the most brilliant work in American\nfiction should read this series of short stories on psychological\nsubjects.  They are clean but intensely emotional; most of them appeared\nin the _Atlantic Monthly_, _Harper's_, etc.\n\n\n*The Practical Book of Early American Arts and Crafts*\n\nBy HAROLD DONALDSON EBERLEIN and ABBOT McCLURE.  Profusely illustrated.\nColored frontispiece.  In a box.  $6.00 net.\n\nThere is an eminently proper revival of interest in the arts and crafts\nof early American workmanship.  In glass, wood, metal and textile stuffs\nour forefathers obtained results of a delightful nature.  Amateur\ncollectors still have a rich field of investigation, owing to the\npresent opportunity for obtaining desirable specimens.  This book is a\nthorough and practical guide for the collector and general reader.\n\n\n*The Practical Book of Architecture*\n\nBy C. MATLACK PRICE.  Profusely illustrated.  In a box. $6.00 net.\n\nNot only a book for the man or woman who wishes to build a home (and for\nwhom it is more helpful than any work previously published), but a book\nwhich tells the general reader what he needs to know about\narchitecture--about the buildings he sees in America or Europe, public\nas well as private.  A valued addition to the Home Life Enrichment\nSeries.\n\n\n*The Practical Book of Period Furniture*\n\nBy HAROLD DONALDSON EBERLEIN and ABBOT McCLURE.  225 illustrations in\ncolor, doubletone and line. In a box.  $6.00 net.\n\nThis book places at the disposal of the general reader all the\ninformation he may need in order to identify and classify any piece of\nperiod furniture, whether it be an original or a reproduction.  The\nauthors have greatly increased the value of the work by including an\nillustrative chronological key.\n\n\n*The Practical Book of Oriental Rugs*\n\nBy G. GRIFFIN LEWIS.  New Edition, revised and enlarged. Twenty full\npage illustrations in color, 93 illustrations in double-tone, and 70\ndesigns in line.  In a box.  $6.00 net.\n\n\"From cover to cover it is packed with detailed information compactly\nand conveniently arranged for ready reference.  Many people who are\ninterested in the beautiful fabrics of which the author treats have long\nwished for such a book as this and will be grateful to G. Griffin Lewis\nfor writing it.\"--_The Dial_.\n\n\n*The Practical Book of Garden Architecture*\n\nBy PHEBE WESTCOTT HUMPHREYS.  Frontispiece in color and 125\nillustrations.  In a box.  $6.00 net.\n\nThis beautiful volume has been prepared from the standpoints of eminent\npracticability, the best taste, and general usefulness for the owner\ndeveloping his own property,--large or small,--for the owner employing a\nprofessional garden architect, for the artist, amateur, student, and\ngarden lover.\n\n\n*The Practical Book of Outdoor Rose Growing*\n\nBy GEORGE C. THOMAS, JR.  New Edition, revised and enlarged.  96 perfect\nphotographic reproductions in full color. Slip case.  $4.00 net.\n\nThere are a number of pages in which the complete list of the best roses\nfor our climate with their characteristics are presented.  One prominent\nrose grower said that these pages were worth their weight in gold to\nhim. The official bulletin of the Garden Club of America said:--\"It is a\nbook one must have.\"  It is in fact in every sense practical,\nstimulating, and suggestive.\n\n\n*Parks: Their Design, Equipment and Use*\n\nBy GEORGE BURNAP.  Official Landscape Architect, Public Buildings and\nGrounds, Washington, D.C.  Profusely illustrated.  Frontispiece in\ncolor.  $6.00 net.\n\nThis, the only exhaustive book on the subject and by the foremost\nauthority on the subject, is an amazing addition to the literature of\ncivic planning.  It is a thorough resume of the finest European and\nAmerican examples of Park work.  