objects of art.  But his disinclination to this department of pure
literature was dissolved, as most prejudices may be, by acquaintance with
the subject.

Municipal documents are human documents.  They are the autobiographies of
communities.  The personalities of Topeka, Kansas, of Limoges, France,
and of Heidelberg, Germany, rise before the impressionable student of
municipal documents like the figures of personal autobiography, like
Benvenuto Cellini, Marie Bashkirtsev, Benjamin Franklin, Miss Mary
Maclane, Mr. George Moore.

A very touching quality in municipal documents is their naivete--that
unavoidable and unconscious self-revelation which is much of the great
charm and value of all autobiographies.  By the way, do statisticians
really understand municipal documents, or do they think them valuable
simply because they are full of statements of fact?

Our literary gentleman, at all events, found his task very engaging,
though as a cataloguer he was much perplexed by the extraordinary
informality, in one respect, of formal public papers, a curious
provinciality, as he could but take it to be, of municipalities.  A very
common neglect, he found, in such publications is to make any mention
anywhere of the relation to geography of the community chronicling its
history.

He would read, for instance, that the pamphlet in his hand was the
"Auditor's Report of Receipts and Expenditures for the Financial Year
Ending February 10, 1875, for the Town of Andover."  Where, he asked,
with absolute certainty, was the town of Andover here referred to?  He
examined the printer's imprint, which was explicit--personally: "Printed
by Warren F. Draper, 1875."  There was something very friendly about
this.  Printers of public documents seem to be an amiable, neighbourly
lot: "Printed at the Enterprise Office," one mentions casually in a
large, warm-hearted fashion.  Another imprint reads, "Auburn, Printed by
Charles Ferris, _Daily Advertiser_ Office, 1848," Mr. Ferris, in his
lifetime, was evidently a very pleasant man, but a little careless of
what to him, no doubt, were inessential details.  He was thoughtless of
the dark ignorance in places remote from Auburn of the _Daily
Advertiser_.  Another prominent Auburnian of the same craft, one W. S.
Morse, it may be learned from some of the products of his press,
flourished in 1886.  But, the puzzled cataloguer inquires, was Mr. Morse
successor to Mr. Ferris, or was he official printer to the Government of
Auburn, Maine, far from the scene of Mr. Ferris's public services,
possibly in Auburn, New York?  To these picayune points the breezy
gentlemen make no reference.

The worker with public documents turns from the title pages to search the
documents themselves.  Are these the "Proceedings of the Board of Chosen
Freeholders" of the City of Albany, Missouri, or of Albany, New
Hampshire?  (A cataloguer has a faint impression that there is an Albany,
too, somewhere in the State of New York.)  Is this a "Copy of Warrant for
Annual Town Meeting" of Lancaster, Massachusetts, or New Hampshire, or
Pennsylvania?  Impossible, he thinks, that there should be no internal
evidence.

He reads on and on.  He notes the intimate nature of an Article 19: "To
see if the town will accept a gift from Hannah E. Bigelow, with
conditions."  He peruses "Selectman's Accounts" of expenditures, how
there was "Paid on account of Grammar School" such or such an amount; he
learns the cost of "Hay Scales," the expenses of "Fire Dep't, Cemetery,
Street Lamps."  He peers behind the official scenes at Decoration Day:
monies paid out of the public treasury for "Brass Band, Address ($20.00),
flowers, flags, tuning piano."  He goes over appropriations for "Repairs
at Almshouse."  He sits with the "Trustees of Memorial Hall," and informs
himself concerning conditions at the "Lunatic Hospital."  He follows with
feeling municipal accessions, "purchase of a Road-scraper, which we find
a very useful machine, and probably money judiciously expended."  But
more and more amazed at the circumstance as he continues he is left
totally in the dark as to where he is all the while.

