The Lost Art of Reading Part 2

I am aware that it does not follow, because I have just come out and have been looking into my window, that I have a right to hold up any person or persons who may be going by in this book, and ask them to look in too, but at the same time I cannot conceal--do not wish to conceal, even if I could--that there have been times, standing in front of my window and looking in, when what I have seen there has seemed to me to a.s.sume a national significance.

There are millions of other windows like it. It is one of the daily sorrows of my life that the people who own them do not seem to know it--most of them--except perhaps in a vague, hurried pained way.

Sometimes I feel like calling out to them as I stand by my window--see them go hurrying by on The Great Street: "Say there, Stranger! Halloa, Stranger! Want to see yourself? Come right over here and look at me!"

n.o.body believes it, of course. It's a good deal like standing and waving one's arms in the Midway--being an egotist,--but I must say, I have never got a man yet--got him in out of the rush, I mean, right up in front of my window--got him once stooped down and really looking in there, but he admitted there was something in it.

Thus does it come to pa.s.s--this gentle swelling. Let me be a warning to you, Gentle Reader, when you once get to philosophising yourself over (along the line of your faults) into the disputed territory of the First Person Singular. I am not asking you to try to believe my little philosophy of types. I am trying to, in my humble way, to be sure, but I would rather, on the whole, let it go. It is not so much my philosophy I rest my case on, as my sub-philosophy or religion--viz., I like it and believe in it--saying I. (Thank Heaven that, bad as it is, I have struck bottom at last!) The best I can do under the circ.u.mstances, I suppose, is to beg (in a perfectly blank way) forgiveness--forgiveness of any and every kind from everybody, if in this and the following chapters I fall sometimes to talking of people--people at large--under the general head of myself.

I was born to read. I spent all my early years, as I remember them, with books,--peering softly about in them. My whole being was hushed and trustful and expectant at the sight of a printed page. I lived in the presence of books, with all my thoughts lying open about me; a kind of still, radiant mood of welcome seemed to lie upon them. When I looked at a shelf of books I felt the whole world flocking to me.

I have been civilised now, I should say, twenty, or possibly twenty-five, years. At least every one supposes I am civilised, and my whole being has changed. I cannot so much as look upon a great many books in a library or any other heaped-up place, without feeling bleak and heartless. I never read if I can help it. My whole att.i.tude toward current literature is grouty and snappish, a kind of perpetual interrupted "What are you ringing my door-bell now for?" att.i.tude. I am a disagreeable character. I spend at least one half my time, I should judge, keeping things off, in defending my character. Then I spend the other half in wondering if, after all, it was worth it. What I see in my window has changed. When I used to go out around and look into it, in the old days, to see what I was like, I was a sunny, open valley--streams and roads and everything running down into it, and opening out of it, and when I go out suddenly now, and turn around in front of myself and look in--I am a mountain pa.s.s. I sift my friends--up a trail. The few friends that come, come a little out of breath (G.o.d bless them!), and a book cannot so much as get to me except on a mule's back.

It is by no means an ideal arrangement--a mountain pa.s.s, but it is better than always sitting in one's study in civilisation, where every pa.s.ser-by, pamphlet, boy in the street, thinks he might just as well come up and ring one's door-bell awhile. All modern books are book agents at heart, around getting subscriptions for themselves. If a man wants to be sociable or literary nowadays, he can only do it by being a more or less disagreeable character, and if he wishes to be a beautiful character, he must go off and do it by himself.

This is a mere choice in suicides.

The question that presses upon me is: Whose fault is it that a poor wistful, incomplete, human being, born into this huge dilemma of a world, can only keep on having a soul in it, by keeping it (that is, his soul) tossed back and forth--now in one place where souls are lost, and now in another? Is it your fault, or mine, Gentle Reader, that we are obliged to live in this undignified, obstreperous fas.h.i.+on in what is called civilisation? I cannot believe it. Nearly all the best people one knows can be seen sitting in civilisation on the edge of their chairs, or hurrying along with their souls in satchels.

There is but one conclusion. Civilisation is not what it is advertised to be. Every time I see a fresh missionary down at the steamer wharf, as I do sometimes, starting away for other lands, loaded up with our Inst.i.tutions to the eyes, Church in one hand and Schoolhouse in the other, trim, happy, and smiling over them, at everybody, I feel like stepping up to him and saying, what seem to me, a few appropriate words.

