Chapter XXI
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I have thus far sketched the events of my life, but I have not shown how much I have depended on books not only for pleasure and for the wisdom they bring to all who read, but also for that knowledge whies to others through their eyes and thei<s></s>r ears. Indeed, books have meant so much more in my education than in that of others, that I shall go back to the time when I began to read.I read my first ected story in May, 1887, when I was seven years old, and from that day to this I have devoured everything in the shape of a printed page that has e within the reay hungry fiips.
As I have said, I did not study regularly during the early years of my education; nor did I read acc to rule.
At first I had only a few books in raised print--"readers" finners, a colle of stories for children, and a book about the earth called "Our World." I think that was all; but I read them over and over, until the words were so worn and pressed I could scarcely make them out. Sometimes Miss Sullivao me, spelling into my hand little stories and poems that she knew I should uand; but I preferred reading myself to beio, because I liked to read again and agaihings that pleased me.
It was during my first visit to Boston that I really began to read in good ear. I ermitted to spend a part of each day in the Institution library, and to wander from bookcase to bookcase, and take down whatever book my fingers lighted upon. And read I did, whether I uood one word in ten or two words on a page.
The words themselves fasated me; but I took no scious at of what I read. My mind must, however, have been very impressio that period, for it retained many words and whole senteo the meaning of which I had not the fai clue; and afterward, when I began to talk and write, these words aences would flash out quite naturally, so that my friends wo the riess of my vocabulary. I must have read parts of many books (in those early days I think I never read any one book through) and a great deal of poetry in this unprehending way, until I discovered "Little Lord Fauntleroy," which was the first book of any sequence I read uandingly.
One day my teacher found me in a er of the library p over the pages of "The Scarlet Letter." I was then about eight years old. I remember she asked me if I liked little Pearl, and explained some of the words that had puzzled me. Theold me that she had a beautiful story about a little boy which she was sure I should like better than "The Scarlet Letter." The name of the story was "Little Lord Fauntleroy," and she promised to read it to me the following summer. But we did not begiory until August; the first few weeks of my stay at the seashore were so full of discoveries aement that I fot the very existence of books. Then my teacher went to visit some friends in Boston, leaving me for a short time.
Wheurned almost the first thing we did was to begiory of "Little Lord Fauntleroy." I recall distinctly the time and place when we read the first chapters of the fasating childs story. It was a warm afternoon in August. We were sitting together in a hammock which swung from two solemn pi a short distance from the house. We had hurried through the dish-washing after lun, in order that we might have as long an afternoon as possible for the story. As we hastehrough the long grass toward the hammock, the grasshoppers swarmed about us and fastehemselves on our clothes, and I remember that my teacher insisted upon pig them all off before we sat down, which seemed to me an unnecessary waste of time. The hammock was covered with pine needles, for it had not been used while my teacher was away. The warm sun shone on the pirees and drew out all their fragrahe air was balmy, with a tang of the sea in it. Before we begaory Miss Sullivan explaio me the things that she knew I should not uand, and as we read on she explaihe unfamiliar words. At first there were many words I did not know, and the reading was stantly interrupted; but as soon as I thhly prehehe situation, I became too eagerly absorbed iory to notice mere words, and I am afraid I listened impatiently to the explanations that Miss Sullivao be necessary. When her fingers were too tired to spell another word, I had for the first time a keen sense of my deprivations. I took the book in my hands and tried to feel the letters with an iy of
longing that I ever fet.
Afterward, at my eager request, Mr. Anagnos had this story embossed, and I read it again and again, until I almost k by heart; and all through my childhood "Little Lord Fauntleroy" was my sweet ale panion. I have given these details at the risk of bein></a>g tedious, because they are in such vivid trast with my vague, mutable and fused memories of earlier reading.
