The Mysterious Book Shop
On Washington Street is a very attractive book store, conducted by a blind couple. Man and wife about thirty years of age, both totally blind. The shop is scrupulously clean. If you ask for a book, the proprietor will find it in a miraculous way, provided it is on the shelves. If you are browsing about, picking up a book here or there, he will ask you to read off to him the title, and then tell you the price. Both look happy, contented, and seem prosperous.
I wondered how it had happened that they started in the book business, that both of them were blind; had they been blind before they married or had misfortune overtaken them after their marriage? They’re in a strange and mysterious place, but peaceful and harmonious.
1918
Small Town Stuff
WHAT is the mysterious power directing the fates of small town inhabitants? Who is it who sells them the same style of clothes, induces them to furnish their homes so that they resemble one the other like one egg resembles another egg? Who is it who makes the people talk and think alike? Never permitting an individual thought, or an expression of individual opinion?
Everything and everybody seem to be cut after the same pattern. Unessentials are the important things in their lives, and they miss the joy of living. They have not learned to be their real selves. They have not been given a chance. Someone told me once: “America is a young nation. We are about a hundred years behind Europe. Our people have not developed yet the sense for beauty and art.” It is not so. America of the fifties of the last century knew the best in life, letters and art. But with the first great fortunes made during the early railroad boom some mysterious powers perverted the minds of America systematically; created in them the lust for sensation, for things of the minute. And today people are being fed with theatres and newspapers and libraries and music and styles, that they really do not want.
They are not given a chance. They must take what these mysterious powers somewhere on Wall Street think good for them, or they can stay at home, lose prestige among their fellow-townsmen, suffer in business and be decried ultimately as “bolsheviks,” or “reds.”
A few weeks in Milwaukee or any other town of its size will open your eyes. Milwaukee has grown incredibly since 1914, produced several hundreds of war-millionaires and has the aspects of a most thriving, prosperous city.
The people crave for good entertainment, good reading, a glimpse of art. There is an Art Institute heavily subsidized by the city. Its permanent exhibition is not worth while talking of. Any third-rate dealer in New York can produce such masterpieces from his stockroom. They are hung on the staircases and kept in boxes in the cellar of this Art Institute. The traveling exhibitions are displayed on walls that need cleaning. There is not the atmosphere of appreciation in this building. The main space is occupied by a sort of “rummage exhibit” consisting of all sorts of souvenirs lent by Milwaukeeans, who became members of the Institute. Articles that can be purchased often in ten-cent stores are here on exhibition with a card of the proprietor.
The Layton Gallery, next door, is a noble opposite to the Art Institute. Bequeathed to the city by the late Layton, millionaire packer, his hobby during his lifetime, it is a real temple of art. In an imposing purely Greek structure, wonderful masterpieces, collected from all over the globe, almost every known name well represented. Its curator, Mr. George Raab, an artist of fame himself, has never permitted commercialism or provincial small tradesman ambition to enter into his sanctuary. Mr. Raab, who himself selected the greater part of the collection, has the rare sense of the antiquarian. His lectures have aroused a good deal of comment and, incidentally, interest for his gallery. He wishes to make the artist live again in his work. He has given up hope to convert the present generation. His hope is the coming generation. In children and students he tries to arouse a love of beauty and sense of harmony and color.
There is only one bookstore in the real sense of the word in Milwaukee, Des Forges’. Its owner is a bookman of the old type, knows values and authors, has studied his profession in England and France and caters to the collectors and lovers of the printed word.
“The young people don’t care for books,” he told me. “They do not wish to accumulate libraries. The women-folk come in and ask for ‘something nice to read,’ and take my word for it. And on occasion they buy nicely bound books for gift purposes.” Again here, the mysterious powers behind the throne. The books that are featured in movie theatres, in installment novels, and in daily papers are the best sellers.
The New Era Shop, that had recently unpleasant introductions to the police department, endeavors to sell radical literature only. Its proprietors are young and therefore hopeful. They may gain, in the course of years, knowledge of books and then select the right sort of stock. It is not radical to lend out George Moore’s “A Story Teller’s Holyday” for $5 for a reading, because ... well radical does not mean immoral or lascivious. The New Era Shop could inaugurate a new Era for Milwaukee book readers if its proprietors would inform themselves about the sort of books worth while introducing to the public. But even to this shop thanks are due. It may lead to something bigger and better.
The department stores advertise their book departments extensively. Here is the great hunting ground for the Chambers and Chesters and Nick Carters and psalm and hymn books. Rosaries are also carried in these book departments.
The public is not given a chance. David Graham Philips and Susan Lenox have just reached Milwaukee and everybody is excitedly discussing the fall and rise of Susan. Several societies for the uplift of poor working girls have been organized as the direct result of the book.
The theatre buildings are magnificent. Modern, airy buildings with comfortable seats and all new improvements that make the sojourn in a showhouse delightful. But the moving pictures shown are again on the level of newspaper fiction stories, of church sermons and of best-selling novels. The millionaire, who is a villain and becomes an honest working man, the poor woman who marries a millionaire, despite his upstart mother’s protests, the cowboy who “cleans up” a mining camp and kills a dozen rowdies in order to sink exhausted in the arms of his boyhood sweetheart whom he had deserted years ago ... and men, women and children sit through all this.
To have dinners by the light of orange-colored candles while sitting on the floor or on the pillows gracefully grouped about an anaemic poet, who reads ephemeral languid stanzas, belongs to the good taste required in the best circles of Milwaukee.
Smocks and bobbed hair have just made their appearance, and an Art Magazine will soon add the final touches of estheticism.
Small gift shops have been opened by enterprising dealers from Chicago, and there will be food for amusement for years in Milwaukee.
But who will come to this one and to hundreds of other towns and give these good helpless people what they want?
Good books, good plays, good movies and a chance to express their individualities in a healthy, pleasant way?
1919