The Golden Censer Part 27

ready to take the impression of the first lazy wish that comes over you.

No, your brain says resolutely, "I will arise," and lo! a victory!--and no small one either. In this way, true firmness is made. It is a growth.

Beware of the insects which beset the lordly tree, withering its leaves and driving its sap into the earth.

"Let us put a cable under the ocean," says Cyrus Field. "Tarry a while,"

says Slow. "Let us put the cities within actual speaking distance!" say Bell, and Gray and Edison. "Tarry a while," says Slow. "Let us print thirty thousand newspapers in an hour, and give them out of the press folded, and pasted, and cut!" say Potter, and Hoe, and Kahler. "Tarry a while" says Slow. And yet, in spite of Slow and Sleepyhead, wonders have acc.u.mulated upon wonders, until the Arabian Nights and Gulliver's Travels are only the creations of a poor fancy, while the intimations which the future affords us stagger the understanding and make us almost idolatrous in our admiration of the quiet, keen-acting men who have dared out into fairy-land and returned laden like the spies coming from Canaan.

Our whole history is one of discipline. And what has it made of us? A nation that has sung

THE DEATH-KNELL OF THE KINGS OF THE EARTH.

I think a good deal of these lines of James Russell Lowell:

This land o' ourn, I tell ye's gut to be A better country than man ever see; I feel my sperit swellin with a cry That seems to say: "Break forth and prophesy."

O strange New World, that yet wast never young, Whose youth from thee by gripin' want was wrung, Brown foundlin' o' the woods, whose baby bed Was prowled round by the Injun's cracklin' tread, An' who grewst strong thru' s.h.i.+fts, and wants, an' pains.

Nursed by stern men, with empires in their brains!

Another sweet poet has sung:

Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey Where wealth acc.u.mulates and men decay.

There can be no question that wealth is fast acc.u.mulating. Let fathers, and mothers, and preceptors spur the rising generation to that love of accuracy, of "right dress," as the soldiers say, which puts each man in his place, certain to stay there as long as he has agreed to, and certain to act when the fitting time arrives.

THE ORGAN AND ITS PIPES AND REEDS.

Perhaps I can impress the true necessity of discipline no more forcibly than by comparing society to a grand organ upon which the Creator sounds his mighty fugue of years. We are the pipes--some the colossal columns which shake the world, and others the tiny tubes which make a feeble cry, almost unheard. No one of us must sound his note save in that proper place and at that proper time which Duty indicates. We mar a perfect harmony by ill-tempered silence, and perhaps ruin the labors of our a.s.sociates by a continuous sounding of our own ridiculous reed.

WHEREVER WE ARE

In the factory, the counting house, the workshops of the grand industries,--or on the broad acres which watch so fondly for the sun, let us be careful, when there is a troubling jar, a fatal discord, that our key is not the guilty one.

BOOKS.

--Books, we know, Are a substantial world, both pure and good; Round these, with tendrils strong as flesh and blood, Our pastime and our happiness will grow.--Wordsworth.

By the aid of books we multiply our sensations a million-fold. Often the reader actually feels what he reads. Such impressions would perhaps never have fallen to his lot in the ordinary way of getting experience. Our indebtedness, then, to the art of printing, is perhaps greater than to any other of the remarkable discoveries which have lent enduring charms to human life. And yet, with all its progress, the book-reading world is still in its infancy. The people do not read half enough, they do not discriminate wisely between good reading and indifferent reading, and they read too much matter of an ephemeral nature, little calculated to be of the slightest benefit to them a week after its perusal. If a man lived on the banks of a beautiful lake, and went down to its sh.o.r.e each pleasant day to take a ride, and, after an excursion upon the peaceful waters, stove his boat in, or cast it adrift, he would be actually following the practice of our people of the present day. The man who owns a library in these times, is considered either a book-worm or an opulent citizen. And yet what treasures are within everyone's reach! Suppose you buy and read a volume. You are

FILLED WITH IDEAS NEW TO YOU,

and you derive great pleasure. Keep that book a year and read it over.

It is safe to say you will gain more benefit and reap greater enjoyment from the second perusal than from the first. A library of books, every one of which you have read, is a mine without "walls." It is a merry a.s.sembly of old friends ever faithful. Grief cannot drive them away.

Slander cannot alienate them. They cannot have rival interests. They cannot want anything you have got, and you can take all they have got,

AND NOT ROB THEM AT ALL.

You have a memory which is as treacherous as the most of the other attributes of human nature. You sit down and read two hours on an interesting topic. A friend opens the same subject to you, a day afterward, in conversation, and you fairly carry him by storm. That is unfair, for you should say you have been "posting up"--but it shows the value of a library. By frequent "posting" on whatever you have read, you become a learned man, which is

A t.i.tLE OF GREAT CREDIT AND DIGNITY

in most men's eyes. The men who read once and "read everything" are never called "learned." _They_ are called "superficial." It is a little unjust, for they have been just as studious as the "learned men," but they have spread themselves out too thin. They have not bought and kept the books they have read, and they cannot remember the vital points.

