Some day I want to talk about my library. It is such a curious collection of old and new books, such a mosaic of learning and fancies and follies, that a glance over it would interest the company. Perhaps I may hereafter give you a talk abut books, but while I am saying a few passing words upon the subject the greatest bibliographical event that ever happened in the book-market of the New World is taking place under our eyes. Here is Mr. Bernard Quaritch just come from his well-known habitat, No. 15 Piccadilly, with such a collection of rare, beautiful, and somewhat expensive volumes as the Western Continent never saw before on the shelves of a bibliopole.

We bookworms are all of us now and then betrayed into an extravagance. The keen tradesmen who tempt us are like the fishermen who dangle a minnow, a frog, or a worm before the perch or pickerel who may be on the lookout for his breakfast. But Mr. Quaritch comes among us like that formidable angler of whom it is said,

His hook he baited with a dragon's tail, And sat upon a rock and bobbed for whale.

The two catalogues which herald his coming are themselves interesting literary documents. One can go out with a few shillings in his pocket, and venture among the books of the first of these catalogues without being ashamed to show himself with no larger furnishing of the means for indulging his tastes,—he will find books enough at comparatively modest prices. But if one feels very rich, so rich that it requires a good deal to frighten him, let him take the other catalogue and see how many books he proposes to add to his library at the prices affixed. Here is a Latin Psalter with the Canticles, from the press of Fust and Schoeffer, the second book issued from their press, the second book printed with a date, that date being 1459. There are only eight copies of this work known to exist; you can have one of them, if so disposed, and if you have change enough in your pocket. Twenty-six thousand two hundred and fifty dollars will make you the happy owner of this precious volume. If this is more than you want to pay, you can have the Gold Gospels of Henry VIII., on purple vellum, for about half the money. There are pages on pages of titles of works any one of which would be a snug little property if turned into money at its catalogue price.

Why will not our multimillionaires look over this catalogue of Mr. Quaritch, and detain some of its treasures on this side of the Atlantic for some of our public libraries? We decant the choicest wines of Europe into our cellars; we ought to be always decanting the precious treasures of her libraries and galleries into our own, as we have opportunity and means. As to the means, there are so many rich people who hardly know what to do with their money that it is well to suggest to them any new useful end to which their superfluity may contribute. I am not in alliance with Mr. Quaritch; in fact, I am afraid of him, for if I stayed a single hour in his library, where I never was but once, and then for fifteen minutes only, I should leave it so much poorer than I entered it that I should be reminded of the picture in the titlepage of Fuller's 'Historie of the Holy Warre,' "We went out full. We returned empty."

—After the teacups were all emptied, the card containing Number Seven's abridged history of two worlds, this and the next, was handed round.

This was all it held:

After all had looked at it, it was passed back to me. "Let The Dictator interpret it," they all said.

This is what I announced as my interpretation:

Two worlds, the higher and the lower, separated by the thinnest of partitions. The lower world is that of questions; the upper world is that of answers. Endless doubt and unrest here below; wondering, admiring, adoring certainty above.—Am I not right?

"You are right," answered Number Seven solemnly. "That is my revelation."

The following poem was found in the sugar-bowl.

I read it to the company. There was much whispering and there were many conjectures as to its authorship, but every Teacup looked innocent, and we separated each with his or her private conviction. I had mine, but I will not mention it.

THE ROSE AND THE FERN.

Lady, life's sweetest lesson wouldst thou learn, Come thou with me to Love's enchanted bower: High overhead the trellised roses burn; Beneath thy feet behold the feathery fern, A leaf without a flower.

What though the rose leaves fall? They still are sweet, And have been lovely in their beauteous prime, While the bare frond seems ever to repeat, "For us no bud, no blossom, wakes to greet The joyous flowering time!"

Heed thou the lesson. Life has leaves to tread And flowers to cherish; summer round thee glows; Wait not till autumn's fading robes are shed, But while its petals still are burning red Gather life's full-blown rose!



VI

Of course the reading of the poem at the end of the last paper has left a deep impression. I strongly suspect that something very much like love-making is going on at our table. A peep under the lid of the sugar-bowl has shown me that there is another poem ready for the company. That receptacle is looked upon with an almost tremulous excitement by more than one of The Teacups. The two Annexes turn towards the mystic urn as if the lots which were to determine their destiny were shut up in it. Number Five, quieter, and not betraying more curiosity than belongs to the sex at all ages, glances at the sugarbowl now and then; looking so like a clairvoyant, that sometimes I cannot help thinking she must be one. There is a sly look about that young Doctor's eyes, which might imply that he knows something about what the silver vessel holds, or is going to hold. The Tutor naturally falls under suspicion, as he is known to have written and published poems. I suppose the Professor and myself have hardly been suspected of writing love-poems; but there is no telling,—there is no telling. Why may not some one of the lady Teacups have played the part of a masculine lover? George Sand, George Eliot, Charles Egbert Craddock, made pretty good men in print. The authoress of "Jane Eyre" was taken for a man by many persons. Can Number Five be masquerading in verse? Or is one of the two Annexes the make believe lover? Or did these girls lay their heads together, and send the poem we had at our last sitting to puzzle the company? It is certain that the Mistress did not write the poem. It is evident that Number Seven, who is so severe in his talk about rhymesters, would not, if he could, make such a fool of himself as to set up for a "poet." Why should not the Counsellor fall in love and write verses? A good many lawyers have been "poets."

Perhaps the next poem, which may be looked for in its proper place, may help us to form a judgment. We may have several verse-writers among us, and if so there will be a good opportunity for the exercise of judgment in distributing their productions among the legitimate claimants. In the mean time, we must not let the love-making and the song-writing interfere with the more serious matters which these papers are expected to contain.

Number Seven's compendious and comprehensive symbolism proved suggestive, as his whimsical notions often do. It always pleases me to take some hint from anything he says when I can, and carry it out in a direction not unlike that of his own remark. I reminded the company of his enigmatical symbol.

You can divide mankind in the same way, I said. Two words, each of two letters, will serve to distinguish two classes of human beings who constitute the principal divisions of mankind. Can any of you tell what those two words are?

"Give me five letters," cried Number Seven, "and I can solve your problem! F-o-o-l-s,—those five letters will give you the first and largest half. For the other fraction"—

Oh, but, said I, I restrict you absolutely to two letters. If you are going to take five, you may as well take twenty or a hundred.

After a few attempts, the company gave it up. The nearest approach to the correct answer was Number Five's guess of Oh and Ah: Oh signifying eternal striving after an ideal, which belongs to one kind of nature; and Ah the satisfaction of the other kind of nature, which rests at ease in what it has attained.

Good! I said to Number Five, but not the answer I am after. The great division between human beings is into the Ifs and the Ases.

"Is the last word to be spelt with one or two s's?" asked the young Doctor.

The company laughed feebly at this question. I answered it soberly. With one s. There are more foolish people among the Ifs than there are among the Ases.

The company looked puzzled, and asked for an explanation.

This is the meaning of those two words as I interpret them: If it were,—if it might be,—if it could be,—if it had been. One portion of mankind go through life always regretting, always whining, always imagining. These are the people whose backbones remain cartilaginous all their lives long, as do those of certain other vertebrate animals,—the sturgeons, for instance. A good many poets must be classed with this group of vertebrates.

As it is,—this is the way in which the other class of people look at the conditions in which they find themselves. They may be optimists or pessimists, they are very largely optimists,—but, taking things just as they find them, they adjust the facts to their wishes if they can; and if they cannot, then they adjust themselves to the facts. I venture to say that if one should count the Ifs and the Ases in the conversation of his acquaintances, he would find the more able and important persons among them—statesmen, generals, men of business—among the Ases, and the majority of the conspicuous failures among the Ifs. I don't know but this would be as good a test as that of Gideon,—lapping the water or taking it up in the hand. I have a poetical friend whose conversation is starred as thick with ifs as a boiled ham is with cloves. But another friend of mine, a business man, whom I trust in making my investments, would not let me meddle with a certain stock which I fancied, because, as he said, "there are too many ifs in it. As it looks now, I would n't touch it."

I noticed, the other evening, that some private conversation was going on between the Counsellor and the two Annexes. There was a mischievous look about the little group, and I thought they were hatching some plot among them. I did not hear what the English Annex said, but the American girl's voice was sharper, and I overheard what sounded to me like, "It is time to stir up that young Doctor." The Counsellor looked very knowing, and said that he would find a chance before long. I was rather amused to see how readily he entered into the project of the young people. The fact is, the Counsellor is young for his time of life; for he already betrays some signs of the change referred to in that once familiar street song, which my friend, the great American surgeon, inquired for at the music-shops under the title, as he got it from the Italian minstrel,

"Silva tredi mondi goo."

