Mr. Chauncey M. Depew is reported to have said that Fame depends entirely upon being civil to interviewers. English visitors should remember this—and a few, who want to feather their nests, are beginning to appreciate the wisdom of our worldly sage. Conan Doyle and Hall Caine have taken “the tip,” and have even been quite civil and polite about American institutions and social life since gaining their own shores. This little simple art of glossing is one the British should cultivate. They are at present the most hateful people on earth. The world is getting crowded now and they should endeavor to become less obnoxious. English celebrities can extend their fame with their courtesies.
A very pathetic and significant incident occurred in one of the leading hotels of Boston the other day. It is fraught with a warning for the injudicious, that needs no additional emphasis from me. But do not turn aside and skip the paragraph because it has a moral!
A well-known Temperance lecturer and social reformer from Shebogan Falls, Arizona, who was stopping at the house, was suddenly taken violently sick, and showed unmistakable signs of suffering from delirium tremens. The gentleman had then been in the hotel for twenty-four hours and he was known to have touched no liquor. A search of his room and grip revealed no intoxicants. The doctors called in were positive about the symptoms, and yet the man’s breath contained no hint of alcohol. The stomach pump afforded no more confirmation. But he was in the throes of delirium tremens, nevertheless, and the doctors were perplexed. All sorts of elaborate theories of hereditary influences were proposed and discussed, and the man’s history and ancestry were looked up. Suddenly he recovered, and an explanation was soon forthcoming.
A well thumbed and dismantled copy of the Arena magazine was discovered under his bed.
Those who are interested in the diffusion of good literature among all classes in America, should make themselves acquainted with the publications of Thomas B. Mosher, of Portland, Me. A good book in his list to put upon the shelf, to begin with, is the beautifully bound volume of the Bibelot for 1895. In making a collection of belles-lettres, the authors and books after all, who give most pleasure, one provides a sure refuge always at hand for any sudden invasion of the blues or ennui, and there is solace here for weightier sorrows, too. For the brave idealists condemned to struggle in this alien world, who can still unpack their minds of all sordid sorrows and bitterness and carry merry and piping hearts to Arcady, are surely not lacking in a profound philosophy—and the philosophy which includes the life of the philosopher is rare indeed.
It is for this reason that the poets and fantastists are closer to our moods through the changing years than all other writers. When the historians, philosophers and social prophets and the rest find us indifferent and content to let the world slide, when great names and ideals no longer stir or move us, when experience has disenchanted us with life and humanity, and so stript history and philosophy and religion of all significance, when all our enthusiasms are gone, love is an exchange of domestic services for the sake of economy, and friendship is a long laid ghost of youth—then we can recur again and again to the authors who turn our chimney corner into that wider dominion of freedom the human spirit can never quite relinquish in its dreams. Fine spun logic and all the metaphysics of the ages cannot bring us back to faith and hope and charity then; but these few blessed spirits who found their way to Arcady occasionally, give us a spell of oblivion, if not much philosophy, and often a pinch of fortitude for our return to the doom of disenchantment.
The republic of beauty is not an important territory or marked very clearly on the current maps of Democracy. But there are still some who cherish the ancient boon of poetry and beauty, and such will appreciate a volume like “The Bibelot,” filled with the literature that blows through our foetid life like God’s wind through a hospital. It is one of the few books that cannot fail to hit the taste of any real book lover. It contains selections from William Blake, James Thomson, Francois Villon, a discourse of Walter Pater’s on Marcus Aurelius, Fragments from Sappho, Sonnets on English Dramatic Poets, the Pathos of the Rose in Poetry, extracts from Rossetti’s “Hand and Soul,” Robert Louis Stevenson’s “A Lodging for the Night: A Story of Villon,” and other masterpieces of literature. It is a priceless book for the poor student, for these selections have been culled from scarce editions and sources not generally accessible.
If our young readers will read the Bibelot, they may acquire the sense of beauty and power of discrimination, and the taste for the best in literature, old and new. They will then become callous to the tawdry domestic twaddle that has been circulated as “literature” in the respectable domestic periodicals, for the past two decades, in this country, and will learn to distinguish genuine literature from mere merchandise. Perhaps then it will be possible for sincere and earnest work to find currency in books in America, as it has not been since the popular picture periodicals took the place of books in our breakneck economy.
Anthony Hope is one of the few authors of the day honest enough to confess that he reads very little. He is too busy writing. This is one of the evils of the age. The writers outnumber the readers. Every man or woman who takes to writing is a reader lost, for writers almost invariably only read and reread their own works. But all authors are not as candid as Anthony Hope.
That volume of lectures on “The Art of Making a Newspaper,” which all “the bright young men” in American journalism have been studying, is marred with the omission of an important historical matter. This is the origin and career of Mr. Dana’s “office cat.” Charles A. Dana is the most picturesque personality in contemporary American public life. He is more definitely in the popular imagination of this generation than any man engaged in literature proper, and so every characteristic detail and whimsy of the “Sun’s” school of journalism should be recorded for the benefit of posterity. The “office cat” has played a great part in the “Sun’s” art and artifice, and its omission is a national catastrophe.