I seldom do it, but the other day when I happened to be down at the _Umbria_ dock about sailing-time, I came across one (a foreign missionary, I mean) pleasant, thoughtless, and benevolent-looking, standing there all by himself by the steamer-rail, and I thought I would try speaking to him.

"Where are you going to be putting--those?" I said, pointing to a lot of funny little churches and funny little schoolhouses he was holding in both hands.

"From Greenland's icy mountains to India's coral strand," he said.

I looked at them a minute. "You don't think, do you?" I said--"You don't really think you had better wait over a little--bring them back and let us--finish them for you, do you? one or two--samples?" I said.

He looked at me with what seemed to me at first, a kind of blurred, helpless look. I soon saw that he was pitying me and I promptly stepped down to the dining-saloon and tried to appreciate two or three tons of flowers.

I do not wish to say a word against missionaries. They are merely apt to be somewhat heedless, morally-hurried persons, rus.h.i.+ng about the world turning people (as they think) right side up everywhere, without really noticing them much, but I do think that a great deliberate corporate body like The American Board of Commissioners of Foreign Missions ought to be more optimistic about the Church--wait and work for it a little more, expect a little more of it.

It seems to me that it ought to be far less pessimistic than it is, also, about what we can do in the way of schools and social life in civilisation and about civilisation's way of doing business. Is our little knack of Christianity (I find myself wondering) quite worthy of all this attention it is getting from The American Board of Commissioners of Foreign Missions? Why should it approve of civilisation with a rush? Does any one really suppose that it is really time to pat it on the back--yet?--to spend a million dollars a year--patting it on the back?

I merely throw out the question.

VIII

More Literary Rush

We had been talking along, in our Club, as usual, for some time, on the general subject of the world--fixing the blame for things. We had come to the point where it was nearly all fixed (most of it on other people) when I thought I might as well put forward my little theory that nearly everything that was the matter, could be traced to the people who "belong to Society."

Then The P. G. S. of M. (who is always shoving a dictionary around in front of him when he talks) spoke up and said:

"But who belongs to Society?"

"All persons who read what they are told to and who call where they can't help it. What this world needs just now," I went on, looking The P. G. S. of M. as much in the eye as I could, "is emanc.i.p.ation. It needs a prophet--a man who can gather about him a few brave-hearted, intelligently ignorant men, who shall go about with their beautiful feet on the mountains, telling the good tidings of how many things there are we do not need to know. The prejudice against being ignorant is largely because people have not learned how to do it. The wrong people have taken hold of it."

I cannot remember the exact words of what was said after this, but I said that it seemed to me that most people were afraid not to know everything. Not knowing too much is a natural gift, and unless a man can make his ignorance contagious--inspire people with the books he dares not read--of course the only thing he can do is to give up and read everything, and belong to Society. He certainly cannot belong to himself unless he protects himself with well-selected, carefully guarded, daring ignorance. Think of the books--the books that are dictated to us--the books that will not let a man go,--and behind every book a hundred intelligent men and women--one's friends, too--one's own kin----

P. G. S. of M.: "But the cultured man must----"

The cultured man is the man who can tell me what he does not know, with such grace that I feel ashamed of knowing it.

Now there's M----, for example. Other people seem to read to talk, but I never see him across a drawing-room without an impulse of barbarism, and I always get him off into a corner as soon as I can, if only to rest myself--to feel that I have a right not to read everything. He always proves to me something that I can get along without. He is full of the most choice and picturesque bits of ignorance. He is creatively ignorant. He displaces a book every time I see him--which is a deal better in these days than writing one. A man should be measured by his book-displacement. He goes about with his thinking face, and a kind of nimbus over him, of never needing to read at all. He has nothing whatever to give but himself, but I had rather have one of his _questions_ about a book I had read, than all the other opinions and subtle distinctions in the room--or the book itself.

P. G. S. of M. "But the cultured man must----"

NOT. It is the very essence of a cultured man that when he hears the word "must" it is on his own lips. It is the very essence of his culture that he says it to himself. His culture is his belonging to himself, and his belonging to himself is the first condition of his being worth giving to other people. One longs for Elia. People know too much, and there doesn't seem to be a man living who can charm them from the error of their way. Knowledge takes the place of everything else, and all one can do in this present day as he reads the reviews and goes to his club, is to look forward with a tired heart to the prophecy of Scripture, "Knowledge shall pa.s.s away."

