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twg_000000046600 | business. More than thirty years before, Puritanism had snuffed out its candles and driven its fiddlers to the streets. But Puritanism, in its turn, fell with the return of the Stuarts. Pepys is a chief witness as to what kind of theatre it was that was set up in London about the year . It was far different from the | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046601 | Elizabethan theatre. It came in from the Bankside and the fields to the north of the city and lodged itself on the better streets and squares. It no longer patterned itself on the inn-yard, but was roofed against the rain. The time had been when the theatre was cousin to the bear-pit. They were ranged together on the Bankside and | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046602 | they sweat and smelled like congenial neighbors. But these days are past. Let Bartholomew Fair be as rowdy as it pleases, let acrobats and such loose fellows keep to Southwark, the theatre has risen in the world! It has put on a wig, as it were, it has tied a ribbon to itself and has become fashionable. And although it | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046603 | has taken on a few extra dissolute habits, they are of the genteelest kind and will make it feel at home in the upper circles. But also the theatre introduced movable scenery. There is an attempt toward elaboration of stage effect. "To the King's playhouse--" says Pepys, "a good scene of a town on fire." Women take parts. An avalanche | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046604 | of new plays descends on it. Even the old plays that have survived are garbled to suit a change of taste. But if you would really know what kind of theatre it was that sprang up with the Stuarts and what the audiences looked like and how they behaved, you must read Pepys. With but a moderate use of fancy, | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046605 | you can set out with him in his yellow coach for the King's house in Drury Lane. Perhaps hunger nips you at the start. If so, you stop, as Pepys pleasantly puts it, for a "barrel of oysters." Then, having dusted yourself of crumbs, you take the road again. Presently you come to Drury Lane. Other yellow coaches are before | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046606 | you. There is a show of foppery on the curb and an odor of smoking links. A powdered beauty minces to the door. Once past the doorkeeper, you hear the cries of the orange women going up and down the aisles. There is a shuffling of apprentices in the gallery. A dandy who lolls in a box with a silken | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046607 | leg across the rail, scrawls a message to an actress and sends it off by Orange Moll. Presently Castlemaine enters the royal box with the King. There is a craning of necks, for with her the King openly "do discover a great deal of familiarity." In other boxes are other fine ladies wearing vizards to hold their modesty if the | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046608 | comedy is free. A board breaks in the ceiling of the gallery and dust falls in the men's hair and the ladies' necks, which, writes Pepys, "made good sport." Or again, "A gentleman of good habit, sitting just before us, eating of some fruit in the midst of the play, did drop down as dead; being choked, but with much | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046609 | ado Orange Moll did thrust her finger down his throat and brought him to life again." Or perhaps, "I sitting behind in a dark place, a lady spit backward upon me by a mistake, not seeing me, but after seeing her to be a very pretty lady, I was not troubled at it at all." At a change of scenes, | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046610 | Mrs. Knipp spies Pepys and comes to the pit door. He goes with her to the tiring-room. "To the women's shift," he writes, "where Nell was dressing herself, and was all unready, and is very pretty, prettier than I thought.... But to see how Nell cursed for having so few people in the pit, was pretty."--"But Lord! their confidence! and | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046611 | how many men do hover about them as soon as they come off the stage, and how confident they are in their talk!" Or he is whispered a bit of gossip, how Castlemaine is much in love with Hart, an actor of the house. Then Pepys goes back into the pit and lays out a sixpence for an orange. As | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046612 | the play nears its end, footmen crowd forward at the doors. The epilogue is spoken. The fiddles squeak their last. There is a bawling outside for coaches. "Would it fit your humor," asks Mr. Pepys, when we have been handed to our seats, "would it fit your humor, if we go around to the Rose Tavern for some burnt wine | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046613 | and a breast of mutton off the spit? It's sure that some brave company will fall in, and we can have a tune. We'll not heed the bellman. We'll sit late, for it will be a fine light moonshine morning." To an Unknown Reader Once in a while I dream that I come upon a person who is reading a | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046614 | book that I have written. In my pleasant dreams these persons do not nod sleepily upon my pages, and sometimes I fall in talk with them. Although