To the owner of a country estate and to\nall who are interested in park and playground establishment and up-keep,\nit will be a stimulating and trustworthy guide.\n\n\n*The Book of the Peony*\n\nBy MRS. EDWARD HARDING.  Twenty full page color illustrations, 25 in\nblack and white.  $5.00 net.\n\nThe glory of the illustrative work and the authoritative treatment by\nthe author mark this book as one which will stand alone amidst the\nliterature upon this popular flower.  It is a thorough and complete\nguide to the culture of the peony and proves a fitting companion volume\nto the famous \"Practical Book of Outdoor Rose Growing.\"\n\n\n*The Civilization of Babylonia and Assyria*\n\nBy MORRIS JASTROW, JR., PH.D., LL.D.  140 illustrations. In a box.\n$7.00 net.\n\nThis work covers the whole civilization of Babylonia and Assyria and by\nits treatment of the various aspects of that civilization furnishes a\ncomprehensive and complete survey of the subject.  The language,\nhistory, religion, commerce, law, art and literature are thoroughly\npresented in a manner of deep interest to the general reader and\nindispensable to the historian, clergyman, anthropologist, and\nsociologist.\n\n\n*Winter Journeys in the South*\n\nBy JOHN MARTIN HAMMOND.  Profusely illustrated.  $3.50 net.\n\nThe kingdoms of wonder for the golfer, the automobilist and almost every\nother type of pleasure-seeker are revealed in this book.  Mr. Hammond is\nan enthusiastic traveller and a skilful photographer.  He believes in\nthe pleasures that may be found in America.  He has wandered about the\nSouth from White Sulphur to Palm Beach; Aiken, Asheville, Charleston,\nNew Orleans, and many other places of fascinating interest have been\nstopping points upon his journeyings.\n\n\n*English Ancestral Homes of Noted Americans*\n\nBy ANNE HOLLINGSWORTH WHARTON.  Twenty-eight illustrations.  $2.00 net.\n\nMiss Wharton so enlivens the past that she makes the distinguished\ncharacters of whom she treats live and talk with us.  She has recently\nvisited the homelands of a number of our great American leaders and we\nseem to see upon their native heath the English ancestors of George\nWashington, Benjamin Franklin, William Penn, the Pilgrim Fathers and\nMothers, the Maryland and Virginia Cavaliers and others who have done\ntheir part in the making of the United States.\n\n\n*Quaint and Historic Forts of North America*\n\nBy JOHN MARTIN HAMMOND.  Photogravure frontispiece and sixty-five\nillustrations.  In a box.  $5.00 net.\n\nMr. Hammond, in his excellent literary style, with the aid of a splendid\ncamera, brings us on a journey through the existing old forts of North\nAmerica and there describes their appearances and confides to us their\nromantic and historic interest.  We follow the trail of the early\nEnglish, French and Spanish adventurers, and the soldiers of the\nRevolution, the War of 1812, and the later Civil and Indian Wars.\n\n\n*Joseph Pennell's Pictures of the Wonder of Work*\n\nProfusely illustrated.  $2.00 net.\n\nMr. Pennell is notably a modern, and has found art in one of the\ngreatest phases of modern achievement--the Wonder of Work--the building\nof giant ships, railway stations, and the modern skyscraper; giant\nmanufacturing, marble-quarrying; oil-wells and wharves--all the great\nwork which man sets his hand to do.  The crisp and wonderful and\ninspiring touches of introduction to each picture are as illuminating as\nthe pictures themselves.\n\n\n*Nights: Rome, Venice, in the Aesthetic Eighties; Paris, London, in the\nFighting Nineties.*\n\nBy ELIZABETH ROBINS PENNELL.  Sixteen illustrations from photographs and\netchings.  $3.00 net.\n\nThe pleasure of association with equally famous literary and artistic\nfriends has been the good fortune of the Pennells.  The illustrations,\nphotographs, and some etchings by Joseph Pennell are unusual.