I saw, soon after this, that the Counsellor was watching his chance to "stir up the young Doctor."

It does not follow, because our young Doctor's bald spot is slower in coming than he could have wished, that he has not had time to form many sound conclusions in the calling to which he has devoted himself Vesalius, the father of modern descriptive anatomy, published his great work on that subject before he was thirty. Bichat, the great anatomist and physiologist, who died near the beginning of this century, published his treatise, which made a revolution in anatomy and pathology, at about the same age; dying soon after he had reached the age of thirty. So, possibly the Counsellor may find that he has "stirred up" a young man who, can take care of his own head, in case of aggressive movements in its direction.

"Well, Doctor," the Counsellor began, "how are stocks in the measles market about these times? Any corner in bronchitis? Any syndicate in the vaccination business?" All this playfully.

"I can't say how it is with other people's patients; most of my families are doing very well without my help, at this time."

"Do tell me, Doctor, how many families you own. I have heard it said that some of our fellow-citizens have two distinct families, but you speak as if you had a dozen."

"I have, but not so large a number as I should like. I could take care of fifteen or twenty more without: having to work too hard."

"Why, Doctor, you are as bad as a Mormon. What do you mean by calling certain families yours?"

"Don't you speak about my client? Don't your clients call you their lawyer? Does n't your baker, does n't your butcher, speak of the families he supplies as his families?"

"To be sure, yes, of course they do; but I had a notion that a man had as many doctors as he had organs to be doctored."

"Well, there is some truth in that; but did you think the old-fashioned family doctor was extinct, a fossil like the megatherium?"

"Why, yes, after the recent experience of a friend of mine, I did begin to think that there would soon be no such personage left as that same old-fashioned family doctor. Shall I tell you what that experience was?"

The young Doctor said he should be mightily pleased to hear it. He was going to be one of those old-fogy practitioners himself.

"I don't know," the Counsellor said, "whether my friend got all the professional terms of his story correctly, nor whether I have got them from him without making any mistakes; but if I do make blunders in some of the queer names, you can correct me. This is my friend's story:

"My family doctor," he said, "was a very sensible man, educated at a school where they professed to teach all the specialties, but not confining himself to any one branch of medical practice. Surgical practice he did not profess to meddle with, and there were some classes of patients whom he was willing to leave to the female physician. But throughout the range of diseases not requiring exceptionally skilled manual interference, his education had authorized him to consider himself, and he did consider himself, qualified to undertake the treatment of all ordinary cases—It so happened that my young wife was one of those uneasy persons who are never long contented with their habitual comforts and blessings, but always trying to find something a little better, something newer, at any rate. I was getting to be near fifty years old, and it happened to me, as it not rarely does to people at about that time of life, that my hair began to fall out. I spoke of it to my doctor, who smiled, said it was a part of the process of reversed evolution, but might be retarded a little, and gave me a prescription. I did not find any great effect from it, and my wife would have me go to a noted dermatologist. The distinguished specialist examined my denuded scalp with great care. He looked at it through a strong magnifier. He examined the bulb of a fallen hair in a powerful microscope. He deliberated for a while, and then said, 'This is a case of alopecia. It may perhaps be partially remedied. I will give you a prescription.' Which he did, and told me to call again in a fortnight. At the end of three months I had called six times, and each time got a new recipe, and detected no difference in the course of my 'alopecia.' After I had got through my treatment, I showed my recipes to my family physician; and we found that three of them were the same he had used, familiar, old-fashioned remedies, and the others were taken from a list of new and little-tried prescriptions mentioned in one of the last medical journals, which was lying on the old doctor's table. I might as well have got no better under his charge, and should have got off much cheaper.

"The next trouble I had was a little redness of the eyes, for which my doctor gave me a wash; but my wife would have it that I must see an oculist. So I made four visits to an oculist, and at the last visit the redness was nearly gone,—as it ought to have been by that time. The specialist called my complaint conjunctivitis, but that did not make it feel any better nor get well any quicker. If I had had a cataract or any grave disease of the eye, requiring a nice operation on that delicate organ, of course I should have properly sought the aid of an expert, whose eye, hand, and judgment were trained to that special business; but in this case I don't doubt that my family doctor would have done just as well as the expert. However, I had to obey orders, and my wife would have it that I should entrust my precious person only to the most skilful specialist in each department of medical practice.

"In the course of the year I experienced a variety of slight indispositions. For these I was auriscoped by an aurist, laryngoscoped by a laryngologist, ausculted by a stethoscopist, and so on, until a complete inventory of my organs was made out, and I found that if I believed all these searching inquirers professed to have detected in my unfortunate person, I could repeat with too literal truth the words of the General Confession, 'And there is no health in us.' I never heard so many hard names in all my life. I proved to be the subject of a long catalogue of diseases, and what maladies I was not manifestly guilty of I was at least suspected of harboring. I was handed along all the way from alopecia, which used to be called baldness, to zoster, which used to be known as shingles. I was the patient of more than a dozen specialists. Very pleasant persons, many of them, but what a fuss they made about my trifling incommodities! 'Please look at that photograph. See if there is a minute elevation under one eye.'

"'On which side?' I asked him, for I could not be sure there was anything different on one side from what I saw on the other.

"'Under the left eye. I called it a pimple; the specialist called it acne. Now look at this photograph. It was taken after my acne had been three months under treatment. It shows a little more distinctly than in the first photograph, does n't it?'

"'I think it does,' I answered. 'It does n't seem to me that you gained a great deal by leaving your customary adviser for the specialist.'

"'Well,' my friend continued, 'following my wife's urgent counsel, I kept on, as I told you, for a whole year with my specialists, going from head to foot, and tapering off with a chiropodist. I got a deal of amusement out of their contrivances and experiments. Some of them lighted up my internal surfaces with electrical or other illuminating apparatus. Thermometers, dynamometers, exploring-tubes, little mirrors that went half-way down to my stomach, tuning-forks, ophthalmoscopes, percussion-hammers, single and double stethoscopes, speculums, sphygmometers,—such a battery of detective instruments I had never imagined. All useful, I don't doubt; but at the end of the year I began to question whether I should n't have done about as well to stick to my long tried practitioner. When the bills for 'professional services' came in, and the new carpet had to be given up, and the old bonnet trimmed over again, and the sealskin sack remained a vision, we both agreed, my wife and I, that we would try to get along without consulting specialists, except in such cases as our family physician considered to be beyond his skill.'"

The Counsellor's story of his friend's experiences seemed to please the young Doctor very much. It "stirred him up," but in an agreeable way; for, as he said, he meant to devote himself to family practice, and not to adopt any limited class of cases as a specialty. I liked his views so well that I should have been ready to adopt them as my own, if they had been challenged.

The young Doctor discourses.

"I am very glad," he said, "that we have a number of practitioners among us who confine themselves to the care of single organs and their functions. I want to be able to consult an oculist who has done nothing but attend to eyes long enough to know all that is known about their diseases and their treatment,—skilful enough to be trusted with the manipulation of that delicate and most precious organ. I want an aurist who knows all about the ear and what can be done for its disorders. The maladies of the larynx are very ticklish things to handle, and nobody should be trusted to go behind the epiglottis who has not the tactus eruditus. And so of certain other particular classes of complaints. A great city must have a limited number of experts, each a final authority, to be appealed to in cases where the family physician finds himself in doubt. There are operations which no surgeon should be willing to undertake unless he has paid a particular, if not an exclusive, attention to the cases demanding such operations. All this I willingly grant.

"But it must not be supposed that we can return to the methods of the old Egyptians—who, if my memory serves me correctly, had a special physician for every part of the body—without falling into certain errors and incurring certain liabilities.

"The specialist is much like other people engaged in lucrative business. He is apt to magnify his calling, to make much of any symptom which will bring a patient within range of his battery of remedies. I found a case in one of our medical journals, a couple of years ago, which illustrates what I mean. Dr. of Philadelphia, had a female patient with a crooked nose,—deviated septum, if our young scholars like that better. She was suffering from what the doctor called reflex headache. She had been to an oculist, who found that the trouble was in her eyes. She went from him to a gynecologist, who considered her headache as owing to causes for which his specialty had the remedies. How many more specialists would have appropriated her, if she had gone the rounds of them all, I dare not guess; but you remember the old story of the siege, in which each artisan proposed means of defence which he himself was ready to furnish. Then a shoemaker said, 'Hang your walls with new boots.'

