Page images
PDF
EPUB

Forms and Shapes in the

Creation:

And what the

Beginning, Ruin, and Cure of every Thing is; it proceeds out of Eternity into Time,

satirical Authors, proving them not only erroneous and diabolical but repugnant to Holy Scripture. The Whole being a Composition of Wit and Humor, Morality and Divinity fit to be perused by all the curious and ingenious, especially the

and again out of Time into Eternity, Ladies." After this title-page, it is ask

and comp

rizeth All Mysteries.

Written in High Dutch, MDCXXII. By Jacob Behmen,

aliàs

Teutonicus Phylosophus.

London,

ing too much of any one to read the book, unless it be to study the manner in which the tea-table, now held so innocent, had, in 1733, such associations of luxury and extravagance that Professor J. Bland is compelled to implore husbands not to find fault with it. "More harmless liquor

Printed by John Macock, for Gyles Cal- could never be invented than the ladies

vert, at the black spread

Eagle, at the West end of Pauls Church,

1651."

Here again the words "Beginning, Ruin, and Cure" are given in large italic letters, and I never open the book without a renewed sensation of awe, very much as if I were standing beside that gulf which yawned at Lisbon in 1755, and had seen those 30,000 human beings swallowed up before my eyes.

We do not sufficiently appreciate, in modern books, the condensed and at least readable title-pages which stand sentinel, as it were, at their beginning. We forget how much more easily the books of two centuries ago were left unread, inasmuch as the title-page was apt to be in itself as long as a book. Take, for instance, this quaint work, not to be found in Allibone's Dictionary of Authors, but owing its authorship to "J. Bland, Professor of Physic," who published in 1773, at London, "An Essay in Praise of Women; or a Looking Glass for Ladies to see their Perfections in with Observations how the Godhead seemed concerned in their Creation; what Respect is due to them on that Account; how they have behaved in all Ages and especially in our Saviour's Time." Thus begins the title-page, which is as long as an ordinary chapter, and closes thus: "Also Observations and Reflections in Defense against base and

in this age have made choice of. What is so pleasant and grateful to the taste as a dish of tea, sweetened with fine loaf sugar? What more innocent banquet could have ever been in use than this? and what more becoming conversation than the inoffensive, sweet and melodious expressions of the fair ones over an entertainment so much like themselves?"

Or let us turn to one of the early American books, "The Columbian Muse, a Selection of American Poetry from various Authors of Established Reputation. Published in New York in 1794.” The most patriotic American could not now read it with patience, yet the most unpatriotic cannot deny its quaint and fervent flavor. It is full of verses on the President's birthday and the genius of America; and of separate odes on American sages, American poets, and American painters. The monotonous couplets, the resounding adjectives, the personifications, the exclamation points, all belong to their period, the time when "Inoculation, heavenly maid' was deemed an appropriate opening for an ode. The very love poetry was patriotic and bore the title "On Love and the American Fair," by Colonel Humphreys, who also contributes a discourse on "The Future State," which turns out to refer to" Western Territory." Aside from the semi-political allusions there is no local coloring whatever, except that Richard

Alsop in an elegy written in February, 1791, gives the very first instance, so far as I know, of an allusion in verse to any flower distinctively American:

foreign country before he had read any book about it. After reading, the dream was half fulfilled, and he turned to something else, so that he died without visit

"There the Wild-Rose in earliest pride shall ing any foreign country. But the very

bloom,

There the Magnolia's gorgeous flowers unfold,

The purple Violet shed its sweet perfume:

And beauteous Meadia wave her plumes of gold."

This last plant, though not here accurately described, must evidently have been the Dodecatheon Meadia, or "Shooting Star." This is really the highest point of Americanism attained in the dingy little volume; the low-water mark being clearly found when we read in the same volume the work of a poet then known as “W. M. Smith, Esq.," who could thus appeal to American farmers to celebrate a birthday :

66

Shepherds, then, the chorus join,

Haste the festive wreath to twine:
Come with bosoms all sincere,
Come with breasts devoid of care;
Bring the pipe and merry lay,
"Tis Eliza's natal day."