Sometimes the mention, made necessary in connection with plans for some
public improvement, of a well-known river, say, revealed the town's
location.  Occasionally the comparative antiquity of the civilisation
supplied inspiration for a good guess as to its situation--that it was
the town of that name in New England rather than the one in Oklahoma.
Multiplied clues of identity, again, built up a case: "Official Ballot"
(ran the title) "for Precinct W. Attleburough, Tuesday.  Nov.  3, 1896."
The name "Wm. M. Olin" was given as that of the "Secretary of the
Commonwealth."  Of the first page that was all.  In heaven's name!
exclaimed the cataloguer, what commonwealth?  A study of the list of
candidates on this ballot, giving their places of residence, however,
fortified one's natural supposition--"of Worcester, of Lynn, of
Haverhill, of Amherst, of Pittsfield" (ah!), "of Boston."  It is a
reasonable surmise that this Ballot pertains to the commonwealth of
Massachusetts.

It is not here stated that the name of its native State is never
discovered in the whole of any American municipal document.  Often, in
some indirect allusion, somewhere in the text it may be found.
Frequently, too, it is true, the State seal is printed upon the title
page or cover of the volume.  And in instances the name of the State
stands out clearly enough upon the page of title.  But in case after
case, in the occupation giving rise to this paper, the only expedient was
recourse to a file of city directories, collating names of streets in
these with those mentioned in the documents.

Another curious idiosyncrasy of one branch of public document--which
informs the labour of cataloguing them with something of the alluring
fascination of putting together jig-saw picture puzzles ("spoke," in the
words of Artemas Ward, "sarcastic") is the extraordinary variety of names
that can be found by municipalities to entitle the Mayor's annual
eloquence.  This versatile character may deliver himself of an Annual
Address, Message, Communication, Statement, or of "Remarks."

A cataloguer was surprised to discover, in "An Act to Incorporate and
Vest Certain Powers in the Freeholders and Inhabitants of the village of
Brooklyn, in the County of Kings," the prophetic enlightenment of the
Inhabitants of that village in the year 1816.  The voice of Andrew
Carnegie, Colonel Roosevelt, and Prof. Brander Matthews speaks in the
following passage: "That the section of the town of Brooklyn, commonly
known as 'The Fire District,' and contained within the following bounds,
viz.: Beginning at the public landing south of Pierpont's distillery,
formerly the property of Philip Livingston, deceased, on the East River,
thence running along the public road leading from said landing to its
intersection with Redhook lane, thence along Redhook lane to where it
intersects Jamaica turnpike road, thence a North East course to the head
of the Wallabaght mill-pond, thence thro the centre of said mill pond to
the East river, and thence down the East river to the place of beginning,
shall continue to be known and distinguished by the Name of the Village
of Brooklyn."  "Thro" certainly is phonetic spelling.

It was the sterling character of these villagers that then laid the
foundation for the better half of a mighty city to come.  The "act"
concludes: "And then and there proceed to elect Five discreet
freeholders, resident within said village, to be trustees thereof."  So
witness is borne to this vernacular quality of discretion in the twilight
of Brooklyn history.

The aesthetic consideration of municipal documents has not received much
attention.  The format of a municipal document, however, is in itself a
delightful essay in unconscious self-characterisation.  Those of the
United States express a plain democratic people.  They have, in fact, all
the commonness of the job printer.  "Printed at the _Journal_ Office,"
is, indeed, their physical character.

The municipal documents of Great Britain are usually bound, in good
English book-cloth, that peculiar fabric to which the connoisseur of
books is so sensitive, and which, for some inexplicable reason, it is,
apparently, impossible to manufacture in this country; or in neat boards,
with cloth backs.  Or if in paper it is of an interesting colour and
texture.  A noble heraldic device, the coat of arms of the city or
borough, is stamped in gold above, or below, the title.  This is repeated
upon the title-page, the typography of which is not without distinction.
The paper has more refinement than that used in such American
publications.  The effect, in fine, is of something aristocratic.  The
"Mayoral Minutes" of Kensington is rather a handsome quarto volume.

An added touch of distinction is given these British volumes by the
presentation card, tipped in after the front cover.  A really exquisite
little thing is this one: it bears, placed with great nicety, its coat of
arms above, delicately reduced in size; across the middle, in beautiful
sensitive type, it reads: "With the City Accountant's Compliments"; in
the lower left corner, in two lines, "Guildhall, Gloucester."