they do not know who I am, they praise the book and name me warmly among my betters. In such circumstance my happy nightmare mounts until I ride foremost with the giants. If | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046615 | I could think that this disturbance of my sleep came from my diet and that these agreeable persons arose from a lobster or a pie, nightly at supper I would ply my fork recklessly among the platters. But in a waking state these meetings never come. If an article of mine is ever read at all, it is read in | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046616 | secret like the Bible. Once, indeed, in a friend's house I saw my book upon the table, but I suspect that it had been dusted and laid out for my coming. I request my hostess that next time, for my vanity, she lay the book face down upon a chair, as though the grocer's knock intruded. Or perhaps a huckster's | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046617 | cart broke upon her enjoyment. Let it be thought that a rare bargain--tender asparagus or the first strawberries of the summer--tempted her off my pages! Or maybe there was red rhubarb in the cart and the jolly farmer, as he journeyed up the street, pitched it to a pleasing melody. Dear lady, I forgive you. But let us hope no | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046618 | laundryman led you off! Such discord would have marred my book. I saw once in a public library, as I went along the shelves, a volume of mine which gave evidence to have been really read. The record in front showed that it had been withdrawn one time only. The card was blank below--but once certainly it had been read. | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046619 | I hope that the book went out on a Saturday noon when the spirits rise for the holiday to come, and that a rainy Sunday followed, so that my single reader was kept before his fire. A dull patter on the window--if one sits unbuttoned on the hearth--gives a zest to a languid chapter. The rattle of a storm--if only | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046620 | the room be snug--fixes the attention fast. Therefore, let the rain descend as though the heavens rehearsed for a flood! Let a tempest come out of the west! Let the chimney roar as it were a lion! And if there must be a clearing, let it hold off until the late afternoon, lest it sow too early a distaste for | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046621 | indoors and reading! There is scarcely a bookworm who will not slip his glasses off his nose, if the clouds break at the hour of sunset when the earth and sky are filled with a green and golden light. I took the book off the library shelf and timidly glancing across my shoulder for fear that some one might catch | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046622 | me, I looked along the pages. There was a thumb mark in a margin, and presently appeared a kindly stickiness on the paper as though an orange had squirted on it. Surely there had been a human being hereabouts. It was as certain as when Crusoe found the footprints in the sand. Ah, I thought, this fellow who sits in | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046623 | the firelight has caught an appetite. Perhaps he bit a hole and sucked the fruit, and the skin has burst behind. Or I wave the theory and now conceive that the volume was read at breakfast. If so, it is my comfort that in those dim hours it stood propped against his coffee cup. But the trail ended with the | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046624 | turning of the page. There were, indeed, further on, pencil checks against one of the paragraphs as if here the book had raised a faint excitement, but I could not tell whether they sprang up in derision or in approval. Toward the end there were uncut leaves, as though even my single reader had failed in his persistence. Being swept | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046625 | once beyond a usual caution, I lamented to my friend F---- of the neglect in which readers held me, to which the above experience in a library was a rare exception. F---- offered me such consolation as he could, deplored the general taste and the decadence of the times, and said that as praise was sweet to everyone, he, as | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046626 | far as he himself was able, offered it anonymously to those who merited it. He was standing recently in a picture gallery, when a long-haired man who stood before one of the pictures was pointed out to him as the artist who had painted it. At once F---- saw his opportunity to confer a pleasure, but as there is a | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046627 | touch of humor in him, he first played off a jest. Lounging forward, he dropped his head to one side as artistic folk do when they look at color. He made a knot-hole of his fingers and squinted through. Next he retreated across the room and stood with his legs apart in the very attitude of wisdom. He cast a | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046628 | stern eye upon the picture and gravely tapped his chin. At last when the artist was fretted to an extremity, F---- came forward and so cordially praised the picture that the artist, being now warmed and comforted, presently excused himself in a high excitement and rushed away to start another picture while the pleasant spell was on him. Had I | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046629 | been the artist, I would have run from either F----'s praise or disapproval. As an instance, I saw a friend on a late occasion coming from a bookstore with a volume of suspicious color beneath his arm. I had been avoiding that particular bookstore for a week because my ay for sale on a forward table. And now when my | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046630 | friend appeared, a sudden panic seized me and I plunged into the first doorway to escape. I found myself facing a soda fountain. For a moment, in my blur, I could not account for the soda fountain, or know quite how it had come into my life. Presently an interne--for he was jacketted as if he walked a hospital--asked me | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046631 | what I'd have. Still somewhat dazed, in my discomposure, having no answer ready, my startled fancy ran among the signs and labels of the counter until I recalled that a bearded man once, unblushing in my presence, had ordered a banana flip. I got the fellow's ear and named it softly. Whereupon he placed a dead-looking banana across a mound | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046632 | of ice-cream, poured on colored juices as though to mark the fatal wound and offered it to me. I ate a few bites of the sickish mixture until the streets were safe. I do not know to what I can attribute my timidity. Possibly it arises from the fact that until recently my writing met with uniform rejection and failure. | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046633 | For years I wrote secretly in order that few persons might know how miserably I failed. I answered upon a question that I had given up the practice, that I now had no time for it, that I scribbled now and then but always burned it. All that while I gave my rare leisure and my stolen afternoons--the hours that | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046634 | other men give to golf and sleep and sitting together--these hours I gave to writing. On a holiday I was at it early. On Saturday when other folks were abroad, I sat at my desk. It was my grief that I was so poor a borrower of the night that I blinked stupidly on my papers if I sat beyond | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046635 | the usual hour. Writing was my obsession. I need no pity for my failures, for although I tossed my cap upon a rare acceptance, my deeper joy was in the writing. That joy repeated failures could not blunt. There are paragraphs that now lie yellow in my desk with their former meaning faded, that still recall as I think of | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046636 | them the first exaltation when I wrote them--feverishly in a hot emotion. In those days I thought that I had caught the sunlight on my pen, and the wind and the moon and the spinning earth. I thought that the valleys and the mountains arose from the mist obedient to me. If I splashed my pen, in my warm regard | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046637 | it was the roar and fury of the sea. It was really no more than my youth crying out. And, alas, my thoughts and my feelings escaped me when I tried to put them down on paper, although I did not know it then. Perhaps they were too vagrant to be held. And yet these paragraphs that might be mournful | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046638 | records of failure, fill me with no more than a tender recollection for the boy who wrote them. The worn phrases now beg their way with broken steps. Like shrill and piping minstrels they whine and crack a melody that I still remember in its freshness. But perhaps, reader, we are brothers in these regards. Perhaps you, too, have faded | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046639 | papers. Or possibly, even on a recent date, you sighed your soul into an essay or a sonnet, and you now have manuscript which you would like to sell. Do not mistake me! I am not an editor, nor am I an agent for these wares. Rather I speak as a friend who, having many such hidden sorrows, offers you | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046640 | a word of comfort. To a desponding Hamlet I exclaim, "'Tis common, my Lord." I have so many friends that have had an unproductive fling toward letters, that I think the malady is general. So many books are published and flourish a little while in their bright wrappers, but yours and theirs and mine waste away in a single precious | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046641 | copy. I am convinced that a close inspection of all desks--a federal matter as though Capital were under fire--would betray thousands of abandoned novels. There may be a few stern desks that are so cluttered with price-sheets and stock-lists that they cannot offer harborage to a love tale. Standing desks in particular, such as bookkeepers affect, are not always chinked | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046642 | with these softer plots. And rarely there is a desk so smothered in learning--reeking so of scholarship--as not to admit a lighter nook for the tucking of a sea yarn. Even so, it was whispered to me lately that Professor B----, whose word shakes the continent, holds in a lower drawer no fewer than three unpublished historical novels, each set | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046643 | up with a full quota of smugglers