Poetry of the Library.

The Librarian's Dream.
1.
He sat at night by his lonely bed,
With an open book before him;
And slowly nodded his weary head,
As slumber came stealing o'er him.

2.
And he saw in his dream a mighty host
Of the writers gone before,
And the shadowy form of many a ghost
Glided in at the open door.

3.
Great Homer came first in a snow-white shroud,
And Virgil sang sweet by his side;
While Cicero thundered in accents loud,
And Caesar most gravely replied.

4.
Anacreon, too, from his rhythmical lips
The honey of Hybla distilled,
And Herodotus suffered a partial eclipse,
While Horace with music was filled.

5.
The procession of ancients was brilliant and long,
Aristotle and Plato were there,
Thucydides, too, and Tacitus strong,
And Plutarch, and Sappho the fair.

6.
Aristophanes elbowed gay Ovid's white ghost,
And Euripides Xenophon led,
While Propertius laughed loud at Juvenal's jokes,
And Sophocles rose from the dead.

7.
Then followed a throng to memory dear,
Of writers more modern in age,
Cervantes and Shakespeare, who died the same year,
And Chaucer, and Bacon the sage.

8.
Immortal the laurels that decked the fair throng,
And Dante moved by with his lyre,
While Montaigne and Pascal stood rapt by his song,
And Boccaccio paused to admire.

9.
Sweet Spenser and Calderon moved arm in arm,
While Milton and Sidney were there,
Pope, Dryden, and Molière added their charm,
And Bunyan, and Marlowe so rare.

10.
Then Gibbon stalked by in classical guise,
And Hume, and Macaulay, and Froude,
While Darwin, and Huxley, and Tyndall looked wise,
And Humboldt and Comte near them stood.

11.
Dean Swift looked sardonic on Addison's face,
And Johnson tipped Boswell a wink,
Walter Scott and Jane Austen hobnobbed o'er a glass,
And Goethe himself deigned to drink.

12.
Robert Burns followed next with Thomas Carlyle,
Jean Paul paired with Coleridge, too,
While De Foe elbowed Goldsmith, the master of style,
And Fielding and Schiller made two.

13.
Rousseau with his eloquent, marvellous style,
And Voltaire, with his keen, witty pen,
Victor Hugo so grand, though repellent the while,
And Dumas and Balzac again.

14.
Dear Thackeray came in his happiest mood,
And stayed until midnight was done,
Bulwer-Lytton, and Reade, and Kingsley and Hood,
And Dickens, the master of fun.

15.
George Eliot, too, with her matter-full page,
And Byron, and Browning, and Keats,
While Shelley and Tennyson joined youth and age,
And Wordsworth the circle completes.

16.
Then followed a group of America's best,
With Irving, and Bryant, and Holmes,
While Bancroft and Motley unite with the rest,
And Thoreau with Whittier comes.

17.
With his Raven in hand dreamed on Edgar Poe,
And Longfellow sweet and serene,
While Prescott, and Ticknor, and Emerson too,
And Hawthorne and Lowell were seen.

18.
While thus the assembly of witty and wise
Rejoiced the librarian's sight,
Ere the wonderful vision had fled from his eyes,
From above shone a heavenly light:

19.
And solemn and sweet came a voice from the skies,
"All battles and conflicts are done,
The temple of Knowledge shall open all eyes,
And law, faith, and reason are one!"

When the radiant dawn of the morning broke,
From his glorious dream the librarian woke.

The Library.
That place that does contain my books,
My books, the best companions, is to me,
A glorious court, where hourly I converse
With the old sages and philosophers;
And sometimes, for variety I confer
With kings and emperors, and weigh their counsels.
Beaumont and Fletcher.

The bard of every age and clime,
Of genius fruitful and of soul sublime,
Who from the glowing mint of fancy pours
No spurious metal, fused from common ores,
But gold to matchless purity refined,
And stamped with all the Godhead in his mind.
Juvenal.

Books, we know,
Are a substantial world, both pure and good;
Round these, with tendrils strong as flesh and blood,
Our pastime and our happiness will grow.
Wordsworth.