From "Little Lord Fauntleroy" I date the beginning of my true i in books. During the wo years I read many books at my home and on my visits to Boston. I ot remember what they all were, or in what order I read them; but I know that among them were "Greek Heroes," La Fontaines "Fables," Hawthornes "Wonder Book," "Bible Stories," Lambs "Tales from Shakespeare," "A Childs History of England" by Dis, "The Arabian Nights," "The Swiss Family Robinson," "The Pilgrims Progress," "Robinson Crusoe,”
"Little Women," and "Heidi," a beautiful little story which I afterward read in German. I read them iervals between study and play with an ever-deepening sense of pleasure. I did not study nor analyze them--I did not know whether they were well written or not; I hought about style or authorship. They laid their treasures at my feet, and I accepted them as t the sunshine and the love of our friends. I loved "Little Women" because it gave me a sense of kinship with girls and boys who could see and hear. Circumscribed as my life was in so many ways, I had to look between the covers of books for news of the world that lay outside my own.
I did not care especially for "The Pilgrims Progress," which I think I did not finish, or for the "Fables." I read La Fontaines "Fables" first in an English translation, and ehem only after a half-hearted fashion. Later I read the book again in French, and I found that, in spite of the vivid word-pictures, and the wonderful mastery of language, I liked it er. I do not know why it is, but stories in whiimals are made to talk and act like human beings have never appealed to me very strongly. The ludicrous caricatures of the animals occupy my mind to the exclusion of the moral.
Then, again, La Fontaine seldom, if ever, appeals thest moral sehe highest chords he strikes are those of reason and self-love. Through all the fables runs the thought that mans morality springs wholly from self-love, and that if that self-love is directed arained by reason, happiness must follow. Now, so far as I judge, self-love is the root of all evil; but, of course, I may be wrong, for La Fontaine had greater opportunities of men than I am likely ever to have. I do not objeuch to the ical and satirical fables as to those in whientous truths are taught by monkeys and foxes.
But I love "The Jungle Book" and "Wild Animals I Have Known." I feel a geerest in the animals themselves, because they are real animals and not caricatures of men. One sympathizes with their loves and hatreds, laughs over their edies, and weeps over their tragedies. And if they point a moral, it is so subtle that we are not scious of it.
My mind opened naturally and joyously to a ception of antiquity. Greece, a Greece, exercised a mysterious fasation over me. In my fancy the pagan gods and goddesses still walked oh and talked face to face with men, and in my heart I secret?99lｉb.ly built shrio those I loved best. I knew and loved the whole tribe of nymphs and heroes and demigods--no, not quite all, for the cruelty and greed of Medea and Jasooo monstrous to be fiven, and I used to wonder why the gods permitted them to d and then puhem for their wiess. And the mystery is still unsolved. I often wonder how God dumbness keep While Sin creeps grinning through His house of Time.
It was the Iliad that made Greece my paradise. I was familiar with the story of Troy before I read it in the inal, and sequently I had little difficulty in making the Greek words surreheir treasures after I had passed the borderland of grammar. Great poetry, whether written in Greek or in English, needs no other interpreter than a responsive heart. Would that the host of those who make the great works of the poets odious
by their analysis, impositions and laborious ents might learn this simple truth! It is not necessary that one should be able to define every word and give it its principal parts and its grammatical position in the senten order to uand and appreciate a fine poem. I know my learned professors have found greater riches in the Iliad than I shall ever find; but I am not avaricious. I am tent that others should be wiser than I. But with all their wide and prehensive knowledge, they easure their enjoyment of that splendid epior I. When I read the fi passages of the Iliad, I am scious of a soul-sehat lifts me above the narrow, cramping circumstany life. My physical limitations are fotten--my world lies upward, the length and the breadth and the sweep of the heavens are mine!
My admiration for the Aeneid is not so great, but it is he less real. I read it as much as possible without the help of notes or diary, and I always like to translate the episodes that please me especially. The word-painting of Virgil is wonderful sometimes; but his gods and men move through the ses of passion and>.</a> strife and pity and love like the graceful figures in an Elizabethan mask, whereas in the Iliad they give three leaps and go on singing. Virgil is serene and lovely like a marble Apollo in the moonlight; Homer is a beautiful, animated youth in the full sunlight with the wind in his hair.
