Open That Door!

by R. Sturgis Ingersoll

Some misguided supporters of the study of the ancient classics use as a plea that "every gentleman should read Greek." The insincerity of this defence can only be compared to the sighs of the woman who attempts to convince her neighbors that the beauty of a sunset appeals to her as it does to no one else, or the ecstatic murmurings of the young man at the art exhibition, who is arousing within himself a false enthusiasm, for some artistic cult that in truth means nothing to him.

We see this type of man or woman all too often. They are usually gushing about their latest emotional experience, when in fact they are incapable of having any. It is an insincere attempt to be the highest of the high-brows. Let us have none of this! Let us realize that education and culture are splendid things to be highly prized, but only in that they make the individual who possesses them a richer, deeper, more sympathetic person.

A hobby, which has to-day become a fashion, is bird study. Far be it from me to disparage the movement seemingly alive in all our suburban districts, but let us make short shift with those who ogle knowingly through field glasses, when the motive behind the action is that in select company it is considered "the thing."

It is a safe warning never to read a book because it is fashionable. Never read a book because you think it will form an engaging topic of conversation; always read because you want to derive a sincere inspiration, an enlarged point of view. Within a library is encased the soul of the past, the meaning of the present, the promise of the future. From it we derive the entire tradition of which we are inheritors, the deeper movements of which we are a part, the prophecies of the future in which we and ours will live. This treasure is more worthy of respect than to be treated as the devourer of an idle hour, or the means whereby to keep "in the swim."

The cultured man is a man of broad understanding, of deep sympathies. A fisherman who knows his boat, his line and the bay in which he makes his livelihood may be a cultured man. He may have derived from his way of life and the tools of his trade the solemn truths that give him an understanding of the ways of men and the needs of the human heart; but another man who has gone through the University, "machinely made, machinely crammed," may be totally without culture in that he has never drunk at those well-springs of living which teach the mind the great underlying sentiments that rule the world. One may well be educated and yet uncultured, "well-read" and yet without the vision that may be derived from books. It is not the word but the spirit of the word that must be taken to heart and lived.

Matthew Arnold defined culture as a knowledge of the best that has been done and said by man—but the one who opens that door must have more than that knowledge. It is not enough to cram away facts in the corners of your brain. These facts must have a direct bearing upon your life. To have knowledge of the best that has been written, you must not only read a great poem but you must allow the thought or fancy to sink into and become part of your personality; of the best that has been done you must not only have knowledge of the courage and wisdom of the early Americans who broke the yoke of Great Britain, but you must apply their courage and wisdom to your daily life; of the best that has been said you must not only read one of Abraham Lincoln's great speeches, but absorb the quiet spirituality of the man who uttered them, and allow his personality to become part of yours.

Farcical moving-picture shows and talking-machine rag-time surely have their place, but can they enter the soul of man as can "the best that has been written, done and said"? The plays of Euripides and the words of Marcus Aurelius have for many centuries given deeper understandings and wider horizons to a multitude of readers, and it is probable that the intensity with which they have acted upon the individual is commensurate with the length of time that they have acted upon the mass. We do not believe that this can be said of the time-killing "movie" or the rag-time song of yesterday.

Let us enter the world of living through the world of books. It is from the printed page that we can best equip ourselves for a rich life of value to ourselves, our family and our neighbors. If you do not believe it, read some book that the world has acknowledged great. Having read it, live it in your eternal self, and you will have passed through the Open Door.

It is a rainy day at the seashore; I am writing in the reading room of a summer hotel. Without, the rain is sweeping across the bathing beach, the tennis courts are flooded, the golf course, without a doubt, is a swampy morass. It is a dreary sight for one who looks through the window pane. Our little world is upon a vacation, and all but the few who wish to tramp the beach in raincoats and gum boots must stay in-doors. And yet there is happiness, and I believe greater promise of the morrow. In one corner of the room there is a stripling of about thirteen, curled in a chair, absorbed in his book, which from the cover I know to be "Treasure Island." He is with Old Pew, John Silver, and the cut-throat buccaneers. On the morrow the sand-dunes for that boy will be places of mystery where weird and exciting fairy deeds might have been accomplished. The commonplace bathing beach will have new mysteries, as the waters that splash at his feet are the same that surround some sunbaked, South Sea Treasure Isle.

At the desk opposite me, a student with furrowed brow reads a calf-skin volume. I have noted the title: "The Speeches of Henry Clay." Perhaps this fellow is a young lawyer or an aspiring politician. He wishes to absorb the ideas of the silver-tongued "Harry of the West," the popular idol of seventy years ago, and to consider their bearing upon the tariff questions of to-day. He must agree with Napoleon Bonaparte: "Read and reflect on history; it is the only true philosophy." And there is a girl reading the poetry of Alfred Noyes, and a bespectacled, bearded old man with a volume of Pope. They have both turned to poetry to find the beauty and truth those poets have seen. How much will their spirits be affected, the one by the lyric note of our contemporary singer, the other by the didactic moralizing of the philosopher wit?