Quaint Lines on a Book-worm.
The Bokeworme sitteth in his celle,
He studyethe all alone,
And burnethe oute the oile,
'Till ye midnight hour is gone
Then gethe he downe upon his bedde,
Ne mo watch will he a-keepe,
He layethe his heade on ye pillowe,
And eke he tryes to sleepe.
Then swyfte there cometh a vision grimme,
And greetythe him sleepynge fair,
And straighte he dreameth of grislie dreames,
And dreades fellowne and rayre.
Wherefore, if cravest life to eld
Ne rede longe uppe at night,
But go to bed at Curfew bell
And ryse wythe mornynge's lyte.

Ballade of the Book-hunter.
In torrid heats of late July,
In March, beneath the bitter bise,
He book-hunts while the loungers fly,—
He book-hunts, though December freeze;
In breeches baggy at the knees,
And heedless of the public jeers,
For these, for these, he hoards his fees,—
Aldines, Bodonis, Elzevirs.

No dismal stall escapes his eye,
He turns o'er tomes of low degrees,
There soiled romanticists may lie,
Or Restoration comedies;
Each tract that flutters in the breeze
For him is charged with hopes and fears,
In mouldy novels fancy sees
Aldines, Bodonis, Elzevirs.

With restless eyes that peer and spy,
Sad eyes that heed not skies nor trees,
In dismal nooks he loves to pry,
Whose motto evermore is Spes!
But ah! the fabled treasure flees;
Grown rarer with the fleeting years,
In rich men's shelves they take their ease,—
Aldines, Bodonis, Elzevirs!

Prince, all the things that tease and please,—
Fame, hope, wealth, kisses, jeers and tears,
What are they but such toys as these—
Aldines, Bodonis, Elzevirs?
Andrew Lang.

'Tis in books the chief
Of all perfections to be plain and brief.
Samuel Butler.

Of all those arts in which the wise excel,
Nature's chief master-piece is writing well.
Buckingham.

Books should to one of these four ends conduce:
For wisdom, piety, delight, or use.
Sir John Denham.

My Books.
Oh, happy he who, weary of the sound
Of throbbing life, can shut his study door,
Like Heinsius, on it all, to find a store
Of peace that otherwise is never found!
Such happiness is mine, when all around
My dear dumb friends in groups of three or four
Command my soul to linger on the shore
Of those fair realms where they reign monarchs crowned.
To-day the strivings of the world are naught,
For I am in a land that glows with God,
And I am in a path by angels trod.
Dost ask what book creates such heavenly thought?
Then know that I with Dante soar afar,
Till earth shrinks slowly to a tiny star.
J. Williams.

Thoughts in a Library.
Speak low! tread softly through these halls;
Here genius lives enshrined;
Here reign in silent majesty
The monarchs of the mind.

A mighty spirit host they come
From every age and clime;
Above the buried wrecks of years
They breast the tide of time.

Here shall the poets chant for thee
Their sweetest, loftiest lays,
And prophets wait to guide thy steps
In Wisdom's pleasant ways.

Come, with these God-anointed kings
Be thou companion here;
And in the mighty realm of mind
Thou shalt go forth a peer!
Anne C. Lynch Botta.

Verses in a Library.
Give me that book whose power is such
That I forget the north wind's touch.

Give me that book that brings to me
Forgetfulness of what I be.

Give me that book that takes my life
In seeming far from all its strife.

Give me that book wherein each page
Destroys my sense of creeping age.
John Kendrick Bangs.

A Book by the Brook.
Give me a nook and a book,
And let the proud world spin round;
Let it scramble by hook or by crook
For wealth or a name with a sound.
You are welcome to amble your ways,
Aspirers to place or to glory;
May big bells jangle your praise,
And golden pens blazon your story;
For me, let me dwell in my nook,
Here by the curve of this brook,
That croons to the tune of my book:
Whose melody wafts me forever
On the waves of an unseen river.
William Freeland.

The love of learning, the sequestered nooks,
And all the sweet serenity of books.
H. W. Longfellow.

Oh for a booke and a shady nooke
Eyther in door or out,
With the greene leaves whispering overhead,
Or the streete cryes all about:
Where I maie reade all at my ease
Both of the newe and olde,
For a jollie goode booke whereon to looke
Is better to me than golde!

