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Page 28
It was only last week,
In my ode upon spring,
Which I meant to have made
A most beautiful thing,
When I talked of the dewdrops
From freshly blown roses,
The nasty things made it
From freshly blown noses.
We can fancy Richard Porson's rage (for Porson was of violent
temper) when, having written the statement that ``the crowd rent
the air with their shouts,'' his printer made the line read ``the
crowd rent the air with their snouts.'' However, this error was
a natural one, since it occurs in the ``Catechism of the Swinish
Multitude.'' Royalty only are privileged when it comes to the
matter of blundering. When Louis XIV. was a boy he one day spoke
of ``un carosse''; he should have said ``une carosse,'' but he
was king, and having changed the gender of carosse the change was
accepted, and unto this day carosse is masculine.
That errors should occur in newspapers is not remarkable, for
much of the work in a newspaper office is done hastily. Yet some
of these errors are very amusing. I remember to have read in a
Berlin newspaper a number of years ago that ``Prince Bismarck is
trying to keep up honest and straightforward relations with all
the girls'' (madchen).
This statement seemed incomprehensible until it transpired that
the word ``madchen'' was in this instance a misprint for
``machten,'' a word meaning all the European powers.
X
WHEN FANCHONETTE BEWITCHED ME
The garden in which I am straying has so many diversions to catch
my eye, to engage my attention and to inspire reminiscence that I
find it hard to treat of its beauties methodically. I find
myself wandering up and down, hither and thither, in so
irresponsible a fashion that I marvel you have not abandoned me
as the most irrational of madmen.
Yet how could it be otherwise? All around me I see those things
that draw me from the pathway I set out to pursue: like a
heedless butterfly I flit from this sweet unto that, glorying and
revelling in the sunshine and the posies. There is little that
is selfish in a love like this, and herein we have another reason
why the passion for books is beneficial. He who loves women must
and should love some one woman above the rest, and he has her to
his keeping, which I esteem to be one kind of selfishness.
But he who truly loves books loves all books alike, and not only
this, but it grieves him that all other men do not share with him
this noble passion. Verily, this is the most unselfish of loves!
To return now to the matter of booksellers, I would fain impress
you with the excellences of the craft, for I know their virtues.
My association with them has covered so long a period and has
been so intimate that even in a vast multitude of people I have
no difficulty in determining who are the booksellers and who are
not.
For, having to do with books, these men in due time come to
resemble their wares not only in appearance but also in
conversation. My bookseller has dwelt so long in his corner with
folios and quartos and other antique tomes that he talks in
black-letter and has the modest, engaging look of a brown old
stout binding, and to the delectation of discriminating
olfactories he exhaleth an odor of mildew and of tobacco
commingled, which is more grateful to the true bibliophile than
all the perfumes of Araby.
I have studied the craft so diligently that by merely clapping my
eyes upon a bookseller I can tell you with certainty what manner
of books he sells; but you must know that the ideal bookseller
has no fads, being equally proficient in and a lover of all
spheres, departments, branches, and lines of his art. He is,
moreover, of a benignant nature, and he denies credit to none;
yet, withal, he is righteously so discriminating that he lets the
poor scholar have for a paltry sum that which the rich parvenu
must pay dearly for. He is courteous and considerate where
courtesy and consideration are most seemly.
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