The municipal documents of Germany are very German.  Verwaltungsbericht
is one of those extraordinary words which are so long that when you look
at one end of the word you cannot see the other end.  These volumes
sometimes might possibly be mistaken, by a foreigner, for "gift books."
Often they are bound, in pronounced German taste, in several strong
colours in a striking combination.  Buttressing the decorative German
letters, on cover and title page, appears some one of various
conventionalisations of the German eagle, made very black, and wearing a
crown and carrying a sceptre.  In "Verwaltungsbericht des Magistrats der
Koniglichen Haupt- und Residenzstadt Hanover, 1906-7," the frontispiece,
the armorial bearings, "Wappen der Koniglichen" and so forth is a
powerfully coloured lithograph, a very ornate affair, of lions (of
egg-yolk yellow), armour, and leaves and castles.  These German
publications are filled with excellent photographs of public places and
buildings, and extensive unfolding coloured maps and diagrams.  A
gentleman with a taste for art viewed with much admiration a handsome
plate of "des Dresdener Wassenwerks."  They contain, too, these volumes,
multitudes of pictures of distinguished citizens, often photogravures
from official paintings; these gentlemen sometimes appear decorated with
massive orders, or again decorated simply with very German expressions of
countenance.  The "Chronik der Haupt- und Reisdenzstadt Stuttgart, 1902,"
somewhat suggests bound volumes of "Jugend," with its heavy pen and ink
head and tail pieces, of women marketing, of a bride and groom kneeling
at the altar, and one, an excellent little drawing of a horse mounting
with a heavily laden wagon a rise of ground, the driver beside him, and a
street lamp behind protruding from below (remember this is a municipal
document).

A quaint little duodecimo is the "Jaarbockie voor de Stad Delft," with
little headpieces pictorially representing the seasons and a curiously
wood-cut astrologer introducing "den Almanak."  A rather square-toed kind
of a little volume, neatly bound in grey boards, and very nicely printed,
having altogether an effect of housewifely cleanliness, is the "Verslag
van den Toestand der Gemeente Haarlem over het jaar 1894.  Door
Burgemeester en Wethouders Uitgebracht aan den Gemeenteraad; imprint
Gedrukt bij Gebr Nobels, te Haarlem."

The language of Great Britain's municipal documents is lofty: "The Royal
Burrough of Kensington, Minute of His Worship the Mayor (Sir H. Seymour
King, K.C.I.E., M.P.) for the year ending November, 1901."  (Here is
imprinted the design of a quartered shield containing a crown, a Papal
hat, and two crosses, and, beneath, the motto: "Quid Nobis Ardui.")
"Printed" (continues the reading) "by order of the Council, 30th,
October, 1901.  Jas. Truscott and Son, Printer, Suffolk Lane, E.C."  And
in the following there is something of the rumble of the history of
England:

  "Addresses
  Presented from the
  Court of Common Council
  to the
  King.

  On his Majesty's Accession to the Throne,
  And on various other Occasions, and his Answers,
  Resolutions of the Court,
  Granting the Freedom of the City to several
  Noble Personages; with their Answers,
  Instructions at different Times to the
  Representatives of the City in Parliament.
  Petitions to Parliament for different Purposes,
  Resolutions of the Court,
  On the Memorial of the Livery, to request
  the Lord Mayor to call a Common Hall;
  For returning Thanks to Lord Chatham,
  And his Answer;
  For erecting a Statue in Guildhall,
  to
  William Beckford, Esq.; late Lord Mayor,
  Agreed to between the 23d October, 1760, and the
  13th. October, 1770
  Printed by Henry Fenwick, Printer to the Honorable
  City of London."

Henry Fenwick, Esq., takes himself with dignity.

But to turn from the pomp of state, to peep for a moment at the intimate
life of the people of England a couple of centuries ago, few things could
be better than "The Constable's Accounts of the Manor of Manchester,"
from which a few items of "Disbursements" are cited;