and red bandits. One of these stories deals scandalously with the abduction of an heiress, but this must be held in confidence. The professor is a stoic before his class, but there's blood in the fellow. There is, therefore, little use in your own denial. You will recall that once, when taken to | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046644 | a ruined castle, you brooded on the dungeons until a plot popped into your head. You crammed it with quaint phrasing from the chroniclers. You stuffed it with soldiers' oaths. "What ho! landlord," you wrote gayly at midnight, "a foaming cup, good sir. God pity the poor sailors that take the sea this night!" And on you pelted with your | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046645 | plot to such conflicts and hair-breadth escapes as lay in your contrivance. These things you have committed. Good sir, we are of a common piece. Let us salute as brothers! And therefore, as to a comrade, I bid you continue in your ways. And that you may not lack matter for your pen, I warmly urge you, when by shrewdest | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046646 | computation you have exhausted the plots of adventure and have worn your villains thin, that you proceed in quieter vein. I urge you to an April mood, for the winds of Spring are up and daffodils nod across the garden. There is black earth in the Spring and green hilltops, and there is also the breath of flowers along the | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046647 | fences and the sound of water for your pen to prattle of. A Plague of All Cowards Having written lately against the dog, several acquaintances have asked me to turn upon the cat, and they have been good enough to furnish me with instances of her faithlessness. Also, a lady with whom I recently sat at dinner, inquired of me | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046648 | on the passing of the fish, whether I had ever properly considered the cow, which she esteemed a most mischievous animal. One of them had mooed at her as she crossed a pasture and she had hastily climbed a fence. I get a good many suggestions first and last. I was once taken to a Turkish bath for no other | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046649 | reason--as I was afterwards told--than that it might supply me with a topic. Odd books have been put in my way. A basket of school readers was once lodged with me, with a request that I direct my attention to the absurd selection of the poems. I have been urged to go against car conductors and customs men. On one | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046650 | occasion I received a paper of tombstone inscriptions, with a note of direction how others might be found in a neighboring churchyard if I were curious. A lady in whose company I camped last summer has asked me to give a chapter to it. We were abroad upon a lake in the full moon--we were lost upon a mountain--twice a | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046651 | canoe upset--there were the usual jests about cooking. These things might have filled a few pages agreeably, yet so far they have given me only a paragraph. But I am not disposed toward any of these subjects, least of all the cat, upon which I look--despite the coldness of her nature--as a harmless and comforting appendage of the hearth-rug. I | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046652 | would no more prey upon her morals than I would the morals of the andirons. I choose, rather, to slip to another angle of the question and say a few words about cowards, among whom I have already confessed that I number myself. In this year of battles, when physical courage sits so high, the reader--if he is swept off | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046653 | in the general opinion--will expect under such a title something caustic. He will think that I am about to loose against all cowards a plague of frogs and locusts as if old Egypt had come again. But cowardice is its own punishment. It needs no frog to nip it. Even the sharp-toothed locust--for in the days that bordered so close | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046654 | upon the mastodon, the locust could hardly have fallen to the tender greenling we know today--even the locust that once spoiled the Egyptians could not now add to the grief of a coward. And yet--really I hesitate. I blush. My attack will be too intimate; for I have confessed that I am not the very button on the cap of | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046655 | bravery. I have indeed stiffened myself to ride a horse, a mightier feat than driving him because of the tallness of the monster and his uneasy movement, as though his legs were not well socketed and might fall out on a change of gaits. I have ridden on a camel in a side-show, but have found my only comfort in | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046656 | his hump. I have stroked the elephant. In a solemn hour of night I have gone downstairs to face a burglar. But I do not run singing to these dangers. While your really brave fellow is climbing a dizzy staircase to the moon--I write in figure--I would shake with fear upon a lower platform. Perhaps you recall Mr. Tipp of | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046657 | the Elia essays. "Tipp," says his pleasant biographer, "never mounted the box of a stage-coach in his life; or leaned against the