"Human nature is the same with medical specialists as it was with ancient cordwainers, and it is too possible that a hungry practitioner may be warped by his interest in fastening on a patient who, as he persuades himself, comes under his medical jurisdiction. The specialist has but one fang with which to seize and bold his prey, but that fang is a fearfully long and sharp canine. Being confined to a narrow field of observation and practice, he is apt to give much of his time to curious study, which may be magnifique, but is not exactly la guerre against the patient's malady. He divides and subdivides, and gets many varieties of diseases, in most respects similar. These he equips with new names, and thus we have those terrific nomenclatures which are enough to frighten the medical student, to say nothing of the sufferers staggering under this long catalogue of local infirmities. The 'old-fogy' doctor, who knows the family tendencies of his patient, who 'understands his constitution,' will often treat him better than the famous specialist, who sees him for the first time, and has to guess at many things 'the old doctor' knows from his previous experience with the same patient and the family to which he belongs.

"It is a great luxury to practise as a specialist in almost any class of diseases. The special practitioner has his own hours, hardly needs a night-bell, can have his residence out of the town in which he exercises his calling, in short, lives like a gentleman; while the hard-worked general practitioner submits to a servitude more exacting than that of the man who is employed in his stable or in his kitchen. That is the kind of life I have made up my mind to."

The teaspoons tinkled all round the table. This was the usual sign of approbation, instead of the clapping of hands.

The young Doctor paused, and looked round among The Teacups. "I beg your pardon," he said, "for taking up so much of your time with medicine. It is a subject that a good many persons, especially ladies, take an interest in and have a curiosity about, but I have no right to turn this tea-table into a lecture platform."

"We should like to hear you talk longer about it," said the English Annex. "One of us has thought of devoting herself to the practice of medicine. Would you lecture to us; if you were a professor in one of the great medical schools?"

"Lecture to students of your sex? Why not, I should like to know? I don't think it is the calling for which the average woman is especially adapted, but my teacher got a part of his medical education from a lady, Madame Lachapelle; and I don't see why, if one can learn from a woman, he may not teach a woman, if he knows enough."

"We all like a little medical talk now and then," said Number Five, "and we are much obliged to you for your discourse. You are specialist enough to take care of a sprained ankle, I suppose, are you not?"

"I hope I should be equal to that emergency," answered the young Doctor; "but I trust you are not suffering from any such accident?"

"No," said Number Five, "but there is no telling what may happen. I might slip, and get a sprain or break a sinew, or something, and I should like to know that there is a practitioner at hand to take care of my injury. I think I would risk myself in your bands, although you are not a specialist. Would you venture to take charge of the case?"

"Ah, my dear lady," he answered gallantly, "the risk would be in the other direction. I am afraid it would be safer for your doctor if he were an older man than I am."

This is the first clearly, indisputably sentimental outbreak which has happened in conversation at our table. I tremble to think what will come of it; for we have several inflammable elements in our circle, and a spark like this is liable to light on any one or two of them.

I was not sorry that this medical episode came in to vary the usual course of talk at our table. I like to have one—of an intelligent company, who knows anything thoroughly, hold the floor for a time, and discourse upon the subject which chiefly engages his daily thoughts and furnishes his habitual occupation. It is a privilege to meet such a person now and then, and let him have his full swing. But because there are "professionals" to whom we are willing to listen as oracles, I do not want to see everybody who is not a "professional" silenced or snubbed, if he ventures into any field of knowledge which he has not made especially his own. I like to read Montaigne's remarks about doctors, though he never took a medical degree. I can even enjoy the truth in the sharp satire of Voltaire on the medical profession. I frequently prefer the remarks I hear from the pew after the sermon to those I have just been hearing from the pulpit. There are a great many things which I never expect to comprehend, but which I desire very much to apprehend. Suppose that our circle of Teacups were made up of specialists,—experts in various departments. I should be very willing that each one should have his innings at the proper time, when the company were ready for him. But the time is coming when everybody will know something about every thing. How can one have the illustrated magazines, the "Popular Science Monthly," the Psychological journals, the theological periodicals, books on all subjects, forced on his attention, in their own persons, so to speak, or in the reviews which analyze and pass judgment upon them, without getting some ideas which belong to many provinces of human intelligence? The air we breathe is made up of four elements, at least: oxygen, nitrogen, carbonic acid gas, and knowledge. There is something quite delightful to witness in the absorption and devotion of a genuine specialist. There is a certain sublimity in that picture of the dying scholar in Browning's "A Grammarian's Funeral:"—

"So with the throttling hands of death at strife, Ground he at grammar; Still, through the rattle, parts of speech were rife; While he could stammer He settled Hoti's business—let it be— Properly based Oun Gave us the doctrine of the enclitic De, Dead from the waist down."

A genuine enthusiasm, which will never be satisfied until it has pumped the well dry at the bottom of which truth is lying, always excites our interest, if not our admiration.

One of the pleasantest of our American writers, whom we all remember as Ik Marvel, and greet in his more recent appearance as Donald Grant Mitchell, speaks of the awkwardness which he feels in offering to the public a "panoramic view of British writers in these days of specialists,—when students devote half a lifetime to the analysis of the works of a single author, and to the proper study of a single period."

He need not have feared that his connected sketches of "English Lands, Letters and Kings" would be any less welcome because they do not pretend to fill up all the details or cover all the incidents they hint in vivid outline. How many of us ever read or ever will read Drayton's "Poly-Olbion?" Twenty thousand long Alexandrines are filled with admirable descriptions of scenery, natural productions, and historical events, but how many of us in these days have time to read and inwardly digest twenty thousand Alexandrine verses? I fear that the specialist is apt to hold his intelligent reader or hearer too cheap. So far as I have observed in medical specialties, what he knows in addition to the knowledge of the well-taught general practitioner is very largely curious rather than important. Having exhausted all that is practical, the specialist is naturally tempted to amuse himself with the natural history of the organ or function he deals with; to feel as a writing-master does when he sets a copy,—not content to shape the letters properly, but he must add flourishes and fancy figures, to let off his spare energy.

I am beginning to be frightened. When I began these papers, my idea was a very simple and innocent one. Here was a mixed company, of various conditions, as I have already told my readers, who came together regularly, and before they were aware of it formed something like a club or association. As I was the patriarch among them, they gave me the name some of you may need to be reminded of; for as these reports are published at intervals, you may not remember the fact that I am what The Teacups have seen fit to call The Dictator.

Now, what did I expect when I began these papers, and what is it that has begun to frighten me?

I expected to report grave conversations and light colloquial passages of arms among the members of the circle. I expected to hear, perhaps to read, a paper now and then. I expected to have, from time to time, a poem from some one of The Teacups, for I felt sure there must be among them one or more poets,—Teacups of the finer and rarer translucent kind of porcelain, to speak metaphorically.

Out of these conversations and written contributions I thought I might make up a readable series of papers; a not wholly unwelcome string of recollections, anticipations, suggestions, too often perhaps repetitions, that would be to the twilight what my earlier series had been to the morning.

I hoped also that I should come into personal relations with my old constituency, if I may call my nearer friends, and those more distant ones who belong to my reading parish, by that name. It is time that I should. I received this blessed morning—I am telling the literal truth—a highly flattering obituary of myself in the shape of an extract from "Le National" of the 10th of February last. This is a bi-weekly newspaper, published in French, in the city of Plattsburg, Clinton County, New York. I am occasionally reminded by my unknown friends that I must hurry up their autograph, or make haste to copy that poem they wish to have in the author's own handwriting, or it will be too late; but I have never before been huddled out of the world in this way. I take this rather premature obituary as a hint that, unless I come to some arrangement with my well-meaning but insatiable correspondents, it would be as well to leave it in type, for I cannot bear much longer the load they lay upon me. I will explain myself on this point after I have told my readers what has frightened me.

I am beginning to think this room where we take our tea is more like a tinder-box than a quiet and safe place for "a party in a parlor." It is true that there are at least two or three incombustibles at our table, but it looks to me as if the company might pair off before the season is over, like the crew of Her Majesty's ship the Mantelpiece,—three or four weddings clear our whole table of all but one or two of the impregnables. The poem we found in the sugar-bowl last week first opened my eyes to the probable state of things. Now, the idea of having to tell a love-story,—perhaps two or three love-stories,—when I set out with the intention of repeating instructive, useful, or entertaining discussions, naturally alarms me. It is quite true that many things which look to me suspicious may be simply playful. Young people (and we have several such among The Teacups) are fond of make-believe courting when they cannot have the real thing,—"flirting," as it used to be practised in the days of Arcadian innocence, not the more modern and more questionable recreation which has reached us from the home of the cicisbeo. Whatever comes of it, I shall tell what I see, and take the consequences.

But I am at this moment going to talk in my own proper person to my own particular public, which, as I find by my correspondence, is a very considerable one, and with which I consider myself in exceptionally pleasant relations.