  "Pd. Expences apprehending two Felons....    -/1/-
  "Pd. Expences maintaining them two Nights
      in the Dungeon ......................    -/2/-
  "To Ann Duncan very ill to take her over into
      Ireland .............................    -/4/-
  "To Straw for the Dungeon ...............    -/4/-
  "To Belman sundry public Cries ..........    -/7/6
  "To three pair of Stockings and dying for the
      Beedle ..............................    -/9/-
  "To Wine drinking Royal healths the Prince's
      birthday at his full age ............    3/16/6
  "To a distressed Sailor to Leverpoole ...    -/1/-
  "Pd. Boonfire on King's Coronation Day ..    -/6/6
  "Gave Nancy Mackeen a Stroller ..........    -/-/6
  "Pd. Musicians at rejoicing for good news
      from Germany, and on birth of the Prince
      of Wales ............................    2/7/-
  "Pd. for a Cat with nine Tails ..........    -/3/-
  "To a lame Stranger .....................    -/1/-
  "Pd. lighting Lamps last Dark ...........    -/2/6
  "Several Fortune Tellers Indicted, etc...    -/12/-
  "Pd. Lawyer Nagave advising Roger Blomely's
      Case bringing Actions agt. the Constable
      for putting him in the Dungeon for being
      drunk on Sunday in time of divine
      Service ..............................   l/l/-"

It is interesting to note in this connection that on August 16, 1762, was
"Pd." one "Barnard Shaw maintenance of Rioters and Evidence, 1-11-6."

A circumstance of considerable human interest, too, and one possibly
little known, is the great aversion to the sight of bears held by the
inhabitants of the Isle of Wight, at least in the year 1891.  A copy of
the "Bye-Laws" of the "Administrative County of the Isle of Wight,"
issued that year, contains, following articles relating to "Regulating
the Sale of Coal" and "Spitting," this:

"As to Bears.

"1. No bear shall be taken along or allowed to be upon any highway,
unless such bear shall be securely confined in a vehicle closed so as to
completely hide such bear from view.

"2. Any person who shall offend against this Bye-law shall be liable to a
fine not exceeding in any case five pounds."

"Atti del Municipale!  Atti del Consiglio Comunale di Siena.  Bollettino
Degli atti Pubblicati Dalla Giunta Municipale di Roma."  It is fitting
that quartos of such titles as these, containing addresses beginning
Signori Consiglieri and Onorevoli Signori, should look something like
Italian opera, and be bound in vellum, title and date stamped in gold on
bright red and purple labels, with sides of mottled purple boards, and
imprints such as "Bologna.  Regia Tipografia Fratelli Merlani," and of
typography the best.  And on genuine paper, far from the woodpulp of
American municipal graft contracts.

Once, indeed, municipal documents were august pages.  Some of the early
Italian and German are on paper that will last as long as the law.  And
in these times the title pages of municipal documents were Piranesiesque:
massive architectural scroll work framing stone tablets, hung with
garlands of fruit and grain, and decorated with carved lions, human
heads, and histrionic masks.  And initial letters throughout to
correspond.

Now who but France would bind her municipal documents in heavily tooled,
full levant morocco, with grained silk inside covers?

XVIII

AS TO PEOPLE

It is a very pleasant thing to go about in the world and see all the
people.

Among the finest people in the world to talk with are scrubwomen.
Bartenders, particularly those in very low places, are not without
considerable merit in this respect.  Policemen and trolley-car conductors
have great social value.  Rustic ferry-men are very attractive
intellectually.  But for a feast of reason and a flow of soul I know of
no society at all comparable to that of scrubwomen.

It is possible that you do not cultivate scrubwomen.  That is your
misfortune.  Let me tell you about my scrubwoman.  I know only this one,
I regret to say, but she, I take it, is representative.

Her name--ah, what does it matter, her name?  The thing beyond price is
her mind.  There is stored, in opulence, all the ready-made language, the
tag-ends of expression, coined by modern man.  But she does not use this
rich dross as others do.  She touches nothing that she does not adorn.
She turns the familiar into the unexpected, which is precisely what great
writers do.  To employ her own expression, she's "a hot sketch, all
right."

She did not like the former occupant of my office.  No; she told me that
she "could not bear a hair of his head."  It seems that some altercation
occurred between them.  And whatever it was she had to say, she declares
that she "told it to him in black and white."  This gentleman, it seems,
was "the very Old Boy."  Though my scrubwoman admits that she herself is
"a sarcastic piece of goods."  By way of emphasis she invariably adds to
her assertions, "Believe _me_!"

