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Page 26
It amazes me that a reasoner so shrewd, so clear, and so exacting
as Horace Smith did not pursue the proposition further; for
without booksellers there would have been no market for
books--the author would not have been able to sell, and the
reader would not have been able to buy.
The further we proceed with the investigation the more satisfied
we become that the original man was three of number, one of him
being the bookseller, who established friendly relations between
the other two of him, saying: ``I will serve you both by
inciting both a demand and a supply.'' So then the author did
his part, and the reader his, which I take to be a much more
dignified scheme than that suggested by Darwin and his school of
investigators.
By the very nature of their occupation booksellers are
broad-minded; their association with every class of humanity and
their constant companionship with books give them a liberality
that enables them to view with singular clearness and
dispassionateness every phase of life and every dispensation of
Providence. They are not always practical, for the development
of the spiritual and intellectual natures in man does not at the
same time promote dexterity in the use of the baser organs of the
body, I have known philosophers who could not harness a horse or
even shoo chickens.
Ralph Waldo Emerson once consumed several hours' time trying to
determine whether he should trundle a wheelbarrow by pushing it
or by pulling it. A. Bronson Alcott once tried to construct a
chicken coop, and he had boarded himself up inside the structure
before he discovered that he had not provided for a door or for
windows. We have all heard the story of Isaac Newton--how he
cut two holes in his study-door, a large one for his cat to enter
by, and a small one for the kitten.
This unworldliness--this impossibility, if you please--is
characteristic of intellectual progression. Judge Methuen's
second son is named Grolier; and the fact that he doesn't know
enough to come in out of the rain has inspired both the Judge and
myself with the conviction that in due time Grolier will become a
great philosopher.
The mention of this revered name reminds me that my bookseller
told me the other day that just before I entered his shop a
wealthy patron of the arts and muses called with a volume which
he wished to have rebound.
``I can send it to Paris or to London,'' said my bookseller.
``If you have no choice of binder, I will entrust it to
Zaehnsdorf with instructions to lavish his choicest art upon
it.''
``But indeed I HAVE a choice,'' cried the plutocrat, proudly.
``I noticed a large number of Grolier bindings at the Art
Institute last week, and I want something of the same kind
myself. Send the book to Grolier, and tell him to do his
prettiest by it, for I can stand the expense, no matter what it
is.''
Somewhere in his admirable discourse old Walton has stated the
theory that an angler must be born and then made. I have always
held the same to be true of the bookseller. There are many, too
many, charlatans in the trade; the simon-pure bookseller enters
upon and conducts bookselling not merely as a trade and for the
purpose of amassing riches, but because he loves books and
because he has pleasure in diffusing their gracious influences.
Judge Methuen tells me that it is no longer the fashion to refer
to persons or things as being ``simon-pure''; the fashion, as he
says, passed out some years ago when a writer in a German paper
``was led into an amusing blunder by an English review. The
reviewer, having occasion to draw a distinction between George
and Robert Cruikshank, spoke of the former as the real Simon
Pure. The German, not understanding the allusion, gravely told
his readers that George Cruikshank was a pseudonym, the author's
real name being Simon Pure.''
This incident is given in Henry B. Wheatley's ``Literary
Blunders,'' a very charming book, but one that could have been
made more interesting to me had it recorded the curious blunder
which Frederick Saunders makes in his ``Story of Some Famous
Books.'' On page 169 we find this information: ``Among earlier
American bards we instance Dana, whose imaginative poem `The
Culprit Fay,' so replete with poetic beauty, is a fairy tale of
the highlands of the Hudson. The origin of the poem is traced to
a conversation with Cooper, the novelist, and Fitz-Greene
Halleck, the poet, who, speaking of the Scottish streams and
their legendary associations, insisted that the American rivers
were not susceptible of like poetic treatment. Dana thought
otherwise, and to make his position good produced three days
after this poem.''
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