I have read recently that Mr. Gladstone receives six hundred letters a day. Perhaps he does not receive six hundred letters every day, but if he gets anything like half that number daily, what can he do with them? There was a time when he was said to answer all his correspondents. It is understood, I think, that he has given up doing so in these later days.

I do not pretend that I receive six hundred or even sixty letters a day, but I do receive a good many, and have told the public of the fact from time to time, under the pressure of their constantly increasing exertions. As it is extremely onerous, and is soon going to be impossible, for me to keep up the wide range of correspondence which has become a large part of my occupation, and tends to absorb all the vital force which is left me, I wish to enter into a final explanation with the well-meaning but merciless taskmasters who have now for many years been levying their daily tax upon me. I have preserved thousands of their letters, and destroyed a very large number, after answering most of them. A few interesting chapters might be made out of the letters I have kept,—not only such as are signed by the names of well-known personages, but many from unknown friends, of whom I had never heard before and have never heard since. A great deal of the best writing the languages of the world have ever known has been committed to leaves that withered out of sight before a second sunlight had fallen upon them. I have had many letters I should have liked to give the public, had their nature admitted of their being offered to the world. What straggles of young ambition, finding no place for its energies, or feeling its incapacity to reach the ideal towards which it was striving! What longings of disappointed, defeated fellow-mortals, trying to find a new home for themselves in the heart of one whom they have amiably idealized! And oh, what hopeless efforts of mediocrities and inferiorities, believing in themselves as superiorities, and stumbling on through limping disappointments to prostrate failure! Poverty comes pleading, not for charity, for the most part, but imploring us to find a purchaser for its unmarketable wares. The unreadable author particularly requests us to make a critical examination of his book, and report to him whatever may be our verdict,—as if he wanted anything but our praise, and that very often to be used in his publisher's advertisements.

But what does not one have to submit to who has become the martyr—the Saint Sebastian—of a literary correspondence! I will not dwell on the possible impression produced on a sensitive nature by reading one's own premature obituary, as I have told you has been my recent experience. I will not stop to think whether the urgent request for an autograph by return post, in view of the possible contingencies which might render it the last one was ever to write, is pleasing or not. At threescore and twenty one must expect such hints of what is like to happen before long. I suppose, if some near friend were to watch one who was looking over such a pressing letter, he might possibly see a slight shadow flit over the reader's features, and some such dialogue might follow as that between Othello and Iago, after "this honest creature" has been giving breath to his suspicions about Desdemona:

"I see this hath a little dash'd your spirits. Not a jot, not a jot. ............. "My lord, I see you're moved."

And a little later the reader might, like Othello, complain,

"I have a pain upon my forehead here."

Nothing more likely. But, for myself, I have grown callous to all such allusions. The repetition of the Scriptural phrase for the natural term of life is so frequent that it wears out one's sensibilities.

But how many charming and refreshing letters I have received! How often I have felt their encouragement in moments of doubt and depression, such as the happiest temperaments must sometimes experience!

If the time comes when to answer all my kind unknown friends, even by dictation, is impossible, or more than I feel equal to, I wish to refer any of those who may feel disappointed at not receiving an answer to the following general acknowledgments:

I. I am always grateful for any attention which shows me that I am kindly remembered.—II. Your pleasant message has been read to me, and has been thankfully listened to.—III. Your book (your essay) (your poem) has reached me safely, and has received all the respectful attention to which it seemed entitled. It would take more than all the time I have at my disposal to read all the printed matter and all the manuscripts which are sent to me, and you would not ask me to attempt the impossible. You will not, therefore, expect me to express a critical opinion of your work.—IV. I am deeply sensible to your expressions of personal attachment to me as the author of certain writings which have brought me very near to you, in virtue of some affinity in our ways of thought and moods of feeling. Although I cannot keep up correspondences with many of my readers who seem to be thoroughly congenial with myself, let them be assured that their letters have been read or heard with peculiar gratification, and are preserved as precious treasures.

I trust that after this notice no correspondent will be surprised to find his or her letter thus answered by anticipation; and that if one of the above formulae is the only answer he receives, the unknown friend will remember that he or she is one of a great many whose incessant demands have entirely outrun my power of answering them as fully as the applicants might wish and perhaps expect.

I could make a very interesting volume of the letters I have received from correspondents unknown to the world of authorship, but writing from an instinctive impulse, which many of them say they have long felt and resisted. One must not allow himself to be flattered into an overestimate of his powers because he gets many letters expressing a peculiar attraction towards his books, and a preference of them to those with which he would not have dared to compare his own. Still, if the homo unius libri—the man of one book—choose to select one of our own writing as his favorite volume, it means something,—not much, perhaps; but if one has unlocked the door to the secret entrance of one heart, it is not unlikely that his key may fit the locks of others. What if nature has lent him a master key? He has found the wards and slid back the bolt of one lock; perhaps he may have learned the secret of others. One success is an encouragement to try again. Let the writer of a truly loving letter, such as greets one from time to time, remember that, though he never hears a word from it, it may prove one of the best rewards of an anxious and laborious past, and the stimulus of a still aspiring future.

Among the letters I have recently received, none is more interesting than the following. The story of Helen Keller, who wrote it, is told in the well-known illustrated magazine called "The Wide Awake," in the number for July, 1888. For the account of this little girl, now between nine and ten years old, and other letters of her writing, I must refer to the article I have mentioned. It is enough to say that she is deaf and dumb and totally blind. She was seven years old when her teacher, Miss Sullivan, under the direction of Mr. Anagnos, at the Blind Asylum at South Boston, began her education. A child fuller of life and happiness it would be hard to find. It seems as if her soul was flooded with light and filled with music that had found entrance to it through avenues closed to other mortals. It is hard to understand how she has learned to deal with abstract ideas, and so far to supplement the blanks left by the senses of sight and hearing that one would hardly think of her as wanting in any human faculty. Remember Milton's pathetic picture of himself, suffering from only one of poor little Helen's deprivations:

"Not to me returns Day, or the sweet approach of even or morn, Or sight of vernal bloom, or summer's rose, Or flocks, or herds, or human face divine; But cloud instead, and ever-during dark Surrounds me, from the cheerful ways of men Cut off, and for the book of knowledge fair Presented with a universal blank Of Nature's works, to me expunged and rased, And wisdom at one entrance quite shut out."

Surely for this loving and lovely child does

"the celestial Light Shine inward."

Anthropologist, metaphysician, most of all theologian, here is a lesson which can teach you much that you will not find in your primers and catechisms. Why should I call her "poor little Helen"? Where can you find a happier child?

SOUTH BOSTON, MASS., March 1, 1890.

DEAR KIND POET,—I have thought of you many times since that bright Sunday when I bade you goodbye, and I am going to write you a letter because I love you. I am sorry that you have no little children to play with sometimes, but I think you are very happy with your books, and your many, many friends. On Washington's Birthday a great many people came here to see the little blind children, and I read for them from your poems, and showed them some beautiful shells which came from a little island near Palos. I am reading a very sad story called "Little Jakey." Jakey was the sweetest little fellow you can imagine, but he was poor and blind. I used to think, when I was small and before I could read, that everybody was always happy, and at first it made me very sad to know about pain and great sorrow; but now I know that we could never learn to be brave and patient, if there were only joy in the world. I am studying about insects in Zoology, and I have learned many things about butterflies. They do not make honey for us, like the bees, but many of them are as beautiful as the flowers they light upon, and they always delight the hearts of little children. They live a gay life, flitting from flower to flower, sipping the drops of honey-dew, without a thought for the morrow. They are just like little boys and girls when they forget books and studies, and run away to the woods and the fields to gather wild-flowers, or wade in the ponds for fragrant lilies, happy in the bright sunshine. If my little sister comes to Boston next June, will you let me bring her to see you? She is a lovely baby and I am sure you will love [her]. Now I must tell my gentle poet good-bye, for I have a letter to write home before I go to bed. From your loving little friend, HELEN A. KELLER.

The reading of this letter made many eyes glisten, and a dead silence hushed the whole circle. All at once Delilah, our pretty table-maid, forgot her place,—what business had she to be listening to our conversation and reading?—and began sobbing, just as if she had been a lady. She could n't help it, she explained afterwards,—she had a little blind sister at the asylum, who had told her about Helen's reading to the children.

It was very awkward, this breaking-down of our pretty Delilah, for one girl crying will sometimes set off a whole row of others,—it is as hazardous as lighting one cracker in a bunch. The two Annexes hurried out their pocket-handkerchiefs, and I almost expected a semi-hysteric cataclysm. At this critical moment Number Five called Delilah to her, looked into her face with those calm eyes of hers, and spoke a few soft words. Was Number Five forgetful, too? Did she not remember the difference of their position? I suppose so. But she quieted the poor handmaiden as simply and easily as a nursing mother quiets her unweaned baby. Why are we not all in love with Number Five? Perhaps we are. At any rate, I suspect the Professor. When we all get quiet, I will touch him up about that visit she promised to make to his laboratory.

