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Page 8
My Uncle Cephas lived in a house so very different from my
grandmother's that it took me some time to get used to the place.
Uncle Cephas was a lawyer, and his style of living was not at all
like grandmother's; he was to have been a minister, but at twelve
years of age he attended the county fair, and that incident
seemed to change the whole bent of his life. At twenty-one he
married Samantha Talbott, and that was another blow to
grandmother, who always declared that the Talbotts were a
shiftless lot. However, I was agreeably impressed with Uncle
Cephas and Aunt 'Manthy, for they welcomed me very cordially and
turned me over to my little cousins, Mary and Henry, and bade us
three make merry to the best of our ability. These first
favorable impressions of my uncle's family were confirmed when I
discovered that for supper we had hot biscuit and dried beef
warmed up in cream gravy, a diet which, with all due respect to
grandmother, I considered much more desirable than dry bread and
dried-apple sauce.
Aha, old Crusoe! I see thee now in yonder case smiling out upon
me as cheerily as thou didst smile those many years ago when to a
little boy thou broughtest the message of Romance! And I do love
thee still, and I shall always love thee, not only for thy
benefaction in those ancient days, but also for the light and the
cheer which thy genius brings to all ages and conditions of
humanity.
My Uncle Cephas's library was stored with a large variety of
pleasing literature. I did not observe a glut of theological
publications, and I will admit that I felt somewhat aggrieved
personally when, in answer to my inquiry, I was told that there
was no ``New England Primer'' in the collection. But this
feeling was soon dissipated by the absorbing interest I took in
De Foe's masterpiece, a work unparalleled in the realm of
fiction.
I shall not say that ``Robinson Crusoe'' supplanted the Primer in
my affections; this would not be true. I prefer to say what is
the truth; it was my second love. Here again we behold another
advantage which the lover of books has over the lover of women.
If he be a genuine lover he can and should love any number of
books, and this polybibliophily is not to the disparagement of
any one of that number. But it is held by the expounders of our
civil and our moral laws that he who loveth one woman to the
exclusion of all other women speaketh by that action the best and
highest praise both of his own sex and of hers.
I thank God continually that it hath been my lot in life to found
an empire in my heart--no cramped and wizened borough wherein
one jealous mistress hath exercised her petty tyranny, but an
expansive and ever-widening continent divided and subdivided into
dominions, jurisdictions, caliphates, chiefdoms, seneschalships,
and prefectures, wherein tetrarchs, burgraves, maharajahs,
palatines, seigniors, caziques, nabobs, emirs, nizams, and nawabs
hold sway, each over his special and particular realm, and all
bound together in harmonious cooperation by the conciliating
spirit of polybibliophily!
Let me not be misunderstood; for I am not a woman-hater. I do
not regret the acquaintances--nay, the friendships--I have formed
with individuals of the other sex. As a philosopher it has
behooved me to study womankind, else I should not have
appreciated the worth of these other better loves. Moreover, I
take pleasure in my age in associating this precious volume or
that with one woman or another whose friendship came into my life
at the time when I was reading and loved that book.
The other day I found my nephew William swinging in the hammock
on the porch with his girl friend Celia; I saw that the young
people were reading Ovid. ``My children,'' said I, ``count this
day a happy one. In the years of after life neither of you will
speak or think of Ovid and his tender verses without recalling at
the same moment how of a gracious afternoon in distant time you
sat side by side contemplating the ineffably precious promises of
maturity and love.''
I am not sure that I do not approve that article in Judge
Methuen's creed which insists that in this life of ours woman
serves a probationary period for sins of omission or of
commission in a previous existence, and that woman's next step
upward toward the final eternity of bliss is a period of longer
or of shorter duration, in which her soul enters into a book to
be petted, fondled, beloved and cherished by some good man--like
the Judge, or like myself, for that matter.
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