How easy it is to fly on paper wings! From "Greek Heroes" to the Iliad was no days journey, nor was it altogether pleasant. One could have traveled round the word many times while I trudged my weary way through the labyrinthine mazes of grammars and diaries, or fell into those dreadful pitfalls called examinations, set by schools and colleges for the fusion of those who seek after knowledge. I suppose this sort of Pilgrims Progress was justified by the end; but it seemed intermio me, in spite of the pleasant surprises that met me now and then at a turn in the road.
I began to read the Bible long before I could uand it. Now it seems strao me that there should have been a time when my spirit was deaf to its wondrous harmonies; but I remember well a rainy Sunday m when, having nothing else to do, I begged my cousin to read me a story out of the Bible. Although she did not think I should uand, she began to spell into my hand the story of Joseph and his brothers. Somehow it failed to i me. The unusual language aition made the story seem unreal and far away in the land of aan, and I fell asleep and wandered off to the land of Nod, before the brothers came with the coat of many colours unto the tent of Jacob and told their wicked lie! I ot uand why the stories of the Greeks should have been so full of charm for me, and those of the Bible so devoid of i, unless it was that I had made the acquaintance of several Greeks in Boston and been inspired by their enthusiasm for the stories of their try; whereas I had not met a single Hebrew yptian, and therefore cluded that they were nothing more than barbarians, and the stories about them were probably all made up, which hypothesis explaihe repetitions and the queer names. Curiously enough, it never occurred to me to call Greek patronymics "queer.”
But how shall I speak of the glories I have since discovered in the Bible? For years I have read it with an ever-broadening sense of joy and inspiration; and I love it as I love no other book. Still there is mu the Bible against which every instiny being rebels, so much that I regret the y which has pelled me to read it through from beginning to end. I do not think that the knowledge which I have gained of its history and sources pensates me for the unpleasaails it has forced upon my attention. For my part, I wish, with Mr. Howells, that the literature of the past might be purged of all that is ugly and barbarous in it, although I should object as much as any oo having these great works weakened or falsified.
There is something impressive, awful, in the simplicity and terrible direess of the book of Esther. Could there be anything more dramatic than the se in which Esther stands before her wicked lord? She knows h<mark></mark>er life is in his hands; there is no oo protect her from his wrath. Yet, quering her womans fear, she approaches him, animated by the patriotism, having but ohought: "If I perish, I perish; but if I live, my people shall live.”
The story of Ruth, too--how Oriental it is! Yet how different is the life of these simple try folks from that
of the Persian capital! Ruth is so loyal ale-hearted, we ot help loving her, as she stands with the reapers amid the waving . Her beautiful, unselfish spirit shines out like a bright star in the night of a dark and cruel age. Love like Ruths, love which rise above flig creeds and deep-seated racial prejudices, is hard to find in all the world.
The Bible gives me a deep, f sehat "things seeemporal, and things unseeernal.”
I do not remember a time since I have been capable of loving books that I have not loved Shakespeare. I ot tell exactly when I began Lambs "Tales from Shakespeare"; but I know that I read them at first with a childs uanding and a childs wonder. "Macbeth" seems to have impressed me most. One reading was suffit to stamp every detail of the story upon my memory forever. For a long time the ghosts and witches pursued me even into Dreamland. I could see, absolutely see, the dagger and Lady Macbeths little white hand--the dreadful stain was as real to me as to the grief-stri queen.
I read "King Lear" soon after "Macbeth," and I shall never fet the feeling of horror when I came to the se in which Glosters eyes are put out. Anger seized me, my fingers refused to move, I sat rigid for one long moment, the blood throbbing in my temples, and all the hatred that a child feel trated in my heart.
I must have made the acquaintance of Shylod Satan about the same time, for the two characters were long associated in my mind. I remember that I was sorry for them. I felt vaguely that they could not be good even if they wished to, because no one seemed willing to help them or to give them a fair ce. Even now I ot find it in my heart to terly. There are moments when I feel that the Shylocks, the Judases, and even the Devil, are broken spokes in the great wheel of good which shall iime be made whole.