Wordsworth says in his Personal Talk,

"Dreams, books are each a world; "

and the books unread mingle with the dreams and unite the charm of both. This applies especially, I think, to books of travel; we buy them, finding their attractions strong, but somehow we do not read them over and over, unless they prove to be such books as those of Urquhart, the Pillars of Hercules especially, where the wealth of learning and originality is so great that we seem in a different region of the globe on every page. One of the most poetic things about Whittier's temperament lay in this fact, that he felt most eager to visit each

possession of such books, and their presence on the shelves, carries one to the Arctic regions or to the Indian Ocean. No single book of travels in Oceanica, it may be, will last so long as that one stanza of Whittier's,

"I know not where Thine islands lift
Their fronded palms in air;
But this I know, I cannot drift

Beyond Thy love and care."

How often have I known that poem to be recited by those who did not even know the meaning of the word “fronded"! It is the poet, not the explorer or the geographer, who makes the whole round world his own.

6

After all," as the brilliant and melancholy Rufus Choate said, "a book is the only immortality; " and sometimes when a book is attacked and even denounced, its destiny of fame is only confirmed. Thus the vivacious and cheery Pope, Pio Nono, when asked by a too daring author to help on his latest publication, suggested that he could only aid it by putting it in the Index Expurgatorius. Yet if a book is to be left unread at last, the fault must ultimately rest on the author, even as the brilliant Lady Eastlake complained, when she wrote of modern English novelists, "Things are written now to be read once, and no more; that is, they are read as often as they deserve. A book in old times took five years to write and was read five hundred times by five hundred people. Now it is written in three months, and read once by five hundred thousand people. That's the proper proportion."

Thomas Wentworth Higginson.

[blocks in formation]
[merged small][merged small][ocr errors]

THE COMMON LOT.1

Such familiarity of address on the part of Wright's head draughtsman had long annoyed Hart, but this morning, instead of nodding curtly, he replied briskly,— "Hello, Cookey!"

The draughtsman winked at his neighbor and thrust out an elbow at a derisive angle, as he laid himself down on the linen plan he was carefully inking in. The man next to him snickered, and the stenographer just outside the door smiled. An office joke was in the air.

"Mr. Hart looks as though something good had happened to him," the stenographer remarked in a mincing tone. "Perhaps some more of his folks have

died and remembered him in their wills."

But Cook dismissed the subject by calling out to one of the men, "Say, Ed, come over here and tell me what you were trying to do with this old hencoop."

He might take privileges with the august Jackson Hart, whose foreign training had rather oppressed the office force at times; but he would not allow Gracie Bellows, the stenographer, to "mix" in his joke.

Cook was a spare, black-haired little man, with beady brown eyes, like a squirrel's. He was a product of Wright's Chicago office, having worked his way to the practical headship of the force. Although he permitted himself his little

1 Copyright, 1903, by ROBERT HERRICK.

fling at Hart, he was the young architect's warmest admirer, approving even those magnificent palaces of the French Renaissance type which the Beaux Arts man put forth during the first months of his connection with the firm.

The little man, who was as sharp as one of his own India ink lines, could see that Hart had something on his mind, and he was curious, in all friendliness, to find out what it was. But Hart did not emerge from his little box of an office for several hours. Then he sauntered by Cook's table, pausing to look out of the window while he abstractedly lighted a cigarette.

Presently the stenographer came up to Hart and said:

"Has the old man wired anything new about his plans?"

"You'll have to ask Miss Bellows." "He said he'd be here next Wednesday or Thursday at the latest."

The draughtsman stared hard at Hart, wondering what was in the man's mind. But he made no answer to the last remark, and presently Hart sauntered to the next window.

As Hart well knew, Graves was waiting to close that arrangement which he had proposed for building an apartment house. The architect had intended to look up the Canostota specifications before he went further with Graves, but he had been distracted by other matters.

Jackson Hart was not given to undue speculation over matters of conduct. He had a serviceable code of business morals, which hitherto had met all the demands

"Mr. Graves is out there and wants to see you particular, Mr. Hart. Shall I show him into your office?" "Ask him to wait," the young archi- of his experience. He called this code tect ordered.

After he had smoked and stared for a few moments longer, he turned to Cook. "What did we specify those I-beams on the Canostota? Were they forty-twos or sixties?"