Suppose you recollect that Lord Bacon has said something very wise about riches. That is all you can call to mind. That carries no impression to anybody. If you had the book in which you saw the speech, you could repeat it accurately, and the probability is that the next time you referred to it you could give

THE GIST OF THE WHOLE THOUGHT,

and, by the next attempt, the language itself. You could say to your friend when you were talking about wealth, that you have admired that speech of Bacon where he says that he cannot call riches better than the "baggage" of virtue; that he thinks the Roman word "impedimenta" still better; that, as baggage is to an army, so is riches to virtue; it cannot be spared or left behind, but, in his quaint expression, "it hindereth the march; yea, and the care of it sometimes loseth or disturbeth the victory." Your friend would be gratified with so perfect a figure of speech, and he would never call you "superficial." That is real experience. It is not theory. A book has little value to a man until he has read it at least twice. He has then labeled and pigeon-holed it, and really needs to possess it.

A MAN OUGHT TO READ

his favorite portions of Shakspeare a thousand times--of the Bible a million times. Reading is much more like painting than we think. Go into a palace car. Do you think this polish was put on the wood with one application of the brush--with two, three, four? No; it would possibly be cheaper to cover it with silk plush than to go over it as the skilled workmen have done. Let us buy less ephemeral stuff, to be set adrift and stove in when we have skimmed over it. Let us season our reading, polish it, grain it, varnish it, repolish it and revarnish it, until we are just like it ourselves--clear, concise, intelligent. How enjoyable it is to meet an intelligent person!

WHAT A CHARM

there is about a comrade who can understand what you say, and who can swap ideas with you "even Steven!" It cannot be done without books.

Considering the vast importance of learning in saving labor and reducing the actual cost of existence, there has been little growth in the business of bookmaking compared with what there should have been. The trade in books in America is large, because the country is large.

Everything is large here. Comparatively, however, it probably sinks below fis.h.i.+ng for mackerel as an industry. As it is now, a shockingly large portion of the industry such as it is is given over to costly bindings. It does not seem that the people, even when they first had books, cared so much for the privilege of reading as they did for a gaudy covering to the volume, on which they could expend a barbaric love for ornament. The wise men of those times marveled, just as the wise men marvel nowadays. "Learning hath gained most by those books,"

says Old Fuller, "by which the printers have lost." Our follies in the way of "books that are all binding" are almost microscopically small when put beside those of the olden times, when, one would think the art of printing, being new, would have been best appreciated, for surely the gra.s.s looks the greenest to us in the spring! Let us do something more than

MAKE JEWELRY OUT OF THE ART OF GUTTENBERG.

"A book may be as great a thing as a battle," said Disraeli, and he meant by that a decisive battle. Now there are sometimes very decisive battles. A Turk once came up against the walls of Vienna and the walls of Tours, in France, and, if he had got through, you and I would to-day, so the scholars say, be "good Mussulmans," instead of Christians, living in freedom and decency. "When a book," says Bruyere, "raises your spirits, and inspires you with n.o.ble and courageous feelings, seek for no other rule to judge the work by; it is good, and made by a good workman." The books you buy should have large clear type. They are to be

YOUR COMPANIONS THROUGH LIFE.

Your eyes will not be so bright in their old age. The volumes should not be bulky--that is, for true, practical use. "Great books," says Clulow, "like large skulls, have often the least brains." "Books," says Dr.

Johnson, "that you may carry to the fire, and hold readily in your hand, are the most useful, after all." There is no objection to a costly and beautifully-bound Bible, out of which you may read each day with added veneration, but your sons and daughters should have pocket copies. From these modest little volumes, the marvels of language and thought may be gathered without seeming effort.

Do not be afraid you are spending too much money on reading. If you read each book as you buy it, you cannot buy too many--that is, if you are an honorable man, earning your living in the world, and not sponging it off some one else. Read your book slowly, above all things. Read it as you would ride in your boat on the waters, looking down at the pebbles, the fishes, the gra.s.ses, and the roots of the pond-lilies which, being of G.o.d's creation like yourself, send a responsive thrill of acquaintance through your heart as you float above them. You can, at best, but glide over a book. Even the writer has been but a pa.s.sing observer of a few of its truths. It is

THE RECORD OF THE CENTURIES.

Respect it. "My latest pa.s.sion will be for books," said Frederick the Great, in his old age. He had hardly looked down into the waters until he got nearly to the other sh.o.r.e. Gibbon declared that a taste for books was the pleasure and glory of his life; and Carlyle, who, it is supposed, was better acquainted with books than any man who has yet lived, declared that of all man could do or make here below, by far the most momentous, wonderful, and worthy were the things we call books.