To Daniel Elzevir.
(From the Latin of Ménage.)
What do I see! Oh! gods divine
And Goddesses—this Book of mine—
This child of many hopes and fears,
Is published by the Elzevirs!
Oh Perfect publishers complete!
Oh dainty volume, new and neat!
The Paper doth outshine the snow,
The Print is blacker than the crow,
The Title-page, with crimson bright,
The vellum cover smooth and white,
All sorts of readers to invite;
Ay, and will keep them reading still,
Against their will, or with their will!
Thus what of grace the Rhymes may lack
The Publisher has given them back,
As Milliners adorn the fair
Whose charms are something skimp and spare.

Oh dulce decus, Elzevirs!
The pride of dead and dawning years,
How can a poet best repay
The debt he owes your House to-day?
May this round world, while aught endures,
Applaud, and buy, these books of yours.
May purchasers incessant pop,
My Elzevirs, within your shop,
And learned bards salute, with cheers,
The volumes of the Elzevirs,
Till your renown fills earth and sky,
Till men forget the Stephani,
And all that Aldus wrought, and all
Turnebus sold in shop or stall,
While still may Fate's (and Binders') shears
Respect, and spare, the Elzevirs!

Blessings be with them, and eternal praise,
Who gave us nobler loves and nobler cares!
The Poets, who on earth have made us heirs
Of truth and pure delight by heavenly lays.
Wordsworth.

Companions.
But books, old friends that are always new,
Of all good things that we know are best;
They never forsake us, as others do,
And never disturb our inward rest.
Here is truth in a world of lies,
And all that in man is great and wise!
Better than men and women, friend,
That are dust, though dear in our joy and pain,
Are the books their cunning hands have penned,
For they depart, but the books remain.
Richard Henry Stoddard.

The Paradox of Books.
I'm strange contradictions; I'm new and I'm old,
I'm often in tatters, and oft decked with gold.
Though I never could read, yet lettered I'm found;
Though blind, I enlighten; though loose, I am bound.
I'm always in black, and I'm always in white;
I am grave and I'm gay, I am heavy and light.
In form too I differ,—I'm thick and I'm thin;
I've no flesh and no bone, yet I'm covered with skin;
I've more points than the compass, more stops than the flute;
I sing without voice, without speaking confute;
I'm English, I'm German, I'm French, and I'm Dutch;
Some love me too fondly, some slight me too much;
I often die soon, though I sometimes live ages,
And no monarch alive has so many pages.
Hannah More.

I love my books as drinkers love their wine;
The more I drink, the more they seem divine;
With joy elate my soul in love runs o'er,
And each fresh draught is sweeter than before:
Books bring me friends where'er on earth I be,—
Solace of solitude, bonds of society.

I love my books! they are companions dear,
Sterling in worth, in friendship most sincere;
Here talk I with the wise in ages gone, And with the nobly gifted in our own:
If love, joy, laughter, sorrow please my mind,
Love, joy, grief, laughter in my books I find.
Francis Bennoch.

My Library.
All round the room my silent servants wait,—
My friends in every season, bright and dim
Angels and seraphim
Come down and murmur to me, sweet and low,
And spirits of the skies all come and go
Early and late;
From the old world's divine and distant date,
From the sublimer few,
Down to the poet who but yester-eve
Sang sweet and made us grieve,
All come, assembling here in order due.
And here I dwell with Poesy, my mate,
With Erato and all her vernal sighs,
Great Clio with her victories elate,
Or pale Urania's deep and starry eyes.
Oh friends, whom chance or change can never harm,
Whom Death the tyrant cannot doom to die,
Within whose folding soft eternal charm
I love to lie,
And meditate upon your verse that flows,
And fertilizes wheresoe'er it goes.
Bryan Waller Procter.

Rational Madness.
A Song, for the Lover of Curious and Rare Books.
Come, boys, fill your glasses, and fill to the brim,
Here's the essence of humor, the soul, too, of whim!
Attend and receive (and sure 'tis no vapour)
A "hap' worth of wit on a pennyworth of paper."

Those joys which the Bibliomania affords
Are felt and acknowledged by Dukes and by Lords!
And the finest estate would be offer'd in vain
For an exemplar bound by the famed Roger Payne!

To a proverb goes madness with love hand in hand,
But our senses we yield to a double command;
The dear frenzy in both is first rous'd by fair looks,—
Here's our sweethearts, my boys! not forgetting our books!

Thus our time may we pass with rare books and rare friends,
Growing wiser and better, till life itself ends:
And may those who delight not in black-letter lore,
By some obsolete act be sent from our shore!