\n\n\n*Our Philadelphia*\n\nBy ELIZABETH ROBINS PENNELL.  Illustrated by Joseph Pennell, with 105\nreproductions of lithographs.  In a box. $7.50 net.\n\nJoseph Pennell's Pictures of the Panama Canal\n\nTwenty-eight reproductions of lithographs made on the Isthmus of Panama,\nwith Mr. Pennell's Introduction giving his experiences and impressions.\n$1.25 net.\n\n\n*Joseph Pennell's Pictures in the Land of Temples*\n\nForty plates in photogravure from lithographs.  $1.25 net.\n\n\n*Life of James McNeill Whistler*\n\nBy ELIZABETH ROBINS and JOSEPH PENNELL.  Thoroughly revised Fifth\nEdition of the authorized Life.  Ninety-seven plates reproduced from\nWhistler's works.  Whistler binding.  $4.00 net.  Three-quarter grain\nlevant.  $8.50 net.\n\n\n*Rings*\n\nBy GEORGE FREDERICK KUNZ, PH.D.  Profusely illustrated in color and\ndoubletone.  In a box.  $6.00 net.\n\nThe origin, purposes and methods of wearing, the forms and materials,\nthe historic interest and talismanic powers of rings as they have played\na part in the life and associations of man.  It is an authoritative\nvolume, magnificently illustrated.\n\n\n*Shakespeare and Precious Stones*\n\nBy GEORGE FREDERICK KUNZ, PH.D.  Four illustrations. $1.25 net.\n\nTreating of all the known references to precious stones in Shakespeare's\nworks, with comments as to the origin of his material, the knowledge of\nthe poet concerning precious stones, and references as to where precious\nstones of his time came from.\n\n\n*The Curious Lore of Precious Stones*\n\nBy GEORGE FREDERICK KUNZ, PH.D.  Profusely illustrated in color,\ndoubletone and line.  In a box.  $6.00 net.\n\nBeing a description of their sentiments and folk lore, superstitions,\nsymbolism, mysticism, use in protection, prevention, religion and\ndivination, crystal gazing, birth stones, lucky stones and talismans,\nastral, zodiacal and planetary.\n\n\n*The Magic of Jewels and Charms*\n\nBy GEORGE FREDERICK KUNZ, PH.D.  Profusely illustrated in color,\ndoubletone and line.  In a box.  $6.00 net.\n\nMagic jewels and electric gems; meteorites or celestial stones; stones\nof healing; fabulous stones; concretions and fossils; snake stones and\nbezoars; charms of ancient and modern times, etc.\n\n\n*Open that Door!*\n\nBy R. STURGIS INGERSOLL.  $1.00 net.\n\nA stimulating volume with a \"kick\" upon the relation of books to life;\nthe part great books play in our goings and comings, in the office, in\nthe street, and in the market place.  The relation of poetry to the\nsuburbanite, etc. A book for the man who never reads and for the one who\ndoes.\n\n\n*From Nature Forward*\n\nBy HARRIET DOAN PRENTISS.  Limp leather binding. $2.00 net.\n\nThe public mind is unsettled; the individual lives a day-to-day\nexistence, wrestling with disease, mental troubles and unsatisfactory\nissues.  This book outlines a system of psychological reforms that can\nbe followed by every man and woman, as the author says, to \"buoyant\nphysical health, release of mental tension, and enlarged and happy\noutlook on life.\"\n\n\n*Peg Along*\n\nBy DR. GEORGE L. WALTON.  $1.00 net.\n\nDr. Walton's slogan, \"Why Worry,\" swept the country. His little book of\nthat title did an infinite amount of good.  \"Peg Along\" is the present\nslogan.  Hundreds of thousands of fussers, fretters, semi- and would-be\ninvalids, and all other halters by the wayside should be reached by Dr.\nWalton's stirring encouragement to \"peg along.\"\n\n\n*A Short History of the Navy*\n\nBy Captain GEORGE R. CLARK, U.S.N., Professor W. O. STEVENS, Ph.D.,\nInstructor CARROL S. ALDEN, Ph.D., Instructor HERMAN F. KRAFFT, LL.B.,\nof the United States Naval Academy.  New Edition.  Illustrated.  $3.00\nnet.\n\nThis standard volume is used as a text at the United States Naval\nAcademy.  