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Page 37
Visitors to the British Museum complain not unfrequently that
they are overcome by the closeness of the atmosphere in that
place, and what is known as the British Museum headache has come
to be recognized by the medical profession in London as a
specific ailment due to the absence of oxygen in the atmosphere,
which condition is caused by the multitude of books, each one of
which, by that breathing process peculiar to books, consumes
several thousand cubic feet of air every twenty-four hours.
Professor Huxley wondered for a long time why the atmosphere of
the British Museum should be poisonous while other libraries were
free from the poison; a series of experiments convinced him that
the presence of poison in the atmosphere was due to the number of
profane books in the Museum. He recommended that these
poison-engendering volumes be treated once every six months with
a bath of cedria, which, as I understand, is a solution of the
juices of the cedar tree; this, he said, would purge the
mischievous volumes temporarily of their evil propensities and
abilities.
I do not know whether this remedy is effective, but I remember to
have read in Pliny that cedria was used by the ancients to render
their manuscripts imperishable. When Cneius Terentius went
digging in his estate in the Janiculum he came upon a coffer
which contained not only the remains of Numa, the old Roman king,
but also the manuscripts of the famous laws which Numa compiled.
The king was in some such condition as you might suppose him to
be after having been buried several centuries, but the
manuscripts were as fresh as new, and their being so is said to
have been due to the fact that before their burial they were
rubbed with citrus leaves.
These so-called books of Numa would perhaps have been preserved
unto this day but for the fanaticism of the people who exhumed
and read them; they were promptly burned by Quintus Petilius, the
praetor, because (as Cassius Hemina explains) they treated of
philosophical subjects, or because, as Livy testifies, their
doctrines were inimical to the religion then existing.
As I have had little to do with profane literature, I know
nothing of the habits of such books as Professor Huxley has
prescribed an antidote against. Of such books as I have gathered
about me and made my constant companions I can say truthfully
that a more delectable-flavored lot it were impossible to find.
As I walk amongst them, touching first this one and then that,
and regarding all with glances of affectionate approval, I fancy
that I am walking in a splendid garden, full of charming vistas,
wherein parterre after parterre of beautiful flowers is unfolded
to my enraptured vision; and surely there never were other odors
so delightful as the odors which my books exhale!
My garden aboundeth in pleasant nooks
And fragrance is over it all;
For sweet is the smell of my old, old books
In their places against the wall.
Here is a folio that's grim with age
And yellow and green with mould;
There's the breath of the sea on every page
And the hint of a stanch ship's hold.
And here is a treasure from France la belle
Exhaleth a faint perfume
Of wedded lily and asphodel
In a garden of song abloom.
And this wee little book of Puritan mien
And rude, conspicuous print
Hath the Yankee flavor of wintergreen,
Or, may be, of peppermint.
In Walton the brooks a-babbling tell
Where the cheery daisy grows,
And where in meadow or woodland dwell
The buttercup and the rose.
But best beloved of books, I ween,
Are those which one perceives
Are hallowed by ashes dropped between
The yellow, well-thumbed leaves.
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