Ballade of True Wisdom.
While others are asking for beauty or fame,
Or praying to know that for which they should pray,
Or courting Queen Venus, that affable dame,
Or chasing the Muses the weary and grey,
The sage has found out a more excellent way—
To Pan and to Pallas his incense he showers,
And his humble petition puts up day by day,
For a house full of books, and a garden of flowers.

Inventors may bow to the God that is lame,
And crave from the fire on his stithy a ray;
Philosophers kneel to the God without name,
Like the people of Athens, agnostics are they;
The hunter a fawn to Diana will slay,
The maiden wild roses will wreathe for the Hours;
But the wise man will ask, ere libation he pay,
For a house full of books, and a garden of flowers.

Oh grant me a life without pleasure or blame
(As mortals count pleasure who rush through their day
With a speed to which that of the tempest is tame)
O grant me a house by the beach of a bay,
Where the waves can be surly in winter, and play
With the sea-weed in summer, ye bountiful powers!
And I'd leave all the hurry, the noise, and the fray,
For a house full of books, and a garden of flowers.

Envoy.
Gods, grant or withhold it; your "yea" and your "nay"
Are immutable, heedless of outcry of ours: But life is worth living, and here we would stay
For a house full of books, and a garden of flowers.
Andrew Lang.

The Library.
They soothe the grieved, the stubborn they chastise,
Fools they admonish, and confirm the wise:
Their aid they yield to all: they never shun
The man of sorrow, nor the wretch undone:
Unlike the hard, the selfish, and the proud,
They fly not sullen from the suppliant crowd;
Nor tell to various people various things,
But show to subjects, what they show to kings.

Blest be the gracious Power, who taught mankind
To stamp a lasting image of the mind!

With awe, around these silent walks I tread;
These are the lasting mansions of the dead:—
"The dead!" methinks a thousand tongues reply;
"These are the tombs of such as cannot die!
Crown'd with eternal fame, they sit sublime,
And laugh at all the little strife of time."

Lo, all in silence, all in order stand,
And mighty folios first, a lordly band;
Then quartos their well-order'd ranks maintain,
And light octavos fill a spacious plain:
See yonder, rangèd in more frequent rows,
A humbler band of duodecimos;
While undistinguished trifles swell the scene,
The last new play and fritter'd magazine.

Here all the rage of controversy ends,
And rival zealots rest like bosom friends:
An Athanasian here, in deep repose,
Sleeps with the fiercest of his Arian foes;
Socinians here with Calvinists abide,
And thin partitions angry chiefs divide;
Here wily Jesuits simple Quakers meet,
And Bellarmine has rest at Luther's feet.
George Crabbe.

Eternity of Poetry.
For deeds doe die, however noblie donne,
And thoughts do as themselves decay;
But wise words, taught in numbers for to runne
Recorded by the Muses, live for ay;
Ne may with storming showers be washt away,
Ne bitter breathing windes with harmful blast,
Nor age, nor envie, shall them ever wast.
Spenser.

The Old Books.
The old books, the old books, the books of long ago!
Who ever felt Miss Austen tame, or called Sir Walter slow?
We did not care the worst to hear of human sty or den;
We liked to love a little bit, and trust our fellow-men.
The old books, the old books, as pure as summer breeze!
We read them under garden boughs, by fire-light on our knees,
They did not teach, they did not preach, or scold us into good;
A noble spirit from them breathed, the rest was understood.

The old books, the old books, the mother loves them best;
They leave no bitter taste behind to haunt the youthful breast:
They bid us hope, they bid us fill our hearts with visions fair;
They do not paralyze the will with problems of despair.
And as they lift from sloth and sense to follow loftier planes,
And stir the blood of indolence to bubble in the veins:
Inheritors of mighty things, who own a lineage high,
We feel within us budding wings that long to reach the sky:
To rise above the commonplace, and through the cloud to soar,
And join the loftier company of grander souls of yore.
The Spectator.

CHAPTER 25.

Humors of the Library.[3]

Some Thoughts on Classification.
 By Librarian F. M. Crunden.
Classification is vexation,
Shelf-numbering is as bad;
The rule of D
Doth puzzle me;
Mnemonics drives me mad.