rails of a balcony; or walked upon the ridge of a parapet; or looked down a precipice; or let off a gun." I cannot follow Tipp, it may be, to his extreme tremors--my hair will not rise to | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046658 | so close a likeness of the fretful porcupine--yet in a measure we are in agreement. We are, as it were, cousins, with the mark of our common family strong on both of us. There are persons who, when in your company on a country walk, will steal apples, not with a decent caution from a tree along the fence, but | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046659 | far afield. If there are grapes, they will not wait for a turn of the road, but will pluck them in the open. Or maybe in your wandering you come on a half-built house. You climb in through a window to look about. Here the stairs will go. The ice-box will be set against this wall. But if your companion | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046660 | is one of valor's minions, he will not be satisfied with this safe and agreeable research--this mild speculation on bath-rooms--this innocent placing of a stove. He must go aloft. He has seen a ladder and yearns to climb it. The footing on the second story is bad enough. If you fall between the joists, you will clatter to the basement. | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046661 | It is hard to realize that such an open breezy place will ever be cosy and warm with fires, and that sleepy folk will here lie snugly a-bed on frosty mornings. But still the brazen fellow is not content. A ladder leads horribly to the roof. For myself I will climb until the tip of my nose juts out upon | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046662 | the world--until it sprouts forth to the air from the topmost timbers: But I will go no farther. But if your companion sees a scaffold around a chimney, he must perch on it. For him, a dizzy plank is a pleasant belvedere from which to view the world. The bravery of this kind of person is not confined to these | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046663 | few matters. If you happen to go driving with him, he will--if the horse is of the kind that distends his nostrils--on a sudden toss you the reins and leave you to guard him while he dispatches an errand. If it were a motor car there would be a brake to hold it. If it were a boat, you might | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046664 | throw out an anchor. A butcher's cart would have a metal drag. But here you sit defenseless--tied to the whim of a horse--greased for a runaway. The beast Dobbin turns his head and holds you with his hard eye. There is a convulsive movement along his back, a preface, it may be, to a sudden seizure. A real friend would | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046665 | have loosed the straps that run along the horse's flanks. Then, if any deviltry take him, he might go off alone and have it out. I have in mind a livery stable in Kalamazoo. Myself and another man of equal equestrianism were sent once to bring out a thing called a surrey and a pair of horses. Do you happen | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046666 | to be acquainted with Blat's Horse Food? If your way lies among the smaller towns, you must know its merits. They are proclaimed along the fences and up the telegraph poles. Drinking-troughs speak its virtues. Horses thrive on Blat's Food. They neigh for it. A flashing lithograph is set by way of testament wherever traffic turns or lingers. Do you | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046667 | not recall the picture? A great red horse rears himself on his hind legs. His forward hoofs are extended. He is about to trample someone under foot. His nostrils are wide. He is unduly excited. It cannot be food, it must be drink that stirs him. He is a fearful spectacle. There was such a picture on the wall of | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046668 | the stable. "Have you any horses," I asked nervously, jerking my thumb toward the wall, "any horses that have been fed on just ordinary food? Some that are a little tired?" For I remembered how Mr. Winkle once engaged horses to take the Pickwickians out to Manor Farm and what mishaps befell them on the way. "'He don't shy, does | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046669 | he?' inquired Mr. Pickwick. "'Shy, sir?--He wouldn't shy if he was to meet a vagginload of monkeys with their tails burnt off.'" But how Mr. Pickwick dropped his whip, how Mr. Winkle got off his tall horse to pick it up, how he tried in vain to remount while his horse went round and round, how they were all spilt | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046670 | out upon the bridge and how finally they walked to Manor Farm--these things are known to everybody with an inch of reading. "'How far is it to Dingley Dell?' they asked. "'Better er seven mile.' "'Is it a good road?' "'No, t'ant.'