Her son--she has a son--has much trouble with his feet.  His mother says
that if he has gone to one "shoeopodist" he has gone to a dozen.  My
scrubwoman tells me that she is "the only fair one" of her family.  Her
people, it appears, "are all olive."  My scrubwoman is a widow.  She has
told me a number of times of the last days of her husband.  It is a
touching story.  She realised that the end was near, and humoured him in
his idea of returning before it was too late to "the old country."  One
day when he had asked her again if she had got the tickets, and then
turned his face to the wall to cough, she said to herself,
"_Good_-night--shirt."

But most of the discourse of my scrubwoman is cheerful.  She is a valiant
figure, a brave being very fond of the society of her friends (of whom I
hold myself to be one), who works late at night, and talks continually.
I know that if you would contrive to find favour with your scrubwoman you
would often be like that person told of by mine who "laughed until she
thought his heart would break."

The most brotherly car-conductors, naturally, are those with not over
much business, those on lines in remote places.  I remember the loss I
suffered not long ago on a suburban car, which results, I am sorry to
say, in your loss also.

The bell signalling to stop rang, and a vivaciously got-up woman with an
extremely broad-at-the-base, pear-shaped torse, arose and got herself
carefully off the car.  The conductor went forward to assist her.  When
he returned aft he came inside the car and sat on the last seat with two
of us who were his passengers.  The restlessness was in him which betrays
that a man will presently unbosom himself of something.  This finally
culminated in his remarking, as if simply for something to say to be
friendly, "You noticed that lady that just got off back there?  Well," he
continued, leaning forward, having received a look intended to be not
discouraging, "that's the mother of Cora Splitts, the little
actress;--that lady's the mother of Cora Splitts, the little actress."

"Is that so!" exclaimed one who was his passenger, not wishing to deny
him the pleasure he expected of having excited astonishment.  A car
conductor leads a hard life, poor fellow, and one should not begrudge him
a little pleasure like that.

The conductor twisted away his face for an instant while he spat
tobacco-juice.  Thus cleared for action, he returned to the subject of
his thoughts.  "That's the mother of Cora Splitts," he repeated again.
"She's at White Plains tonight, Cora is.  Cora and me," he said, as one
that says, "ah, me, what a world it is!"--"Cora and me was chums once.
Yes, sir; we was chums and went to school together."  Some valuable
reminiscences of the distinguished woman, dating back to days before the
world dreamed of what she would become, by one who played with her as a
child, doubtless would have been told, but the conductor was interrupted;
a great many people got off, some others got on the car just then, and he
went forward to collect fares from these, and the thread was broken.

At my journey's end, I recollect, I went into a public-house.  There was
a person there whose presence made a deep impression upon my memory.  A
fine stocky lad, with a great square jaw, heavy beery jowls, and a
blue-black, bearded chin; in a blue striped collar.  He put both hands
firmly on the bar-rail at a good distance apart; straightened his arms
taut and his body at right angles with them, so that he resembled a huge
carpenter's square; then curled his back finely in, and said, with a
significant look at the man behind the bar, "Gimme one o' them shells."
A thin glass of beer was set before him; he relaxed, straightened up, and
drank off its contents.  Then, apparently, feeling that he was observed,
he looked very unconcernedly all about the room and appeared to be bored.
He then examined very attentively a picture on the wall, and his neck
seemed to be temporarily stiff.  I can see him now, I am happy to say, as
plain as print.

One's mind is, indeed, a grand photograph album.  How precious to one it
will be when one is old and may sit all day in a house by the sea and, so
to say, turn the leaves.  That is why one should be going about all the
while in one's vigour with an alert and an open mind.

Wives are picturesque characters, too.  I mind me of my friend Billy
Henderson's new wife.  Billy Henderson's wife looks like a balloon.
She's so fat that she has busted down the arches of her feet.  In order
to "fight flesh" she walks a great deal.  She walks a mile every day, and
then takes a car back home.  Her father comes over from Philadelphia once
every week to see her, because she is so homesick.  For months after she
was married she just cried all the time, she was so homesick.  She never
goes to the movies.  The movies make her cry.  One time she saw at the
movies a hospital scene.  It horrified her for days.  A friend of hers is
about to be married.  But she has told her friend that she cannot go to
the wedding.  Weddings always make her cry so.  She just can't read the
war news; it is too terrible; it affects her so that she can't sleep a
bit.  She hasn't read any of it at all, and, she says, she has no idea
who is winning the war.  She takes some kind of capsules to reduce flesh,
which cost six dollars for fifty.  She has taken twenty-five.  The
extension of the draft age being spoken of, she said to Billy:

"Dearie, I'll put you under the bed where they won't get you."  She
doesn't want to vote, and she can't understand why any one should want to
go to poles and vote and all that kind of thing.

