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Page 24
Too few people seem to realize that books have feelings. But if
I know one thing better than another I know this, that my books
know me and love me. When of a morning I awaken I cast my eyes
about my room to see how fare my beloved treasures, and as I cry
cheerily to them, ``Good-day to you, sweet friends!'' how
lovingly they beam upon me, and how glad they are that my repose
has been unbroken. When I take them from their places, how
tenderly do they respond to the caresses of my hands, and with
what exultation do they respond unto my call for sympathy!
Laughter for my gayer moods, distraction for my cares, solace for
my griefs, gossip for my idler moments, tears for my sorrows,
counsel for my doubts, and assurance against my fears--these
things my books give me with a promptness and a certainty and a
cheerfulness which are more than human; so that I were less than
human did I not love these comforters and bear eternal gratitude
to them.
Judge Methuen read me once a little poem which I fancy mightily;
it is entitled ``Winfreda,'' and you will find it in your Percy,
if you have one. The last stanza, as I recall it, runs in this
wise:
And when by envy time transported
Shall seek to rob us of our joys,
You'll in our girls again be courted
And I'll go wooing in our boys.
``Now who was the author of those lines?'' asked the Judge.
``Undoubtedly Oliver Wendell Holmes,'' said I. ``They have the
flavor peculiar to our Autocrat; none but he could have done up
so much sweetness in such a quaint little bundle.''
``You are wrong,'' said the Judge, ``but the mistake is a natural
one. The whole poem is such a one as Holmes might have written,
but it saw the light long before our dear doctor's day: what a
pity that its authorship is not known!''
``Yet why a pity?'' quoth I. ``Is it not true that words are the
only things that live forever? Are we not mortal, and are not
books immortal? Homer's harp is broken and Horace's lyre is
unstrung, and the voices of the great singers are hushed; but
their songs--their songs are imperishable. O friend! what moots
it to them or to us who gave this epic or that lyric to
immortality? The singer belongs to a year, his song to all
time. I know it is the custom now to credit the author with his
work, for this is a utilitarian age, and all things are by the
pound or the piece, and for so much money.
``So when a song is printed it is printed in small type, and the
name of him who wrote it is appended thereunto in big type. If
the song be meritorious it goes to the corners of the earth
through the medium of the art preservative of arts, but the
longer and the farther it travels the bigger does the type of the
song become and the smaller becomes the type wherein the author's
name is set.
``Then, finally, some inconsiderate hand, wielding the pen or
shears, blots out or snips off the poet's name, and henceforth
the song is anonymous. A great iconoclast--a royal old
iconoclast--is Time: but he hath no terrors for those precious
things which are embalmed in words, and the only fellow that
shall surely escape him till the crack of doom is he whom men
know by the name of Anonymous!''
``Doubtless you speak truly,'' said the Judge; ``yet it would be
different if I but had the ordering of things. I would let the
poets live forever and I would kill off most of their poetry.''
I do not wonder that Ritson and Percy quarrelled. It was his
misfortune that Ritson quarrelled with everybody. Yet Ritson was
a scrupulously honest man; he was so vulgarly sturdy in his
honesty that he would make all folk tell the truth even though
the truth were of such a character as to bring the blush of shame
to the devil's hardened cheek.
On the other hand, Percy believed that there were certain true
things which should not be opened out in the broad light of day;
it was this deep-seated conviction which kept him from publishing
the manuscript folio, a priceless treasure, which Ritson never
saw and which, had it fallen in Ritson's way instead of Percy's,
would have been clapped at once into the hands of the printer.
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