... "The depressed Pickwickians turned moodily away, with the tall quadruped, for which they all felt the most unmitigated | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046671 | disgust, following slowly at their heels." "Have you any horses," I repeated, "that have not been fed on Blat's Food--horses that are, so to speak, on a diet?" In the farthest stalls, hidden from the sunlight and the invigorating infection of the day, two beasts were found with sunken chests and hollow eyes, who took us safely to our destination | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046672 | on their hands and knees. As you may suspect, I do not enjoy riding. There is, it is true, one saddle horse in North Carolina that fears me. If time still spares him, that horse I could ride with content. But I would rather trust myself on the top of a wobbly step-ladder than up the sides of most horses. | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046673 | I am not quite of a mind, however, with Samuel Richardson who owned a hobby-horse and rode on his hearth-rug in the intervals of writing "Pamela." It is likely that when he had rescued her from an adventure of more than usual danger--perhaps her villainous master has been concealed in her closet--perhaps he has been hiding beneath her bed--it is | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046674 | likely, having brought her safely off, the author locked her in the buttery against a fresh attack. Then he felt, good man, in need of exercise. So while he waits for tea and muffins, he leaps upon his rocking-horse and prances off. As for the hobby-horse itself, I have not heard whether it was of the usual nursery type, or | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046675 | whether it was built in the likeness of the leather camels of a German steamship. I need hardly say that these confessions of my cowardice are for your ear alone. They must not get abroad to smirch me. If on a country walk I have taken to my heels, you must not twit me with poltroonery. If you charge me | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046676 | with such faint-heartedness while other persons are present, I'll deny it flat. When I sit in the company of ladies at dinner, I dissemble my true nature, as doublet and hose ought to show itself courageous to petticoat. If then, you taunt me, for want of a better escape, I shall turn it to a jest. I shall engage the | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046677 | table flippantly: Hear how preposterously the fellow talks!--he jests to satisfy a grudge. In appearance I am whole as the marble, founded as a rock. But really some of us cowards are diverting persons. The lady who directed me against the cow is a most delightful woman with whom I hope I shall again sit at dinner. A witty lady | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046678 | of my acquaintance shivers when a cat walks in the room. A man with whom I pass the time pleasantly and profitably, although he will not admit a fear of ghosts, still will not sleep in an empty house because of possible noises. I would rather spend a Saturday evening in the company of the cowardly Falstaff than of the | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046679 | bold Hotspur. If it were not for sack, villainous sack, and a few spots upon his front, you would go far to find a better companion than the fat old Knight. Bob Acres was not much for valor and he made an ass of himself when he went to fight a duel, yet one could have sat agreeably at mutton | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046680 | with him. But these things are slight. It matters little whether or not one can mount a ladder comfortably. Now that motors have come in, horses stand remotely in our lives. Nor is it of great moment whether or not we fear to be out of fashion--whether we halt in the wearing of a wrong-shaped hat, or glance fearfully around | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046681 | when we choose from a line of forks. Superstitions rest mostly on the surface and are not deadly in themselves. A man can be true of heart even if he will not sit thirteen at table. But there is a kind of fear that is disastrous to them that have it. It is the fear of the material universe in | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046682 | all its manifestations. There are persons, stout both of chest and limb, who fear drafts and wet feet. A man who is an elephant of valor and who has been feeling this long while a gentle contempt for such as myself, will cry out if a soft breeze strikes against his neck. If a foot slips to the gutter and | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046683 | becomes wet, he will dose himself. Achilles did not more carefully nurse his heel. For him the lofty dome of air is packed with malignant germs. The round world is bottled with contagion. A strong man who, in his time, might have slain the Sofi, is as fearful of his health as though the plague were up the street. Calamities | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046684 | beset him. The slightest sniffling in his nose is the trumpet for a deep disorder. Existence is but a moving hazard. Life for him, poor fellow, is but a room with a window on the night and a storm beating on the casement. God knows, it is better to grow giddy on a ladder than to think that this majestic | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046685 | earth is such an universal pestilence. The Asperities of the Early British Reviewers Book reviewers nowadays direct their attention, for the most part, to the worthy books and they habitually neglect those that seem beneath their regard. On a rare occasion they assail an unprofitable book, but even this is often but a bit of practice. They swish a bludgeon | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046686 | to try their hand. They only take their