After a few months of adventuring I had my own library of dry books. Their dryness will be evident from the check-list which follows.
I was especially delighted with my discovery, among a lot of old trousers in a second-hand shop, of a board-cover copy of “Watts on the Mind.” Its fine print, copious foot-notes, its mysterious references, as “Seq.,” “i.e.,” “Aris. Book IV., ff.,” put the stamp upon it as being a very scholarly book indeed. I looked it through, and not finding any conversation in it, judged that it was not too light. Its analytical chapter headings, and its birthmark, “182—,” fully persuaded me that I might get educated from that sort of a book!
In the salvage rooms, where I obtained most of my treasures, I obtained a black, cloth-bound book, with mottled damp pages and with a mouldy flavor to it, entitled, “Scriptural Doctrine,” which I knew was a dry book, because it was a religious book printed in the 40’s. It undertook to summarize all the great and fearsome doctrines from the Fall to the Recovery by massing every appropriate passage of scripture under them, and concluding, with loyalty to the major premises, with stout assertions that they were all true because they were. I also found, in the same place and on the same day, a well-worn, pencil-marked, dog-eared copy of “A History of the Ancient World,” filled with quaint wood-cuts of ruined walls, soldiers in battle, with steel spears and bare feet. It was covered with a crumpled piece of paper bag, and there were only two leaves missing two-thirds of the way in the book, cutting the history of the Greeks right in two. I knew that that would be a scholar’s book on the face of it. Scholars always read about old nations and destroyed cities, and that book was filled with such records. I was pleased with it. I also picked up, in the salvage rooms, a three-volume edition of “The Cottage Bible,” two volumes of which were without covers, and one of them had most of the leaves stained as if it had been in a fire somewhere. It was an edition printed somewhere near the beginning of the nineteenth century. I bought that, first, because it was a three-volume edition on one subject; it was ponderous. Scholars always had such books. I also bought it because it had so many notes in it. Half of each page was covered with them in fine print. To me, that was the highest type of intellectual book.
I later added to the collection—a thrilling find—a well-bound copy of a civil trial, in Boston, with every word stenographically recorded, and interesting to me because Paul Revere was one of the witnesses, the ORIGINAL Paul Revere that you read of in the school books and see advertised on coffee and cigars! I wondered how such a valuable work had ever passed the book collectors who paid thousands for such prizes! I bought it in much trembling, lest the second-hand shopkeeper should be aware of the book’s real value and not let me have it for ten cents! Perhaps there might be an old document hidden in its yellow leaves! It was with such high, romantic feelings that I made the purchase, and hurried from the shop as swiftly as I could.
The book-buying, once established, kept with me persistently, and crowded out for a time the more material pleasures of pork pies, cream puffs, and hot beef teas. I turned nearly all my spending money into books. One Saturday afternoon, for the first time, I went into a large city bookstore where they always had at the door a barrel of whale-ship wood for fireplaces. I scouted through the shop for bargains, and besides sundry purchases of penny reproductions of famous paintings, I secured Sarah K. Bolton’s “Poor Boys who became Famous,” marked down to fifty cents.
My next purchases at the bookstore were a manilla-covered copy of Guizot’s “History of France,” “Life of Calvin,” a fifty-cent copy of the Koran which I purchased because it was an oriental book like the “Arabian Nights,” and on account of the thrilling legends and superstitions with which Sale has filled a copious Addenda. I also bought a fifteen-cent copy of Spurgeon’s “Plow Talks,” and a ten-cent pamphlet of “Anecdotes for Ministers,” because I reasoned that ministers always had good stories in their sermons—ergo, why not get a source-book for myself, and be equal with the ministers?
Week by week my stock of books grew, each volume probably wondering why it ever became mixed in such strange company. I bought no fiction, now. That was left behind with dime novels and “Boy’s Books!” I was aiming for REAL scholarship now, and I might fit myself for college. I had a great longing now to align my tastes with those that I imagined would be the tastes of real scholars. From “Poor Boys who became Famous” I learned that some of the heroes therein depicted had the habit of reading any massive work they laid their fingers on, of borrowing GOOD books, almost without regard to the subject. Good reading seemed to be the standard, and to that standard I tried to conform. I went into the shop of an Englishman who sold things at auction, and, among his shelves, I found a calfskin-bound “Cruden’s Concordance of the Bible,” which, I found on examination, contained the “Memoirs” of the author. That must be good reading, I judged. Any man who could compile such a mass of references must be dry enough to be a scholar. So I paid twenty-five cents for the book immediately. The same evening I also secured two volumes of Hume’s “History of England,” printed, so the Roman numerals told me, after I had laboriously sought out their meaning, before the end of the eighteenth century, and with the long “s” and very peculiar type. One of the volumes had a cover missing. Though the history did not begin until the later kings, I had the satisfaction of knowing that at least I had a Good history on my list.
Of a technical and necessary nature, I had two well-worn, and very old, arithmetics which I bought for two cents, and Binney’s “Compend of Theology,” which gave a simple and dogmatic summary of Protestant doctrine from the standpoint of Methodism. To complete my scholarly equipment, I knew that I ought to keep a journal of my doings, as every biography that I read mentioned one. So I bought a small pocket diary for that year. My library was complete.
In my reading of biography, I noted that a scholar or a student had his books in cases and that he had a study. I resolved to display my books in a study, likewise. The only available place in the house was a large front room, which my aunt kept closed because there was no furniture for it. The floors were carpetless and lined with tacks left by the last occupant in tearing up the carpet. The wall-paper was dim with dust, and the windows had the shutters drawn because there were no curtains for them. During the day the light filtered dismally through the blinds.
I asked my aunt if I might use that to study in, and she said that “it wasn’t any fret of hers.” I could. So I placed a bedroom chair, and secured a small, second-hand writing-desk, and placed them in the room. I used the white mantel-shelf for my books. I placed them lovingly on end, and according to color, and they seemed magnificent to me—my first library! I would stand before them, in proud contemplation, and whisper to myself, “My own books!”