That is the time looked forward to by him with apprehension and looked back upon with horror, because the poor fellow knows what comes of
CLEANING THE LIBRARY.
ith traitorous kiss remarked my spouse,
“Remain down town to lunch to-day,
For we are busy cleaning house,
And you would be in Minnie’s way.”
When I came home that fateful night,
I found within my sacred room
The wretched maid had wreaked her spite
With mop and pail and witch’s broom.
The books were there, but oh how changed!
They startled me with rare surprises,
For they had all been rearranged,
And less by subjects than by sizes.
Some volumes numbered right to left,
And some were standing on their heads,
And some were of their mates bereft,
And some behind for refuge fled.
The women brave attempts had made
At placing cognate books together;—
They looked like strangers close arrayed
Under a porch in stormy weather.
She watched my face—that spouse of mine—
Some approbation there to glean,
But seeing I did not incline
To praise, remarked, “I’ve got it clean.”
And so she had—and also wrong;
She little knew—she was but thirty—
I entertained a preference strong
To have it right, though ne’er so dirty.
That wife of mine has much good sense,
To chide her would have been inhuman,
And it would be a great expense
To graft the book-sense on a woman.
uch are my reflections when I consider a fire in my own little library. But when I regard the great and growing mass of books with which the earth groans, and reflect how few of them are necessary or original, and how little the greater part of them would be missed, I sometimes am led to believe that a general conflagration of them might in the long run be a blessing to mankind, by the stimulation of thought and the deliverance of authors from the influence of tradition and the habit of imitation. When I am in this mood I incline to think that much is
ODE TO OMAR.
mar, who burned (or did not burn)
The Alexandrian tomes,
I would erect to thee an urn
Beneath Sophia’s domes.
So many books I can’t endure—
The dull and commonplace,
The dirty, trifling and obscure,
The realistic race.
Would that thy exemplary torch
Could bravely blaze again,
And many manufactories scorch
Of book-inditing men.
The poets who write “dialect,”
Maudlin and coarse by turns,
Most ardently do I expect
Thou’lt wither up with Burns.
All the erratic, yawping class
Condemn with judgment stern,
Walt Whitman’s awful “Leaves of Grass”
With elegant Swinburne.
Of commentators make a point,
The carping, blind, and dry;
Rend the “Baconians” joint by joint,
And throw them on to fry.
Especially I’d have thee choke
Law libraries in sheep
With fire derived from ancient Coke,
And sink in ashes deep.
Destroy the sheep—don’t save my own—
I weary of the cram,
The misplaced diligence I’ve shown—
But kindly spare my Lamb.
Fear not to sprinkle on the pyre
The woes of “Esther Waters”;
They’ll only make the flame soar higher,
And warn Eve’s other daughters.
But ’ware of Howells and of James,
Of Trollope and his rout;
They’d dampen down the fiercest flames
And put your fire out.