 Air—The Lord Chancellor's Song. When first I became a librarian,
Says I to myself, says I,
I'll learn all their systems as fast as I can,
Says I to myself, says I;
The Cutter, the Dewey, the Schwartz, and the Poole,
The alphabet, numeral, mnemonic rule,
The old, and the new, and the eclectic school,
Says I to myself, says I.

Class-numbers, shelf-numbers, book-numbers, too,
Says I to myself, says I,
I'll study them all, and I'll learn them clear thro',
Says I to myself, says I;
I'll find what is good, and what's better and best,
And I'll put two or three to a practical test;
And then—if I've time—I'll take a short rest,
Says I to myself, says I.

But art it is long and time it doth fly,
Says I to myself, says I,
And three or four years have already passed by,
Says I to myself, says I;
And yet on those systems I'm not at all clear,
While new combinations forever appear,
To master them all is a life-work, I fear,
Says I to myself, says I.

Classification in a Library in Western New York: Gail Hamilton's "Woolgathering," under Agriculture.

Book asked for. "An attack philosopher in Paris."

A changed title. A young woman went into a library the other day and asked for the novel entitled "She combeth not her head," but she finally concluded to take "He cometh not, she said."

Labor-saving devices. The economical catalogue-maker who thus set down two titles—

"Mill on the Floss,
do. Political economy."

has a sister who keeps a universal scrap-book into which everything goes, but which is carefully indexed. She, too, has a mind for saving, as witness:

"Patti, Adelina.
do. Oyster."

From a New York auction catalogue:

"267. Junius Stat Nominis Umbrii, with numerous splendid portraits."

At the New York Free Circulating Library, a youth of twenty said Shakespeare made him tired. "Why couldn't he write English instead of indulging in that thee and thou business?" Miss Braddon he pronounced "a daisy". A pretty little blue-eyed fellow "liked American history best of all," but found the first volume of Justin Winsor's history too much for him. "The French and German and Hebrew in it are all right, but there's Spanish and Italian and Latin, and I don't know those."

A gentleman in Paris sent to the bookbinder two volumes of the French edition of "Uncle Tom's Cabin." The title in French is "L'Oncle Tom," and the two volumes were returned to him marked on their backs:

L'Oncle,L'Oncle,
Tome I.Tome II.

How a Bibliomaniac Binds His Books.
I'd like my favorite books to bind
So that their outward dress
To every bibliomaniac's mind
Their contents should express.

Napoleon's life should glare in red,
John Calvin's life in blue;
Thus they would typify bloodshed
And sour religion's hue.

The Popes in scarlet well may go;
In jealous green, Othello;
In gray, Old Age of Cicero,
And London Cries in yellow.

My Walton should his gentle art
In salmon best express,
And Penn and Fox the friendly heart
In quiet drab confess.

Crimea's warlike facts and dates
Of fragrant Russia smell;
The subjugated Barbary States
In crushed Morocco dwell.

But oh! that one I hold so dear
Should be arrayed so cheap
Gives me a qualm; I sadly fear
My Lamb must be half-sheep!
Irving Browne.

In a Wisconsin library, a young lady asked for the "Life of National Harthorne" and the "Autograph on the breakfast table."

"Have you a poem on the Victor of Manengo, by Anon?"

Library inquiry—"I want the catalogue of temporary literature."

Query—What did she want?

A friend proposes to put Owen's "Footfalls on the Boundaries of Another World" in Travels. Shall we let him?

A poet, in Boston, filled out an application for a volume of Pope's works, an edition reserved from circulation, in the following tuneful manner:

"You ask me, dear sir, to a reason define
Why you should for a fortnight this volume resign
To my care.—I am also a son of the nine."

A worthy Deutscher, confident in his mastery of the English tongue, sent the following quaint document across the sea:

"I send you with the Post six numbers, of our Allgemeine Militär-Zeitung, which is published in the next year to the fifty times. Excuse my bath english I learned in the school and I forgot so much. If you have interest to german Antiquariatskataloge I will send to you some. I remain however yours truly servant."

A gentlemanly stranger once asked the delivery clerk for "a genealogy." "What one?" she asked. "Oh! any," he said. "Well—Savage's?" "No; white men."

Said Melvil Dewey: "To my thinking, a great librarian must have a clear head, a strong hand, and, above all, a great heart. Such shall be greatest among librarians; and, when I look into the future, I am inclined to think that most of the men who will achieve this greatness will be women."