anger, as it were, upon an outing, lest with too close housing it grow pallid and shrink in girth. Or maybe they indulge themselves in humor. Perhaps they think that their pages grow dull and that ridicule will restore the balance. They throw it in like a drunken porter to relieve a | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046687 | solemn scene. I fancy that editors of this baser sort keep on their shelves one or two volumes for their readers' sport and mirth. I read recently a review of an historical romance--a last faltering descendant of the race--whose author in an endeavor to restore the past, had made too free a use of obsolete words. With what playfulness was | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046688 | he held up to scorn! Mary come up, sweet chuck! How his quaint phrasing was turned against him! What a merry fellow it is who writes, how sharp and caustic! There's pepper on his mood. But generally, it is said, book reviews are too flattering. Professor Bliss Perry, being of this opinion, offered some time ago a statement that "Magazine | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046689 | writing about current books is for the most part bland, complaisant, pulpy.... The Pedagogue no longer gets a chance at the gifted young rascal who needs, first and foremost, a premonitory whipping; the youthful genius simply stays away from school and carries his unwhipped talents into the market place." At a somewhat different angle of the same opinion, Dr. Crothers | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046690 | suggests in an essay that instead of being directed to the best books, we need to be warned from the worst. He proposes to set up a list of the Hundred Worst Books. For is it not better, he asks, to put a lighthouse on a reef than in the channel? The open sea does not need a bell-buoy to | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046691 | sound its depth. On these hints I have read some of the riticisms of days past to learn whether they too were pulpy--whether our present silken criticism always wore its gloves and perfumed itself, or whether it has fallen to this smiling senility from a sterner youth. Although I am usually a rusty student, yet by diligence I have sought | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046692 | to mend my knowledge that I might lay it out before you. Lately, therefore, if you had come within our Public Library, you would have found me in one of these attempts. Here I went, scrimping the other business of the day in order that I might be at my studies before the rush set in up town. Mine was | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046693 | the alcove farthest from the door, where are the mustier volumes that fit a bookish student. So if your quest was the lighter books--such verse and novels as present fame attests--you did not find me. I was hooped and bowed around the corner. I am no real scholar, but I study on a spurt. For a whole week together I | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046694 | may read old plays until their jigging style infects my own. I have set myself against the lofty histories, although I tire upon their lower slopes and have not yet persisted to their upper and windier ridges. I have, also, a pretty knowledge of the Queen Anne wits and feel that I must have dogged and spied upon them while | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046695 | they were yet alive. But in general, although I am curious in the earlier chapters of learning, I lag in the inner windings. However, for a fortnight I have sat piled about with old reviews, whose leather rots and smells, in order that I might study the fading criticisms of the past. Until rather near the end of the eighteenth | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046696 | century, those who made their living in England by writing were chiefly publishers' hacks, fellows of the Dunciad sucking their quills in garrets and selling their labor for a crust, for the reading public was too small to support them. Or they found a patron and gave him a sugared sonnet for a pittance, or strained themselves to the length | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046697 | of an Ode for a berth in his household. Or frequently they supported a political party and received a place in the Red Tape Office. But even in politics, on account of the smallness of the reading public and the politicians' indifference to its approval, their services were of slight account. Too often a political office was granted from a | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046698 | pocket borough in which a restricted electorate could be bought at a trifling expense. To gain support inside the House of Commons was enough. The greater public outside could be ignored. This attitude changed with the coming of the French Revolution. Here was a new force unrealized before--that of a crowd which, being unrepresented and with a real grievance, could, | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000046699 | when it liked, take a club and go after what it wanted. For the first time in many years in England--such were the whiffs of liberty across the Channel--the power of an unrepresented public came to be known. It was not that the English crowd had as yet taken the club in its hands, but there were new thoughts abroad | 60 | gutenberg |
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