This edition brings the material to date and is an especially\ntimely book.\n\n\n                     *      *      *      *      *\n\n\n                     *LIPPINCOTT'S TRAINING SERIES*\n\n                 For Those Who Wish To Find Themselves\n\nA series of handbooks by authorities for young men and women engaged or\nanticipating becoming engaged in any one of the various professions. The\naim is to present the best methods of education and training, channels\nof advancement, etc.\n\n\n*Training for the Newspaper Trade*\n\nBy DON C. SEITZ, Business Manager of the New York World. Illustrated.\n$1.25 net.\n\n\n*Training for the Street Railway Business*\n\nBy C. B. FAIRCHILD, JR., Executive Assistant of the Philadelphia Rapid\nTransit Co.  Illustrated.  $1.25 net.\n\n\n*Training for the Stage*\n\nBy ARTHUR HORNBLOW, Editor of The Theatre Magazine. Preface by DAVID\nBELASCO.  Illustrated.  $1.25 net.\n\n\n*Training of a Forester*\n\nBy GIFFORD PINCHOT, New Edition, illustrated.  $1.25 net.\n\n\n\n                            *IN PREPARATION*\n\n\n*The Training and Rewards of a Doctor*\n\nBy DR. RICHARD C. CABOT.\n\n\n*The Training and Rewards of a Lawyer*\n\nBy HARLAN STONE, Dean of the Columbia Law School.\n\n\n*Fundamentals of Military Service*\n\nBy CAPTAIN LINCOLN C. ANDREWS, U.S. Cavalry.  Prepared under the\nsupervision of Major-General Leonard Wood, U.S.A.  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PRATT.  $2.50 net.\n\nThe basis upon which military railway transport has been organized alike\nin Germany, France and the United Kingdom, with a presentation of the\nvast importance of railway facilities in modern warfare and a thorough\ndiscussion of the subject from the standpoint of the American looking to\nhis country's needs.\n\n\n*First Aid in Emergencies*\n\nBy ELDRIDGE L. ELIASON, M.D.  106 illustrations.  $1.50 net.\n\nNowhere will be found a better First Aid guide for the soldier, the\ncamper, the sportsman, the teacher, scout master, and the father and\nmother of the family.\n\n\n                     *      *      *      *      *\n\n\n                         *LIPPINCOTT'S READER'S\n                           REFERENCE LIBRARY*\n\n           Each volume: crown octavo, half morocco, gilt top.\n\n\nHEROES AND HEROINES OF FICTION.  Modern Prose and Poetry.  By William S.\nWalsh.  $3.00 net.\n\nHEROES AND HEROINES OF FICTION.  Classical, Mediaeval and Legendary.  By\nWilliam S. Walsh.  $3.00 net.\n\nHANDY-BOOK OF LITERARY CURIOSITIES.  By William S. Walsh.  $3.50 net.\n\nHANDY-BOOK OF CURIOUS INFORMATION.  By William S. Walsh.  $3.50 net.\n\nA DICTIONARY OF MIRACLES.  By Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.  $2.50 net.\n\nDICTIONARY OF PHRASE AND FABLE.  By Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.  $1.75\nnet.\n\nBENHAM'S BOOK OF QUOTATIONS.  By W. Gurney Benham. $3.50 net.\n\nTHESAURUS OF ENGLISH WORDS AND PHRASES.  By Peter Mark Roget, M.D.,\nF.R.S.  $2.50 net.\n\nA DICTIONARY OF ENGLISH SYNONYMS.  By Richard Soule. $2.50 net.\n\nCHAMBERS'S CONCISE GAZETTEER OF THE WORLD.  $3.00 net.\n\nTHE WRITER'S HANDBOOK.  $2.50 net.\n\nCHAMBERS'S BIOGRAPHICAL DICTIONARY.  Edited by David Patrick and Francis\nHindes Groome.  $3.00 net.\n\nCURIOSITIES OF POPULAR CUSTOMS.  By William S. Walsh. $3.50 net.\n\nTHE HISTORIC NOTEBOOK.  By Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.  $3.50 net.\n\nTHE READER'S HANDBOOK.  By Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.  $3.50 net.\n\nFACTS AND FANCIES FOR THE CURIOUS.  By Charles C. Bombaugh.  $3.00 net.\n\nWORDS, FACTS AND PHRASES.  By Eliezer Edwards.  $2.50 net.\n\nCHAMBERS'S TWENTIETH CENTURY DICTIONARY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE.  $2.00\nnet.","title":"Open That Door!","tradition":"philosophy-ethics","translated_text":null,"word_count":26253}