I got a chance at last to speak privately with him.

"Did Number Five go to meet you in your laboratory, as she talked of doing?"

"Oh, yes, of course she did,—why, she said she would!"

"Oh, to be sure. Do tell me what she wanted in your laboratory."

"She wanted me to burn a diamond for her."

"Burn a diamond! What was that for? Because Cleopatra swallowed a pearl?"

"No, nothing of that kind. It was a small stone, and had a flaw in it. Number Five said she did n't want a diamond with a flaw in it, and that she did want to see how a diamond would burn."

"Was that all that happened?"

"That was all. She brought the two Annexes with her, and I gave my three visitors a lecture on carbon, which they seemed to enjoy very much."

I looked steadily in the Professor's face during the reading of the following poem. I saw no questionable look upon it,—but he has a remarkable command of his features. Number Five read it with a certain archness of expression, as if she saw all its meaning, which I think some of the company did not quite take in. They said they must read it slowly and carefully. Somehow, "I like you" and "I love you" got a little mixed, as they heard it. It was not Number Five's fault, for she read it beautifully, as we all agreed, and as I knew she would when I handed it to her.

I LIKE YOU AND I LOVE YOU.

I LIKE YOU met I LOVE YOU, face to face; The path was narrow, and they could not pass. I LIKE YOU smiled; I LOVE YOU cried, Alas! And so they halted for a little space.

"Turn thou and go before," I LOVE YOU said, "Down the green pathway, bright with many a flower Deep in the valley, lo! my bridal bower Awaits thee." But I LIKE YOU shook his head.

Then while they lingered on the span-wide shelf That shaped a pathway round the rocky ledge, I LIKE YOU bared his icy dagger's edge, And first he slew I LOVE YOU,—then himself.



VII

There is no use in burdening my table with those letters of inquiry as to where our meetings are held, and what are the names of the persons designated by numbers, or spoken of under the titles of the Professor, the Tutor, and so forth. It is enough that you are aware who I am, and that I am known at the tea-table as The Dictator. Theatrical "asides" are apt to be whispered in a pretty loud voice, and the persons who ought not to have any idea of what is said are expected to be reasonably hard of bearing. If I named all The Teacups, some of them might be offended. If any of my readers happen to be able to identify any one Teacup by some accidental circumstance,—say, for instance, Number Five, by the incident of her burning the diamond,—I hope they will keep quiet about it. Number Five does n't want to be pointed out in the street as the extravagant person who makes use of such expensive fuel, for the story would soon grow to a statement that she always uses diamonds, instead of cheaper forms of carbon, to heat her coffee with. So with other members of the circle. The "Cracked Teacup," Number Seven, would not, perhaps, be pleased to recognize himself under that title. I repeat it, therefore, Do not try to identify the individual Teacups. You will not get them right; or, if you do, you may too probably make trouble. How is it possible that I can keep up my freedom of intercourse with you all if you insist on bellowing my "asides" through a speaking-trumpet? Besides, you cannot have failed to see that there are strong symptoms of the springing up of delicate relations between some of our number. I told you how it would be. It did not require a prophet to foresee that the saucy intruder who, as Mr. Willis wrote, and the dear dead girls used to sing, in our young days,

"Taketh every form of air, And every shape of earth, And comes unbidden everywhere, Like thought's mysterious birth,"

would pop his little curly head up between one or more pairs of Teacups. If you will stop these questions, then, I will go on with my reports of what was said and done at our meetings over the teacups.

Of all things beautiful in this fair world, there is nothing so enchanting to look upon, to dream about, as the first opening of the flower of young love. How closely the calyx has hidden the glowing leaves in its quiet green mantle! Side by side, two buds have been tossing jauntily in the breeze, often brought very near to each other, sometimes touching for a moment, with a secret thrill in their close-folded heart-leaves, it may be, but still the cool green sepals shutting tight over the burning secret within. All at once a morning ray touches one of the two buds, and the point of a blushing petal betrays the imprisoned and swelling blossom.

—Oh, no, I did not promise a love-story. There may be a little sentiment now and then, but these papers are devoted chiefly to the opinions, prejudices, fancies, whims, of myself, The Dictator, and others of The Teacups who have talked or written for the general benefit of the company.

Here are some of the remarks I made the other evening on the subject of Intellectual Over-Feeding and its consequence, Mental Dyspepsia. There is something positively appalling in the amount of printed matter yearly, monthly, weekly, daily, secreted by that great gland of the civilized organism, the press. I need not dilate upon this point, for it is brought home to every one of you who ever looks into a bookstore or a public library. So large is the variety of literary products continually coming forward, forced upon the attention of the reader by stimulating and suggestive titles, commended to his notice by famous names, recasting old subjects and developing and illustrating new ones, that the mind is liable to be urged into a kind of unnatural hunger, leading to a repletion which is often followed by disgust and disturbed nervous conditions as its natural consequence.

It has long been a favorite rule with me, a rule which I have never lost sight of, however imperfectly I have carried it out: Try to know enough of a wide range of subjects to profit by the conversation of intelligent persons of different callings and various intellectual gifts and acquisitions. The cynic will paraphrase this into a shorter formula: Get a smattering in every sort of knowledge. I must therefore add a second piece of advice: Learn to hold as of small account the comments of the cynic. He is often amusing, sometimes really witty, occasionally, without meaning it, instructive; but his talk is to profitable conversation what the stone is to the pulp of the peach, what the cob is to the kernels on an ear of Indian corn. Once more: Do not be bullied out of your common sense by the specialist; two to one, he is a pedant, with all his knowledge and valuable qualities, and will "cavil on the ninth part of a hair," if it will give him a chance to show off his idle erudition.

I saw attributed to me, the other day, the saying, "Know something about everything, and everything about something." I am afraid it does not belong to me, but I will treat it as I used to treat a stray boat which came through my meadow, floating down the Housatonic,—get hold of it and draw it ashore, and hold on to it until the owner turns up. If this precept is used discreetly, it is very serviceable; but it is as well to recognize the fact that you cannot know something about everything in days like these of intellectual activity, of literary and scientific production. We all feel this. It makes us nervous to see the shelves of new books, many of which we feel as if we ought to read, and some among them to study. We must adopt some principle of selection among the books outside of any particular branch which we may have selected for study. I have often been asked what books I would recommend for a course of reading. I have always answered that I had a great deal rather take advice than give it. Fortunately, a number of scholars have furnished lists of books to which the inquirer may be directed. But the worst of it is that each student is in need of a little library specially adapted to his wants. Here is a young man writing to me from a Western college, and wants me to send him a list of the books which I think would be most useful to him. He does not send me his intellectual measurements, and he might as well have sent to a Boston tailor for a coat, without any hint of his dimensions in length, breadth, and thickness.

But instead of laying down rules for reading, and furnishing lists of the books which should be read in order, I will undertake the much humbler task of giving a little quasi-medical advice to persons, young or old, suffering from book-hunger, book-surfeit, book-nervousness, book-indigestion, book-nausea, and all other maladies which, directly or indirectly, may be traced to books, and to which I could give Greek or Latin names if I thought it worth while.

I have a picture hanging in my library, a lithograph, of which many of my readers may have seen copies. It represents a gray-haired old book-lover at the top of a long flight of steps. He finds himself in clover, so to speak, among rare old editions, books he has longed to look upon and never seen before, rarities, precious old volumes, incunabula, cradle-books, printed while the art was in its infancy,—its glorious infancy, for it was born a giant. The old bookworm is so intoxicated with the sight and handling of the priceless treasures that he cannot bear to put one of the volumes back after he has taken it from the shelf. So there he stands,—one book open in his hands, a volume under each arm, and one or more between his legs,—loaded with as many as he can possibly hold at the same time.

Now, that is just the way in which the extreme form of book-hunger shows itself in the reader whose appetite has become over-developed. He wants to read so many books that he over-crams himself with the crude materials of knowledge, which become knowledge only when the mental digestion has time to assimilate them. I never can go into that famous "Corner Bookstore" and look over the new books in the row before me, as I enter the door, without seeing half a dozen which I want to read, or at least to know something about. I cannot empty my purse of its contents, and crowd my bookshelves with all those volumes. The titles of many of them interest me. I look into one or two, perhaps. I have sometimes picked up a line or a sentence, in these momentary glances between the uncut leaves of a new book, which I have never forgotten. As a trivial but bona fide example, one day I opened a book on duelling. I remember only these words: "Conservons-la, cette noble institution." I had never before seen duelling called a noble institution, and I wish I had taken the name of the book. Book-tasting is not necessarily profitless, but it is very stimulating, and makes one hungry for more than he needs for the nourishment of his thinking-marrow. To feed this insatiable hunger, the abstracts, the reviews, do their best. But these, again, have grown so numerous and so crowded with matter that it is hard to find time to master their contents. We are accustomed, therefore, to look for analyses of these periodicals, and at last we have placed before us a formidable-looking monthly, "The Review of Reviews." After the analyses comes the newspaper notice; and there is still room for the epigram, which sometimes makes short work with all that has gone before on the same subject.