It seems strahat my first reading of Shakespeare should have left me so many unpleasant memories. The bright, gentle, fanciful plays--the ones I like best noear not to have impressed me at first, perhaps because they reflected the habitual sunshine and gaiety of a childs life. But "there is nothing more capricious than the memory of a child: what it will hold, and what it will lose.”
I have since read Shakespeares plays many times and know parts of them by heart, but I ot tell which of them I like best. My delight in them is as varied as my moods. The little songs and the sos have a meaning for me as fresh and wonderful as the dramas. But, with all my love for Shakespeare, it is often weary work to read all the meanings into his lines which critid entators have given them. I used to try to remember their interpretations, but they disced and vexed me; so I made a secret pact with myself not to try any more. This pact I have only just broken in my study of Shakespeare under Professor Kittredge. I know there are many things in Shakespeare, and in the world, that I do not uand; and I am glad to see veil after veil lift gradually, revealing new realms of thought ay.
o poetry I love history. I have read every historical work that I have been able to lay my hands on, from a catalogue of dry facts and dryer dates to Greens impartial, picturesque "History of the English People"; from Freemans "History of Europe" to Emertons "Middle Ages." The first book that gave me any real sense of the value of history was Swintons "World History," which I received on my thirteenth birthday. Though I believe it is no longer sidered valid, yet I have kept it ever since as one of my treasures. From it I learned how the raen spread from land to land and built great cities, how a few great rulers, earthly Titans, put everything uheir feet, and with a decisive word opehe gates of happiness for millions and closed them upon millions more: how different nations pioneered in art and knowledge and broke ground for the mightier growths of ing ages; how civilization underwent as it were, the holocaust of a degee age, and rose again, like the Phoenix, among the nobler sons of the North; and how by liberty, tolerand education the great and the wise have opehe way for the salvation of the whole world.
In my college reading I have bee somewhat familiar with Frend German literature. The German puts strength before beauty, and truth before vention, both in life and in literature. There is a vehement, sledge-hammer vigour about everything that he does. When he speaks, it is not to impress others, but because his heart would burst if he did not find an outlet for the thoughts that burn in his soul.
Then, too, there is in German literature a fine reserve which I like; but its chief glory is the reition I find in it of the redeeming potency of womans self-sacrifig love. This thought pervades all German literature and is mystically expressed ihes "Faust": All things transitory But as symbols are sehs insufficy Here grows to event. The indescribable Here it is dohe Woman Soul leads us upward and on!
Of all the French writers that I have read, I like Moliere and Rae best. There are fihings in Balzad passages in Merimee which strike one like a keen blast of sea air. Alfred de Musset is impossible! I admire Victo--I appreciate his genius, his brilliancy, his romanticism; though he is not one of my literary passions. But Hugo and Goethe and Schiller and all great poets of all great nations are interpreters of eternal things, and my spirit reverently follows them into the regions where Beauty and Truth and Goodness are one.
I am afraid I have written too much about my book-friends, a I have mentioned only the authors I love most; and from this faight easily suppose that my circle of friends was very limited and undemocratic, which would be a very wrong impression. I like many writers for many reasons--Carlyle for his ruggedness and s of shams; Wordsworth, who teaches the oneness of man and nature; I find an exquisite pleasure in the oddities and surprises of Hood, in Herricks quaintness and the palpable st of lily and rose in his verses; I like Whittier for his enthusiasms and moral rectitude. I knew him, and the gentle remembrance of our friendship doubles the pleasure I have in reading his poems. I love Mark Twain--who does not? The gods, too, loved him and put into his heart all manner of wisdom; then, feari he should bee a pessimist, they spanned his mind with a rainbow of love and faith. I like Scott for his freshness, dash and large hoy. I love all writers whose minds, like Lowells, bubble up in the sunshine of optimism--fountains of joy and good will, with occasionally a splash of anger and here and there a healing spray of sympathy and pity.
In a word, literature is my Utopia. Here I am not disfranchised. No barrier of the senses shuts me out from the sweet, gracious discourse of my book-friends. They talk to me without embarrassment or awkwardness. The things I have learned and the things I have been taught seem of ridiculously little importanpared with their "large loves and heavenly charities.”
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