A Library Hymn.
 By an Assistant Librarian.
I have endeavored to clothe the dull prose of the usual Library Rules with the mantle of poetry, that they may be more attractive, and more easily remembered by the great public whom we serve.

Gently, reader, gently moving,
Wipe your feet beside the door;
Hush your voice to whispers soothing,
Take your hat off, I implore!
Mark your number, plainly, rightly,
From the catalogue you see;
With the card projecting slightly,
Then your book bring unto me.
Quickly working,
With no shirking,
Soon another there will be.

If above two weeks you've left me,
Just two cents a day I'll take,
And, unless my mind's bereft me,
Payment you must straightway make.
Treat your books as if to-morrow,
Gabriel's trump would surely sound,
And all scribbling, to your sorrow,
'Gainst your credit would be found.
Therefore tear not,
Spot and wear not
All these books so neatly bound.

These few simple rules abiding,
We shall always on you smile:
There will be no room for chiding,
No one's temper will you rile.
And when Heaven's golden portals
For you on their hinges turn,
With the books for all immortals,
There will be no rules to learn.
Therefore heed them,
Often read them,
Lest your future weal you spurn.

Titles of Books Asked for by written Slips in a Popular Library.

Blunders in Cataloguing.

Recent Calls for Books at a Western Library.

In Vol. 3 of Laporte's "Bibliographie contemporaine," Dibdin's famous book is entered thus: "Bibliomania, or boock, madnss: a bibliographical romance...ilustrated with cats."

A well-known librarian writes:

"The Catalogue of the Indiana State Library for the year 1859 has long been my wonder and admiration. "Bank's History of the Popes" appears under the letter B. Strong in the historical department, it offers a choice between the "Life of John Tyler, by Harper & Brothers," "Memoirs of Moses Henderson, by Jewish Philosophers," "Memoirs and Correspondence of Viscount Castlereach, by the Marquis of Londonderry," and "Memoirs of Benvenuto, by Gellini." In fiction, you may find "Tales of My Landlord by Cleishbotham," and "The Pilot, by the Author of the Pioneers;" while, if your passion for plural authorship is otherwise unappeasable—if Beaumont and Fletcher or Erckman-Chatrian seem to you too feeble a combination of talents—you may well be captivated by the title "Small Arms, by the United States Army."

"The State of Indiana has undoubtedly learned a good many things since 1859; but whosoever its present librarian may be, it is hardly probable that its highest flight in bibliography has surpassed the catalogue from which the above are quoted."

Books demanded at a certain public library:

A country order for books called for "The Thrown of David," "Echo of Hummo" (Ecce Homo) and "Echo of Deas" (Ecce Deus).

The Nation mentions as an instance of "the havoc which types can make with the titles of books, that a single catalogue gives us 'Clara Reeve's Old English Barn,' 'Swinburne's Century of Scoundrels,' and 'Una and her Papuse.' But this is outdone by the bookseller who offered for sale "Balvatzky, Mrs. Izis unveiled." Another goddess is offended in "Transits of Venice, by R. A. Proctor."

In a certain city, an examination of applicants for employment in the public library was held. The following is an exact copy of the answer to a question, asking for the title of a work written by each of the authors named: "John Ruskin, 'The Bread Winners;' William H. Prescott, 'The Frozen Pirate;' Charles Darwin, 'The Missing Link;' Thomas Carlyle, 'Caesar's Column.'" The same man is responsible for saying that "B. C." stands for the Creation, and "A. D." for the Deluge.

Who wants this bright young man?

A Story About Stories.
"When A Man's Single," all "Vanity Fair"
Courts his favor and smiles,
And feminine "Moths" "In Silk Attire"
Try on him "A Woman's Wiles."

"The World, the Flesh and the Devil"
Were "Wormwood" and gall to me,
Weary and sick of "The Passing Show,"
No "Woman's Face" was "Fair to See."

I fled away to "The Mill on the Floss"
"Two Years Ago," "In an Evil Hour,"
For "The Miller's Daughter" there I met,
Who "Cometh Up as a Flower."

She was a simple "Rose in June,"
And I was "An Average Man;"
"We Two" were "Far From the Madding Crowd"
When our "Love and Life" began.

It was but "A Modern Instance"
Of true "Love's Random Shot,"
And I, "The Heir of Redclyffe"
Was "Kidnapped": and "Why Not"?