Where do we see the old and sweet content of loving a thing for itself?

Now, there are the flowers. The only way to delight in a flower at your feet in these days is to watch with it all alone, or keep still about it. The moment you speak of it, it becomes botany. It's a rare man who will not tell you all he knows about it. Love isn't worth anything without a cla.s.sic name. It's a wonder we have any flowers left. Half the charm of a flower to me is that it looks demure and talks perfume and keeps its name so gently to itself. The man who always enjoys views by picking out the places he knows, is a symbol of all our reading habits and of our national relation to books. One can glory in a great cliff down in the depths of his heart, but if you mention it, it is geology, and an argument. Even the birds sing zoologically, and as for the sky, it has become a mere blue-and-gold science, and all the wonder seems to be confined to one's not knowing the names of the planets. I was brought up wistfully on

Twinkle, twinkle, little star, How I wonder what you are.

But now it is become:

Twinkle, twinkle, little star, Teacher's told me what you are.

Even babies won't wonder very soon. That is to say, they won't wonder out loud. n.o.body does. Another of my poems was:

Where did you come from, baby dear?

Out of the everywhere into here.

I thought of it the other day when I stepped into the library with the list of books I had to have an opinion about before Mrs. W----'s Thursday Afternoon, I felt like a literary infant.

Where did you come from, baby fair?

Out of the here into everywhere.

And the bookcases stared at me.

It is a serious question whether the average American youth is ever given a chance to thirst for knowledge. He thirsts for ignorance instead. From the very first he is hemmed in by knowledge. The kindergarten with its suave relentlessness, its perfunctory cheerfulness, closes in upon the life of every child with himself. The dear old-fas.h.i.+oned breathing spell he used to have after getting here--whither has it gone? The rough, strong, ruthless, unseemly, grown-up world crowds to the very edge of every beginning life. It has no patience with trailing clouds of glory. Flocks of infants every year--new-comers to this planet--who can but watch them sadly, huddled closer and closer to the little strip of wonder that is left near the land from which they came? No lingering away from us. No infinite holiday. Childhood walks a precipice crowded to the brink of birth. We tabulate its moods. We register its learning inch by inch. We draw its poor little premature soul out of its body breath by breath. Infants are well informed now. The suckling has nerves. A few days more he will be like all the rest of us. It will be:

Poem: "When I Was Weaned."

"My First Tooth: A Study."

The Presiding Genius of the State of Ma.s.sachusetts, with his dazed, kind look, looked up and said: "I fear, my dear fellow, there is no place for you in the world."

Thanks. One of the delights of going fis.h.i.+ng or hunting is, that one learns how small "a place in the world" is--comes across so many accidentally preserved characters--preserved by not having a place in the world--persons that are interesting to be with--persons you can tell things.

The real object--it seems to me--in meeting another human being is complement--fitting into each other's ignorances. Sometimes it seems as if it were only where there is something to be caught or shot, or where there is plenty of room, that the highest and most sociable and useful forms of ignorance were allowed to mature.

One can still find such fascinating prejudices, such frank enthusiasms of ignorance, where there's good fis.h.i.+ng; and then, in the stray hamlets, there is the grave whimsicalness and the calm superior air of austerity to cultured people.

Ah, let me live in the Maine woods or wander by the brooks of Virginia, and rest my soul in the delights--in the pomposity--of ignorance--ignorance in its pride and glory and courage and lovableness! I never come back from a vacation without a dream of what I might have been, if I had only dared to know a little less; and even now I sometimes feel I have ignorance enough, if like Elia, for instance, I only knew how to use it, but I cannot as much as get over being ashamed of it. I am nearly gone.

I have little left but the gift of being bored. That is something--but hardly a day pa.s.ses without my slurring over a guilty place in conversation, without my hiding my ignorance under a bushel, where I can go later and take a look at it by myself. Then I know all about it next time and sink lower and lower. A man can do nothing alone. Of course, ignorance must be natural and not acquired in order to have the true ring and afford the most relief in the world; but every wide-awake village that has thoughtful people enough--people who are educated up to it--ought to organise an Ignoramus Club to defend the town from papers and books----.