If William James had not taken up science as a profession and thus become a philosopher, he would have been a printer. No other commercial pursuit so invited him as “the honorable, honored, and productive business of printing,” as he expressed it in a letter to his mother in 1863. Naturally, with such a conception of the practice of book manufacture, he was always particularly concerned with the physical format of his volumes. He once told me that my ability to translate his “fool ideas” into type showed the benefit of a Harvard education! He had no patience with any lapse on the part of the proofreader, and when the galleys of his books reached this point in the manufacture even my most experienced readers were on the anxious seat. On the other hand, he was generous in his appreciation when a proofreader called his attention to some slip in his copy that he had overlooked.
After his volume Pragmatism appeared and created such universal attention, a series of “popular” lectures on the subject was announced at Cambridge. The Harpers had just published a novel of mine entitled The Spell, in connection with which I had devoted much time to the study of humanism and the humanists of the fifteenth century. Because of my familiarity with a kindred subject, I must confess to a sense of mortification that in reading Pragmatism I found myself beyond my depth. A “popular” presentation appealed to me as an opportunity for intellectual development, so I attended the first lecture, armed with pencil and notebook. Afterwards it so happened that Professor James was on the trolley car when I boarded it at Harvard Square, and I sat down beside him.
“I was surprised to see you at my lecture,” he remarked. “Don’t you get enough of me at your office?”
I told him of my excursions into other philosophic pastures, and of my chagrin to find so little in pragmatic fields upon which my hungry mind could feed. He smiled at my language, and entered heartily into the spirit.
“And today?” he inquired mischievously.—“I hope that today I guided you successfully.”
“You did,” I declared, opening my notebook, and showing him the entry: “Nothing is the only resultant of the one thing which is not.”
“That led me home,” I said soberly, with an intentional double meaning.
Professor James laughed heartily.
“Did I really say that? I have no doubt I did. It simply proves my contention that philosophers too frequently exercise their prerogative of concealing themselves behind meaningless expressions.”
Two of Professor James’ typographic hobbies were paper labels and as few words as possible on the title page. In the matter of supplying scant copy for the title, he won my eternal gratitude, for many a book, otherwise typographically attractive, is ruined by overloading the title with too much matter. This is the first page that catches the eye, and its relation to the book is the same as the door of a house. Only recently I opened a volume to a beautiful title page. The type was perfectly arranged in proportion and margin, the decoration was charming and in complete harmony with the type. It was set by an artist-printer and did him credit; but turning a few more pages I found myself face to face with a red-blooded story of western life, when the title had prepared me for something as delicate as Milton’s L’Allegro. A renaissance door on a New England farmhouse would have been equally appropriate!