It is just as well to recognize the fact that if one should read day and night, confining himself to his own language, he could not pretend to keep up with the press. He might as well try to race with a locomotive. The first discipline, therefore, is that of despair. If you could stick to your reading day and night for fifty years, what a learned idiot you would become long before the half-century was over! Well, then, there is no use in gorging one's self with knowledge, and no need of self-reproach because one is content to remain more or less ignorant of many things which interest his fellow-creatures. We gain a good deal of knowledge through the atmosphere; we learn a great deal by accidental hearsay, provided we have the mordant in our own consciousness which makes the wise remark, the significant fact, the instructive incident, take hold upon it. After the stage of despair comes the period of consolation. We soon find that we are not so much worse off than most of our neighbors as we supposed. The fractional value of the wisest shows a small numerator divided by an infinite denominator of knowledge.

I made some explanations to The Teacups, the other evening, which they received very intelligently and graciously, as I have no doubt the readers of these reports of mine will receive them. If the reader will turn back to the end of the fourth number of these papers, he will find certain lines entitled, "Cacoethes Scribendi." They were said to have been taken from the usual receptacle of the verses which are contributed by The Teacups, and, though the fact was not mentioned, were of my own composition. I found them in manuscript in my drawer, and as my subject had naturally suggested the train of thought they carried out into extravagance, I printed them. At the same time they sounded very natural, as we say, and I felt as if I had published them somewhere or other before; but I could find no evidence of it, and so I ventured to have them put in type.

And here I wish to take breath for a short, separate paragraph. I have often felt, after writing a line which pleased me more than common, that it was not new, and perhaps was not my own. I have very rarely, however, found such a coincidence in ideas or expression as would be enough to justify an accusation of unconscious plagiarism,—conscious plagiarism is not my particular failing. I therefore say my say, set down my thought, print my line, and do not heed the suspicion that I may not be as original as I supposed, in the passage I have been writing. My experience may be worth something to a modest young writer, and so I have interrupted what I was about to say by intercalating this paragraph.

In this instance my telltale suspicion had not been at fault. I had printed those same lines, years ago, in "The Contributors' Club," to which I have rarely sent any of my prose or verse. Nobody but the editor has noticed the fact, so far as I know. This is consoling, or mortifying, I hardly know which. I suppose one has a right to plagiarize from himself, but he does not want to present his work as fresh from the workshop when it has been long standing in his neighbor's shop-window.

But I have just received a letter from a brother of the late Henry Howard Brownell, the poet of the Bay Fight and the River Fight, in which he quotes a passage from an old book, "A Heroine, Adventures of Cherubina," which might well have suggested my own lines, if I had ever seen it. I have not the slightest recollection of the book or the passage. I think its liveliness and "local color" will make it please the reader, as it pleases me, more than my own more prosaic extravagances:

LINES TO A PRETTY LITTLE MAID OF MAMMA'S.

"If Black Sea, Red Sea, White Sea, ran One tide of ink to Ispahan, If all the geese in Lincoln fens Produced spontaneous well-made pens, If Holland old and Holland new One wondrous sheet of paper grew, And could I sing but half the grace Of half a freckle in thy face, Each syllable I wrote would reach From Inverness to Bognor's beach, Each hair-stroke be a river Rhine, Each verse an equinoctial line!"

"The immediate dismissal of the 'little maid' was the consequence."

I may as well say that our Delilah was not in the room when the last sentence was read.

Readers must be either very good-natured or very careless. I have laid myself open to criticism by more than one piece of negligence, which has been passed over without invidious comment by the readers of my papers. How could I, for instance, have written in my original "copy" for the printer about the fisherman baiting his hook with a giant's tail instead of a dragon's? It is the automatic fellow,—Me—Number-Two of our dual personality,—who does these things, who forgets the message Me—Number—One sends down to him from the cerebral convolutions, and substitutes a wrong word for the right one. I suppose Me—Number—Two will "sass back," and swear that "giant's" was the message which came down from headquarters. He is always doing the wrong thing and excusing himself. Who blows out the gas instead of shutting it off? Who puts the key in the desk and fastens it tight with the spring lock? Do you mean to say that the upper Me, the Me of the true thinking-marrow, the convolutions of the brain, does not know better? Of course he does, and Me-Number-Two is a careless servant, who remembers some old direction, and follows that instead of the one just given.

Number Seven demurred to this, and I am not sure that he is wrong in so doing. He maintains that the automatic fellow always does just what he is told to do. Number Five is disposed to agree with him. We will talk over the question.

But come, now, why should not a giant have a tail as well as a dragon? Linnaeus admitted the homo caudatus into his anthropological catalogue. The human embryo has a very well marked caudal appendage; that is, the vertebral column appears prolonged, just as it is in a young quadruped. During the late session of the Medical Congress at Washington, my friend Dr. Priestley, a distinguished London physician, of the highest character and standing, showed me the photograph of a small boy, some three or four years old, who had a very respectable little tail, which would have passed muster on a pig, and would have made a frog or a toad ashamed of himself. I have never heard what became of the little boy, nor have I looked in the books or journals to find out if there are similar cases on record, but I have no doubt that there are others. And if boys may have this additional ornament to their vertebral columns, why not men? And if men, why not giants? So I may not have made a very bad blunder, after all, and my reader has learned something about the homo caudatus as spoken of by Linnxus, and as shown me in photograph by Dr. Priestley. This child is a candidate for the vacant place of Missing Link.

In accounting for the blunders, and even gross blunders, which, sooner or later, one who writes much is pretty sure to commit, I must not forget the part played by the blind spot or idiotic area in the brain, which I have already described.

The most knowing persons we meet with are sometimes at fault. Nova onania possumus omnes is not a new nor profound axiom, but it is well to remember it as a counterpoise to that other truly American saying of the late Mr. Samuel Patch, "Some things can be done as well as others." Yes, some things, but not all things. We all know men and women who hate to admit their ignorance of anything. Like Talkative in "Pilgrim's Progress," they are ready to converse of "things heavenly or things earthly; things moral or things evangelical; things sacred or things profane; things past or things to come; things foreign or things at home; things more essential or things circumstantial."

Talkative is apt to be a shallow fellow, and to say foolish things about matters he only half understands, and yet he has his place in society. The specialists would grow to be intolerable, were they not counterpoised to some degree by the people of general intelligence. The man who knows too much about one particular subject is liable to become a terrible social infliction. Some of the worst bores (to use plain language) we ever meet with are recognized as experts of high grade in their respective departments. Beware of making so much as a pinhole in the dam that holds back their knowledge. They ride their hobbies without bit or bridle. A poet on Pegasus, reciting his own verses, is hardly more to be dreaded than a mounted specialist.

One of the best offices which women perform for men is that of tasting books for them. They may or may not be profound students,—some of them are; but we do not expect to meet women like Mrs. Somerville, or Caroline Herschel, or Maria Mitchell at every dinner-table or afternoon tea. But give your elect lady a pile of books to look over for you, and she will tell you what they have for her and for you in less time than you would have wasted in stupefying yourself over a single volume.

One of the encouraging signs of the times is the condensed and abbreviated form in which knowledge is presented to the general reader. The short biographies of historic personages, of which within the past few years many have been published, have been a great relief to the large class of readers who want to know something, but not too much, about them.

What refuge is there for the victim who is oppressed with the feeling that there are a thousand new books he ought to read, while life is only long enough for him to attempt to read a hundred? Many readers remember what old Rogers, the poet, said:

"When I hear a new book talked about or have it pressed upon me, I read an old one."