Without raising his hand from the minute lines of the linen sheet, the draughtsman grunted:

"Don't remember just what. Were n't forty-twos. Nothing less than sixties ever got out of this office, I guess. May be eighties."

"Um," the architect reflected, knocking his cigarette against the table. "It "It makes a difference in the sizes what make they are, doesn't it?"

"It don't make any difference about the weights!" And the draughtsman turned to his linen sheet with a shrug of the shoulders that said, "You ought to know that much!"

"professional etiquette." In this case he was not clear how the code should be applied. The Canostota was not his affair. It was only by the merest accident that he had been sent there that day to help the electricians, and had seen that drill-hole which had led him to question the thickness of the I-beams, about which he might very well have been mistaken. If there were anything wrong with them, it was Wright's business to see that the contractor was properly watched when the steel work was being run through the mill. And he did not feel any special sense of obligation toward Wright, who had never displayed any great confidence in him.

He wanted the contractor's commission, now more than ever, with his engagement to Helen freshly pricking him to look for bread and butter; wanted it all the more because all thought of fight

The architect continued to stare out ing his uncle's will had gone when Helen of the murky window.

[merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small]

had accepted him.

When he rang for the stenographer and told her to show Graves into his office, he had made up his mind. Closing his door, he turned and looked into

the contractor's heavy face with an air of alert determination. He was about to play his own game for the first time, and he felt the man's excitement of it! The two remained shut up in Hart's cubby-hole for over an hour. When Cook had returned from the restaurant in the basement where he lunched, and the other men had taken their hats and coats from the lockers, Hart stepped out of his office and walked across the room to Cook's table. He spread before the draughtsman a fresh sepia sketch, the water scarcely dried on it. It was the front elevation for a house, such a one as is described impressively in the newspapers as "Mr. So-and-So's handsome country residence."

"Now, that's what I call a peach! Cook whistled through his closed teeth, squinting at the sketch admiringly. "Nothing like that residence has come out of this office for a good long time. The old man don't favor houses as a rule. Is this for some magnate?"

"This is n't for the firm," Hart answered.

"Oh!" Cook received the news with evident disappointment. "Just a fancy sketch? "

"Not for a minute! This is my own business. It's for a Mrs. Phillips at Forest Park."

Cook looked again at the elevation of the large house with admiring eyes. If he had ever penetrated beyond the confines of Cook County in the state of Illinois, he might have wondered less at Hart's creation. But he was not familiar with the Loire châteaux, even in photograph, for Wright's taste happened to be early English.

practical man in the office. How would you like to run the new office?"

Cook's manner froze into caution.

66

Oh, I don't know. It's pretty good up here looking after Wright's business." Hart picked up his sketch and turned away.

"I thought you might like the chance. Some of the men I knew in Paris may join me, and I shan't have much trouble in making up a good team."

Then he went out to his luncheon, and when he returned, he shut himself up in his box, stalking by Cook's desk without a word. When he came forth again the day's work was over, and the office force had left. Cook was still dawdling over his table.

"Say, Hart!" he called out to the architect. "I don't want you to have the wrong idea about my refusing that offer of yours. I don't mind letting you know that I ain't fixed like most of the boys. I've got a family to look after, my mother and sister and two kid brothers. It isn't easy for us to pull along on my pay, and I can't afford to take any chances."

"Who's asking you to take chances, Cookey?" Hart answered, mollified at once. Perhaps you might do well by yourself."

66

"You see," Cook explained further, "my sister's being educated to teach, but she's got two years more at the Normal. And Will's just begun high school. Ed's the only earner besides myself in the whole bunch, and what he gets don't count."

Thereupon the architect sat down on the edge of the draughting - table in friendly fashion and talked freely of his

"So you 're going to shake us?" Cook plans. He hinted at the work for Graves asked regretfully.

"Just as soon as I can have a word with Mr. Wright. This is n't the only job I have on hand."

"Is that so?"

"Don't you want to come in? Hart asked abruptly. "I shall want a good

and at his prospects with the railroad.

"I have ten thousand dollars in the bank, anyway. That will keep the office going some time. And I don't mind telling you that I have something at stake, too," he added in a burst of confidence. "I am going to be married."

« PreviousContinue »