Perhaps I should not have remembered that book-hunting morning in Old Paris on the Quai Voltaire, when I bought that beautiful old copy of the Proverbs of Solomon—with the butterfly so strangely crushed between its pages—had it not been for a circumstance that happened to me, the other day, in the subway, which seemed to me of the nature of a marvel. Many weary men and women were travelling—in an enforced, yet in some way humorously understanding, society—from Brooklyn Bridge to the Bronx. I got in at Wall Street. The "crush-hour" was near, for it was 4:25—still, as yet, there were time and space granted us to observe our neighbours. In the particular car in which I was sitting, there was room still left to look about and admire the courage of your fellow-passengers. Weary men going home—many of them having used them all day long—have little wish to use their eyes, so all the men in my car sat silently and sadly, contemplating the future. As I looked at them, it seemed to me that they were thinking over the day's work they had done, and the innumerable days' work they had still to do. No one smiled. No one observed the other. An automatic courtesy gave a seat here and there, but no one gave any attention to any business but his own thoughts and his own sad station.
It was a car, if I remember aright, occupied almost entirely by men-passengers, and, so far as I could see, there were no evidences that men knew women from men, or vice versa, yet, at last, there seemed to dawn on four men sitting in a row that there was a wonderful creature reading a book on the other side of the aisle—a lovely young woman, with all the fabled beauty of the sea-shell, and the rainbow, that enchantment in her calm pearl-like face, and in the woven stillness of her hair, that has in all times and countries made men throw up sails and dare the unknown sea, and the unknown Fates. The beauty, too, that nature had given her was clothed in the subdued enchantments of the rarest art. All unconscious of the admiration surrounding her, she sat in that subway car, like a lonely butterfly, strangely there in her incongruous surroundings, for a mysterious moment,—to vanish as swiftly as she had come—and, as she stepped from the car, leaving it dark and dazzled—
bright with her past presence yet—
I, who had fortunately, and fearfully, sat by her side was aware that the book she had been reading was lying forgotten on the seat. It was mine by right of accident,—treasure-trove. So I picked it up, braving the glares of the four sad men facing me.
Naturally, I had wondered what book it was; but its being bound in tooled and jewelled morocco, evidently by one of the great bookbinders of Paris, made it unprofitable to hazard a guess.
I leave to the imagination of lovers of books what book one would naturally expect to find in hands so fair. Perhaps Ronsard—or some other poet from the Rose-Garden of old France. No! it was a charmingly printed copy of The New Testament.
The paradox of the discovery hushed me for a few moments, and then I began to turn over the pages, several of which I noticed were dog eared after the manner of beautiful women in all ages. A pencil here and there had marked certain passages. Come unto me, ran one of the underlined passages, all ye that are heavy laden, and I will give you rest,—and I thought how strange it was that she whose face was so calm and still should have needed to mark that. And another marked passage I noted—He was in the world, and the world was made by Him, and the world knew Him not. Then I put down the book with a feeling of awe—such as the Bible had never brought to me before, though I had been accustomed to it from my boyhood, and I said to myself: "How very strange!" And I meant how strange it was to find this wonderful old book in the hands of this wonderful young beauty.
It had seemed strange to find that butterfly in that old copy of the Proverbs of King Solomon, but how much stranger to find the New Testament in the hands, or, so to speak, between the wings, of an American butterfly.
I found something written in the book at least as wonderful to me as the sacred text. It was the name of the butterfly—a name almost as beautiful as herself. So I was enabled to return her book to her. There is, of course, no need to mention a name as well-known for good works as good looks. It will suffice to say that it was the name of the most beautiful actress in the world.
There is a moral to this story. Morals—to stories—are once more coming into fashion. The Bible, in my boyhood, came to us with no such associations as I have recalled. There were no butterflies between its pages, nor was it presented to us by fair or gracious hands. It was a very grim and minatory book, wielded, as it seemed to one's childish ignorance, for the purpose which that young priest of St. Sulpice had used the pages of his copy of the Proverbs of King Solomon, that of crushing out the joy of life.