Happy the man who finds his rest in the pages of some favorite classic! I know no reader more to be envied than that friend of mine who for many years has given his days and nights to the loving study of Horace. After a certain period in life, it is always with an effort that we admit a new author into the inner circle of our intimates. The Parisian omnibuses, as I remember them half a century ago,—they may still keep to the same habit, for aught that I know,—used to put up the sign "Complet" as soon as they were full. Our public conveyances are never full until the natural atmospheric pressure of sixteen pounds to the square inch is doubled, in the close packing of the human sardines that fill the all-accommodating vehicles. A new-comer, however well mannered and well dressed, is not very welcome under these circumstances. In the same way, our tables are full of books half-read and books we feel that we must read. And here come in two thick volumes, with uncut leaves, in small type, with many pages, and many lines to a page,—a book that must be read and ought to be read at once. What a relief to hand it over to the lovely keeper of your literary conscience, who will tell you all that you will most care to know about it, and leave you free to plunge into your beloved volume, in which you are ever finding new beauties, and from which you rise refreshed, as if you had just come from the cool waters of Hippocrene! The stream of modern literature represented by the books and periodicals on the crowded counters is a turbulent and clamorous torrent, dashing along among the rocks of criticism, over the pebbles of the world's daily events; trying to make itself seen and heard amidst the hoarse cries of the politicians and the rumbling wheels of traffic. The classic is a still lakelet, a mountain tarn, fed by springs that never fail, its surface never ruffled by storms,—always the same, always smiling a welcome to its visitor. Such is Horace to my friend. To his eye "Lydia, dic per omnes" is as familiar as "Pater noster qui es in caelis" to that of a pious Catholic. "Integer vitae," which he has put into manly English, his Horace opens to as Watt's hymn-book opens to "From all that dwell below the skies." The more he reads, the more he studies his author, the richer are the treasures he finds. And what Horace is to him, Homer, or Virgil, or Dante is to many a quiet reader, sick to death of the unending train of bookmakers.

I have some curious books in my library, a few of which I should like to say something about to The Teacups, when they have no more immediately pressing subjects before them. A library of a few thousand volumes ought always to have some books in it which the owner almost never opens, yet with whose backs he is so well acquainted that he feels as if he knew something of their contents. They are like those persons whom we meet in our daily walks, with whose faces and figures, whose summer and winter garments, whose walking-sticks and umbrellas even, we feel acquainted, and yet whose names, whose business, whose residences, we know nothing about. Some of these books are so formidable in their dimensions, so rusty and crabbed in their aspect, that it takes a considerable amount of courage to attack them.

I will ask Delilah to bring down from my library a very thick, stout volume, bound in parchment, and standing on the lower shelf, next the fireplace. The pretty handmaid knows my books almost as if she were my librarian, and I don't doubt she would have found it if I had given only the name on the back.

Delilah returned presently, with the heavy quarto in her arms. It was a pleasing sight,—the old book in the embrace of the fresh young damsel. I felt, on looking at them, as I did when I followed the slip of a girl who conducted us in the Temple, that ancient building in the heart of London. The long-enduring monuments of the dead do so mock the fleeting presence of the living!

Is n't this book enough to scare any of you? I said, as Delilah dumped it down upon the table. The teacups jumped from their saucers as it thumped on the board. Danielis Georgii Morhofii Polyhistor, Literarius, Philosophicus et Poeticus. Lubecae MDCCXXXIII. Perhaps I should not have ventured to ask you to look at this old volume, if it had not been for the fact that Dr. Johnson mentions Morohof as the author to whom he was specially indebted.—more, I think, than to any other. It is a grand old encyclopaedic summary of all the author knew about pretty nearly everything, full of curious interest, but so strangely mediaeval, so utterly antiquated in most departments of knowledge, that it is hard to believe the volume came from the press at a time when persons whom I well remember were living. Is it possible that the books which have been for me what Morhof was for Dr. Johnson can look like that to the student of the year 1990?

Morhof was a believer in magic and the transmutation of metals. There was always something fascinating to me in the old books of alchemy. I have felt that the poetry of science lost its wings when the last powder of projection had been cast into the crucible, and the fire of the last transmutation furnace went out. Perhaps I am wrong in implying that alchemy is an extinct folly. It existed in New England's early days, as we learn from the Winthrop papers, and I see no reason why gold-making should not have its votaries as well as other popular delusions.

Among the essays of Morhof is one on the "Paradoxes of the Senses." That title brought to mind the recollection of another work I have been meaning to say something about, at some time when you were in the listening mood. The book I refer to is "A Budget of Paradoxes," by Augustus De Morgan. De Morgan is well remembered as a very distinguished mathematician, whose works have kept his name in high honor to the present time. The book I am speaking of was published by his widow, and is largely made up of letters received by him and his comments upon them. Few persons ever read it through. Few intelligent readers ever took it up and laid it down without taking a long draught of its singular and interesting contents. The letters are mostly from that class of persons whom we call "cranks," in our familiar language.

At this point Number Seven interrupted me by calling out, "Give us some of those cranks' letters. A crank is a man who does his own thinking. I had a relation who was called a crank. I believe I have been spoken of as one myself. That is what you have to expect if you invent anything that puts an old machine out of fashion, or solve a problem that has puzzled all the world up to your time. There never was a religion founded but its Messiah was called a crank. There never was an idea started that woke up men out of their stupid indifference but its originator was spoken of as a crank. Do you want to know why that name is given to the men who do most for the world's progress? I will tell you. It is because cranks make all the wheels in all the machinery of the world go round. What would a steam-engine be without a crank? I suppose the first fool that looked on the first crank that was ever made asked what that crooked, queer-looking thing was good for. When the wheels got moving he found out. Tell us something about that book which has so much to say concerning cranks."

Hereupon I requested Delilah to carry back Morhof, and replace him in the wide gap he had left in the bookshelf. She was then to find and bring down the volume I had been speaking of.

Delilah took the wisdom of the seventeenth century in her arms, and departed on her errand. The book she brought down was given me some years ago by a gentleman who had sagaciously foreseen that it was just one of those works which I might hesitate about buying, but should be well pleased to own. He guessed well; the book has been a great source of instruction and entertainment to me. I wonder that so much time and cost should have been expended upon a work which might have borne a title like the Encomium Moriae of Erasmus; and yet it is such a wonderful museum of the productions of the squinting brains belonging to the class of persons commonly known as cranks that we could hardly spare one of its five hundred octavo pages.

Those of us who are in the habit of receiving letters from all sorts of would-be-literary people—letters of inquiry, many of them with reference to matters we are supposed to understand—can readily see how it was that Mr. De Morgan, never too busy to be good-natured with the people who pestered—or amused-him with their queer fancies, received such a number of letters from persons who thought they had made great discoveries, from those who felt that they and their inventions and contrivances had been overlooked, and who sought in his large charity of disposition and great receptiveness a balm for their wounded feelings and a ray of hope for their darkened prospects.

The book before us is made up from papers published in "The Athenaeum," with additions by the author. Soon after opening it we come to names with which we are familiar, the first of these, that of Cornelius Agrippa, being connected with the occult and mystic doctrines dealt with by many of De Morgan's correspondents. But the name most likely to arrest us is that of Giordano Bruno, the same philosopher, heretic, and martyr whose statue has recently been erected in Rome, to the great horror of the Pope and his prelates in the Old World and in the New. De Morgan's pithy account of him will interest the company: "Giordano Bruno was all paradox. He was, as has been said, a vorticist before Descartes, an optimist before Leibnitz, a Copernican before Galileo. It would be easy to collect a hundred strange opinions of his. He was born about 1550, and was roasted alive at Rome, February 17, 1600, for the maintenance and defence of the Holy Church, and the rights and liberties of the same."

Number Seven could not contain himself when the reading had reached this point. He rose from his chair, and tinkled his spoon against the side of his teacup. It may have been a fancy, but I thought it returned a sound which Mr. Richard Briggs would have recognized as implying an organic defect. But Number Seven did not seem to notice it, or, if he did, to mind it.

"Why did n't we all have a chance to help erect that statue?" he cried. "A murdered heretic at the beginning of the seventeenth century, a hero of knowledge in the nineteenth,—I drink to the memory of the roasted crank, Giordano Bruno!"

Number Seven lifted his teacup to his lips, and most of us followed his example.

After this outburst of emotion and eloquence had subsided, and the teaspoons lay quietly in their saucers, I went on with my extract from the book I had in hand.

I think, I said, that the passage which follows will be new and instructive to most of the company. De Morgan's interpretation of the cabalistic sentence, made up as you will find it, is about as ingenious a piece of fanciful exposition as you will be likely to meet with anywhere in any book, new or old. I am the more willing to mention it as it suggests a puzzle which some of the company may like to work upon. Observe the character and position of the two distinguished philosophers who did not think their time thrown away in laboring at this seemingly puerile task.

"There is a kind of Cabbala Alphabetica which the investigators of the numerals in words would do well to take up; it is the formation of sentences which contain all the letters of the alphabet, and each only once. No one has done it with v and j treated as consonants; but you and I can do it. Dr. Whewell and I amused ourselves some years ago with attempts. He could not make sense, though he joined words he gave me Phiz, styx, wrong, buck, flame, quiz.