We cannot escape the hand of "Fate,"
And few are "Fated to be Free,"
But beware of "A Social Departure"—
You'll live "Under the Ban," like me.

I tried to force the "Gates Ajar"
For my "Queen of Curds and Cream,"
But "The Pillars of Society"
Shook with horror at my "Dream."

I am no more "A Happy Man,"
Though blessed with "Heavenly Twins,"
Because "The Wicked World" maintains
"A Low Marriage" the worst of sins.

"Pride and Prejudice" rule the world,
"A Marriage for Love" is "A Capital Crime,"
Beware of "A Country Neighborhood"
And shun "Mad Love" in time.

Says the Nation:

A Philadelphia catalogue, whose compiler must have been more interested in current events than in his task, offers for sale "Intrigues of the Queen of Spain with McKinley, the Prince of Peace, Boston, 1809." How Godoy should become McKinley, or McKinley should become the Prince of Peace, is a problem for psychologists.

Confusion of Knowledge.

The following are some specimens of answers to Examinations of candidates for Library employment, given within the past five years:

"A sonnet is a poem which is adapted to music, as Petrarch's sonnets"; "a sonnet is a short poem sometimes and sometimes a long one and generally a reflection, or thoughts upon some inanimate thing, as Young's 'Night thoughts.'" "An epic is a critical writing, as 'Criticism on man'"; "an epic is a literary form written in verse, and which teaches us some lesson not necessarily of a moral nature"; "an epic is a dramatic poem."

Epigrammatic writing is very clearly defined as "critical in a grammatical way." "Allegory is writing highly colored, as Pope's works"; "allegory is writing of something that never happened, but it is purely imaginary, often a wandering from the main point." A common mistake regarding the meaning of the word bibliography results in such answers as "bibliography—a study of the Bible;" or "gives the lives of the people in the Bible." An encyclopaedia was aptly defined as "a storehouse of knowledge for the enlightenment of the public," while another answer reads "Book of Books, giving the life of famous persons, life and habits of animals and plants, and some medical knowledge." A collection of works of any author is termed "an anthropology." "Anthology is the study of insects." Folklore is defined as "giving to animals and things human sense"; an elegy means "a eulogy," oratory, "the deliverance of words." Belles-lettres is to one applicant "beautiful ideas," to another "the title of a book," to another "short stories"; again "are the letters of French writers," and still another writes "French for prominent literature and light literature." A concordance "is the explication or definition of something told in a simpler form," is the extremely lucid answer to one question, which was answered by another candidate as "a table of reference at back of book."

The titles of books are too seldom associated with their authors' names, resulting in such answers as "Homer is the author of the Aeneid"; "Lalla Rookh" was written by James Blackmore; "Children of the Abbey," by Walter Besant (while another attributed it to Jane Porter); "Bow of orange Ribbon," by George Meredith; "Hon. Peter Stirling," by Fielding; "Quo Vadis," by Browning; "Pamela," by Frank Stockton (according to another by Marie Edgworth); "Love's Labour's Lost," by Bryant (another gives Thomas Reade as the author, while still another guesses Schiller); "Descent of Man," by Alexander Pope (another gives Dryden); "The Essay on Man," by Francis Bacon.

One candidate believes "Hudibras" to be an early Saxon poem; another that "Victor Hugo's best known work is William Tell"; another that "Aesop's Fables is a famous allegory." Charlotte Brontë is described as an "American—nineteenth century—children's book." Cicero was "known for Latin poetry." "Dante is an exceedingly bitter writer; he takes you into hell and describes Satan and his angels. He wrote his play for the stage." Another's idea of the Divine Comedy is "a play which could be acted by the priests on the steps of a church for the benefit of the poorer class."

Civil service in the mind of one young woman was "the service done by the government in a country, domesticly."

A Christian socialist is "an advocate of Christian science." "A limited monarchy is a kingdom whose ruler is under the ruler of another country." Legal tender is "the legal rate of interest"; another considers it "Paper money." In economics, some of the answers were "profit-sharing, a term used in socialism, the rich to divide among the poor." "Monopolies is the money gained by selling church properties"; while "a trust is usually a place where a person puts some money where it will be safe to keep it."

