GREAT AMERICAN AUTHORS
A FORWARD LOOK
When Mother used to tell you a story about when she was a little girl, you were interested only in the story and in the pictures her words called up in your mind. Suppose some older person had been listening while she told one of these tales, and had been interested not alone in the adventure that she was telling about, as you were, but in the way in which she told it. This person, your uncle, let's say, would notice how Mother planned her story so as to keep the very most exciting thing to the last, and how you grew more and more excited about it, and how your eyes shone, and her eyes too, and how without knowing it she was letting him see what kind of people they were in her story, and what kind of little girl she was-very brave, you know-and when at the end you drew a long breath and had that delightful little thrill that you always have at the end of a perfectly wonderful story-after all this, suppose your uncle should look at Mother in a funny kind of way and should say, "Bless me, Sis, I had no idea you were an author."
What would you say? Mother an author? Why, an author is a person who writes big books in words that no one can understand, but Mother, she-why, she is Mother!
Yet your uncle is right. Mother is an author when she thinks back over her life and picks out something that is interesting, and then tells it in her very most interesting way to please you. If she would only write out that story, and a printer would print it in a book, and in the front of the book you should read "When I Was a Little Girl." By Mother"-that would be a Book, and Mother would be a real author.
Now long, long ago, there weren't any books. When Mother told you a story, if you had lived then, you would remember it and would tell it to other people, and after you grew up you would tell it to your children, and when they had grown up, they would tell it to your grandchildren, and so on and on. Who wrote Cinderella, or Sleeping Beauty, or the Three Bears? You don't know. Nobody knows. They just happened. They were told by mothers to their children and so on and so on, and after centuries, perhaps, when printing had been invented, some printer man thought, like your uncle, that here was a story that ought to be printed and so he made a book of it. But he didn't claim to be the author of it, for he was not.
So, some of the stories you have read in this book do not have any author's name attached to them. And even if they did, you were not thinking, while you were reading, about the man who wrote them. You just thought of the story and whether you liked it or not. Yet no small part of the advantage that you enjoy because you live now, instead of in the days when there were no books, lies in the fact that you can become acquainted with the men and women who have written the stories and poems that you read.
Let's put it this way. In those old days that we have been speaking about, you would have had to depend upon your Mother, or some other mother, or some village weaver of tales, for your stories. But they were busy, and you couldn't get enough stories to satisfy your appetite. Then one-time, let's say, a strange, wandering fellow came to your village. And he had yards and yards of the most wonderful stories to tell. And he went home with you, let's say, and stayed there, and did nothing but tell you stories whenever you wanted them, first thing in the morning, and after school, and bedtime, and all. And he was never too busy. And you learned to know him, what an interesting man he was, and what fine eyes he had, and what a smile that made you smile back before he said a word, and how he loved Truth and hated lies, and loved Honor and hated shameful things. He was your author, your book, your book of books. And he was as dear to you, in himself, as his stories were.
Now you can have just such a friend, no, you can have a whole company of just such friends, for yourself. How? In books, of course. Only they won't be merely books; they will be friends. Washington Irving, teller of wonderful stories, and Robert Louis Stevenson are there, in those books, and you can learn them as well as their stories. And Henry W. Longfellow, writer of stories in verse; and John G. Whittier, writer of poems about barefoot boys and corn huskings; and Benjamin Franklin, a kindly philosopher-there, that word is too hard for you, but it just slipped out, and so you will have to be told that a philosopher is a person who thinks about life and its meaning.
That's what all authors are, in a way. That's what makes them authors. They don't just eat and sleep and do their work, whatever it is-they think about life. And what they see and think they set down for you. To know them is to know delightful friends who will tell you what everything means and will answer all your questions.
There they are, on your bookshelf. They won't speak to you unless you speak first. If you want to do something else and don't wish to be bothered, they won't bother you. But when you want to talk with them, they are ready. Call upon them often, and you will learn one of the blessedest things about life, the companionship of boobs.
Some of them, men of our own America, are to be introduced to you in the following pages. From now on you are to do three things. First, you are to listen and enjoy when they tell you what they have to say. Next, you are to begin to do just what your uncle was doing when he listened to Mother telling you that story-you are to see that there is a way to tell something that is good, and that if one has learned this way, like Mother, he is an author. And last, you are to find that these authors are real persons whom you can learn to know. Then you will love them, just as you love Mother, not alone for what they say, but for what they are.