"I gave him the following, which he agreed was 'admirable sense,'—I certainly think the words would never have come together except in this way: I quartz pyx who fling muck beds. I long thought that no human being could say this under any circumstances. At last I happened to be reading a religious writer,—as he thought himself,—who threw aspersions on his opponents thick and threefold. Heyday came into my head; this fellow flings muck beds; he must be a quartz pyx. And then I remembered that a pyx is a sacred vessel, and quartz is a hard stone, as hard as the heart of a religious foe-curser. So that the line is the motto of the ferocious sectarian who turns his religious vessels into mud-holders, for the benefit of those who will not see what he sees."

"There are several other sentences given, in which all the letters (except v and j as consonants) are employed, of which the following is the best: Get nymph; quiz sad brow; fix luck,—which in more sober English would be, Marry; be cheerful; watch your business. There is more edification, more religion, in this than in all the 666 interpretations put together."

There is something very pleasant in the thought of these two sages playing at jackstraws with the letters of the alphabet. The task which De Morgan and Dr. Whewell, "the omniscient," set themselves would not be unworthy of our own ingenious scholars, and it might be worth while for some one of our popular periodicals to offer a prize for the best sentence using up the whole alphabet, under the same conditions as those submitted to by our two philosophers.

This whole book of De Morgan's seems to me full of instruction. There is too much of it, no doubt; yet one can put up with the redundancy for the sake of the multiplicity of shades of credulity and self-deception it displays in broad daylight. I suspect many of us are conscious of a second personality in our complex nature, which has many traits resembling those found in the writers of the letters addressed to Mr. De Horgan.

I have not ventured very often nor very deeply into the field of metaphysics, but if I were disposed to make any claim in that direction, it would be the recognition of the squinting brain, the introduction of the term "cerebricity" corresponding to electricity, the idiotic area in the brain or thinking-marrow, and my studies of the second member in the partnership of I-My-Self & Co. I add the Co. with especial reference to a very interesting article in a late Scribner, by my friend Mr. William James. In this article the reader will find a full exposition of the doctrine of plural personality illustrated by striking cases. I have long ago noticed and referred to the fact of the stratification of the currents of thought in three layers, one over the other. I have recognized that where there are two individuals talking together there are really six personalities engaged in the conversation. But the distinct, separable, independent individualities, taking up conscious life one after the other, are brought out by Mr. James and the authorities to which he refers as I have not elsewhere seen them developed.

Whether we shall ever find the exact position of the idiotic centre or area in the brain (if such a spot exists) is uncertain. We know exactly where the blind spot of the eye is situated, and can demonstrate it anatomically and physiologically. But we have only analogy to lead us to infer the possible or even probable existence of an insensible spot in the thinking-centre. If there is a focal point where consciousness is at its highest development, it would not be strange if near by there should prove to be an anaesthetic district or limited space where no report from the senses was intelligently interpreted. But all this is mere hypothesis.

Notwithstanding the fact that I am nominally the head personage of the circle of Teacups, I do not pretend or wish to deny that we all look to Number Five as our chief adviser in all the literary questions that come before us. She reads more and better than any of us. She is always ready to welcome the first sign of genius, or of talent which approaches genius. She makes short work with all the pretenders whose only excuse for appealing to the public is that they "want to be famous." She is one of the very few persons to whom I am willing to read any one of my own productions while it is yet in manuscript, unpublished. I know she is disposed to make more of it than it deserves; but, on the other hand, there are degrees in her scale of judgment, and I can distinguish very easily what delights her from what pleases only, or is, except for her kindly feeling to the writer, indifferent, or open to severe comment. What is curious is that she seems to have no literary aspirations, no desire to be known as a writer. Yet Number Five has more esprit, more sparkle, more sense in her talk, than many a famous authoress from whom we should expect brilliant conversation.

There are mysteries about Number Five. I am not going to describe her personally. Whether she belongs naturally among the bright young people, or in the company of the maturer persons, who have had a good deal of experience of the world, and have reached the wisdom of the riper decades without losing the graces of the earlier ones, it would be hard to say. The men and women, young and old, who throng about her forget their own ages. "There is no such thing as time in her presence," said the Professor, the other day, in speaking of her. Whether the Professor is in love with her or not is more than I can say, but I am sure that he goes to her for literary sympathy and counsel, just as I do. The reader may remember what Number Five said about the possibility of her getting a sprained ankle, and her asking the young Doctor whether he felt equal to taking charge of her if she did. I would not for the world insinuate that he wishes she would slip and twist her foot a little,—just a little, you know, but so that it would have to be laid on a pillow in a chair, and inspected, and bandaged, and delicately manipulated. There was a banana-skin which she might naturally have trodden on, in her way to the tea-table. Nobody can suppose that it was there except by the most innocent of accidents. There are people who will suspect everybody. The idea of the Doctor's putting that banana-skin there! People love to talk in that silly way about doctors.

Number Five had promised to read us a narrative which she thought would interest some of the company. Who wrote it she did not tell us, but I inferred from various circumstances that she had known the writer. She read the story most effectively in her rich, musical voice. I noticed that when it came to the sounds of the striking clock, the ringing of the notes was so like that which reaches us from some far-off cathedral tower that we wanted to bow our heads, as if we had just heard a summons to the Angelus. This was the short story that Number Five read to The Teacups:—

I have somewhere read this anecdote. Louis the Fourteenth was looking out, one day, from, a window of his palace of Saint-Germain. It was a beautiful landscape which spread out before him, and the monarch, exulting in health, strength, and the splendors of his exalted position, felt his bosom swell with emotions of pride and happiness: Presently he noticed the towers of a church in the distance, above the treetops. "What building is that?" he asked. "May it please your Majesty, that is the Church of St. Denis, where your royal ancestors have been buried for many generations." The answer did not "please his Royal Majesty." There, then, was the place where he too was to lie and moulder in the dust. He turned, sick at heart, from the window, and was uneasy until he had built him another palace, from which he could never be appalled by that fatal prospect.

Something like the experience of Louis the Fourteenth was that of the owner of

THE TERRIBLE CLOCK.

I give the story as transcribed from the original manuscript:—

The clock was bequeathed to me by an old friend who had recently died. His mind had been a good deal disordered in the later period of his life. This clock, I am told; seemed to have a strange fascination for him. His eyes were fastened on it during the last hours of his life. He died just at midnight. The clock struck twelve, the nurse told me, as he drew his last breath, and then, without any known cause, stopped, with both hands upon the hour.

It is a complex and costly piece of mechanism. The escapement is in front, so that every tooth is seen as it frees itself. It shows the phases of the moon, the month of the year, the day of the month, and the day of the week, as well as the hour and minute of the day.

I had not owned it a week before I began to perceive the same kind of fascination as that which its former owner had experienced. This gradually grew upon me, and presently led to trains of thought which became at first unwelcome, then worrying, and at last unendurable. I began by taking offence at the moon. I did not like to see that "something large and smooth and round," so like the skull which little Peterkin picked up on the field of Blenheim. "How many times," I kept saying to myself, "is that wicked old moon coming up to stare at me?" I could not stand it. I stopped a part of the machinery, and the moon went into permanent eclipse. By and by the sounds of the infernal machine began to trouble and pursue me. They talked to me; more and more their language became that of articulately speaking men. They twitted me with the rapid flight of time. They hurried me, as if I had not a moment to lose. Quick! Quick! Quick! as each tooth released itself from the escapement. And as I looked and listened there could not be any mistake about it. I heard Quick! Quick! Quick! as plainly, at least, as I ever heard a word from the phonograph. I stood watching the dial one day,—it was near one o'clock,—and a strange attraction held me fastened to the spot. Presently something appeared to trip or stumble inside of the infernal mechanism. I waited for the sound I knew was to follow. How nervous I got! It seemed to me that it would never strike. At last the minute-hand reached the highest point of the dial. Then there was a little stir among the works, as there is in a congregation as it rises to receive the benediction. It was no form of blessing which rung out those deep, almost sepulchral tones. But the word they uttered could not be mistaken. I can hear its prolonged, solemn vibrations as if I were standing before the clock at this moment.

Gone! Yes, I said to myself, gone,—its record made up to be opened in eternity.

I stood still, staring vaguely at the dial as in a trance. And as the next hour creeps stealthily up, it starts all at once, and cries aloud, Gone!—Gone! The sun sinks lower, the hour-hand creeps downward with it, until I hear the thrice-repeated monosyllable, Gone!—Gone!—Gone! Soon through the darkening hours, until at the dead of night the long roll is called, and with the last Gone! the latest of the long procession that filled the day follows its ghostly companions into the stillness and darkness of the past.