About noted personages and historic events and places the answers are equally startling. "Molière was a French essayist and critic" (also "a French writer of the nineteenth century,") Cecil Rhodes, "the founder of Bryn Mawr College"; "Seth Low—England, eighteenth century;" Attila "a woman mentioned in the Bible for her great cruelty to her child;" Warren Hastings "was a German soldier" (also "was a discoverer; died about 1870"); "Nero was a Roman emperor B. C. 450." Perhaps the most unique guess in this line was "Richard Wagner invented the Wagner cars;" Abbotsford is "the title of a book by Sir Walter Scott;" "Vassar College is a dream, high-up and unattainable;" "Tammany Hall is a political meeting place in London;" "the Parthenon, an art gallery in Athens."

Pedagogy seemed one of the most perplexing of words. It was defined by one as "the science of religion," by another as "learned pomposity;" but the most remarkable of all was "pedagogy is the study of feet."

Song of Some Library School Scholars.
Three little maids from school are we,
Filled to the brim with economy—
Not of the house but library,
Learnt in the Library School.

1st Maid—I range my books from number one.
2nd Maid—Alphabetically I've begun.
3rd Maid—In regular classes mine do run.
All—Three maids from the Library School.

All—Three little maidens all unwary,
Each in charge of a library,
Each with a system quite contrary
To every other school.

Our catalogues, we quite agree,
From faults and errors must be free,
If only we our way can see
To find the proper rule.

Boy's remark on returning a certain juvenile book to the library: "I don't want any more of them books. The girls is all too holy."

"Half the books in this library are not worth reading," said a sour-visaged, hypercritical, novel-satiated woman.—"Read the other half, then," advised a bystander.

The Woes of a Librarian.
Let us give a brief rehearsal
Of the learning universal,
Which men expect to find
In Librarians to their mind.

He must undergo probation,
Before he gets a situation;
Must begin at the creation,
When the world was in formation,
And come down to its cremation,
In the final consummation
Of the old world's final spasm:
He must study protoplasm,
And bridge over every chasm
In the origin of species,
Ere the monkey wore the breeches,
Or the Simian tribe began
To ascend from ape to man.

He must master the cosmology,
And know all about psychology,
And the wonders of biology,
And be deep in ornithology,
And develop ideology,
With the aid of craniology.
He must learn to teach zoölogy,
And be skilled in etymology,
And the science of philology,
And calculate chronology,
While he digs into geology,
And treats of entomology,
And hunts up old mythology,
And dips into theology,
And grows wise in sociology,
And expert in anthropology.

He must also know geography,
And the best works on photography,
And the science of stenography,
And be well up on cosmography,
And the secrets of cryptography.
Must interpret blind chirography,
Know by heart all mens' biography,
And the black art of typography,
And every book in bibliography.

These things are all essential
And highly consequential.

If he's haunted by ambition
For a library position,
And esteems it a high mission,
To aspire to erudition;
He will find some politician
Of an envious disposition,
Getting up a coalition
To secure his non-admission,
And send him to perdition,
Before he's reached fruition.

If he gets the situation,
And is full of proud elation
And of fond anticipation,
And has in contemplation
To enlighten half the nation,
He may write a dissertation
For the public information
On the laws of observation,
And the art of conversation.

He must know each famed oration,
And poetical quotation,
And master derivation,
And the science of translation,
And complex pagination,
And perfect punctuation,
And binomial equation,
And accurate computation,
And boundless permutation,
And infinite gradation,
And the craft of divination,
And Scripture revelation,
And the secret of salvation.

He must know the population
Of every separate nation,
The amount of immigration,
And be wise in arbitration,
And the art of navigation,
And colonial annexation,
And problems Australasian.

He must take his daily ration
Of catalogue vexation,
And endless botheration
With ceaseless complication
Of decimal notation,
Or Cutter combination.

To complete his education,
He must know the valuation
Of all the publications
Of many generations,
With their endless variations,
And true interpretations.

When he's spent a life in learning,
If his lamp continues burning,
When he's mastered all philosophy,
And the science of theosophy,
Grown as learned as Mezzofanti,
As poetical as Dante,
As wise as Magliabecchi,
As profound as Mr. Lecky—
Has absorbed more kinds of knowledge
Than are found in any college;
He may take his full degree
Of Ph. or LL. D.
And prepare to pass the portal
That leads to life immortal.

Footnotes:

[3] Mostly from the Library Journal, New York.

CHAPTER 26.