Billy Henderson's wife is handsome; she is rich; she is an excellent
cook; she loves Billy Henderson.

XIX

HUMOURS OP THE BOOK SHOP

The panorama before his view is the human mind.  He panders to its
divers follies, consults its varied wisdom.  He stands umbrellaless in
the rain of all its idiosyncrasies.  Why has he not lifted up his
voice?  He, the book clerk, that lives among countless volumes of
confessions!  Whose daily task is to wrestle hour by hour with a living
Comedie Humaine!  Has the constant spectacle of so many books been
astringent in its effect upon any latent creative impulse?  Or has he
been dumb in the colloquial sense, forsooth; a figure like Mr.
Whistler's guard in the British Museum?  Sundry "lettered booksellers"
of England have, indeed, given us some reminiscences of bookselling and
its humours.  But they were the old boys.  They belonged to an old
order and reflected another day.  "As physicians are called 'The
Faculty' and counsellors-at-law 'The Profession,'" writes Boswell, "the
booksellers of London are called 'The Trade.'"  Let us look into this
Trade as it is to-day, we said.  So for a space we played we were a
book clerk.

There are two, decidedly contradictory, popular conceptions of the man
whose business it is to sell books.  One is the sentimental notion of
an old gentleman in a "stovepipe hat," a dreamer and an idealist, who
keeps a second-hand stall.  The most delightful pictures of him are in
the pages of Anatole France.  He is a man of much erudition.  And books
are his wife and family, food and drink.  Then there is the other idea.
"Why is it," we report the remark of an important looking gentleman in
a high hat, "that clerks in book stores never know anything about
books?" (or anything else, was perhaps not far from his thought.)  This
gentleman, it was readily perceived, had an idea that he had said
something rather good.  But it was not new.  This conception of the
book clerk is one of the world's seven jokes--brother to that of the
mother-in-law.  The book clerk of this view is a familiar figure in the
pages of humour, like the talkative barber or the comic Irishman of the
vaudeville stage--a stock character.  His illiteracy is classic; his
ignorant sayings irresistable.  He was sired by Charles Keene and
damned by Punch.  Phil May was his godfather; and every industrious
humourist employs him periodically.  These two ideas of the book
business are perhaps reconciled by the popularly cherished sentiment
that book sellers are not what they were.  Newspapers from time to time
print feature articles about the days "When Book Sellers Knew Books."
If you ask a salesman in a modern book shop if he has "Praed," you of
course expect him to reply, "I have, sir (or madam), but it doesn't
seem to do any good."

Well, at the Zoo there is humour from the inside looking out, as well
as from the outside looking in.  The book clerk is in the position to
remark certain human phenomena patent to him beyond the view of any
other, most curious, perhaps, among them a pleasant hypocrisy.  "Oh!"
purls a sweet lady, pausing to glance for the space of a second at her
surroundings, "I think books are just fine!"  "I love to be in a book
store," rattles a vivacious young woman.  "Books have the greatest
fascination for me," says another.  A young lady waiting for friends
looks out of the front door the entire time.  Her friends express
regret at having kept her waiting.  "Oh!" she exclaims, "I have been so
happy here"--glancing quickly around at the books--"I should just like
to be left here a couple of years."  There is a respectful pause by all
for an instant, each bringing into her face an expression of adoration
for the dear things of the mind.  Then, chatting gaily, the party
hastens away.  We turn to hear, "Oh, wouldn't you love to live in a
book shop!"

What is it that all men say in a book shop?  The great say it, even,
and the far from great.  Each in his turn looks solemnly at his
companion or at the salesman and says: "Of the making of books there is
no end."  Then each in his turn lights into a smile.  He has said
something pretty good.

"There are persons esteemed on their reputation," says the "Imitation
of Christ," "who by showing themselves destroy the opinion one had of
them." Though one might think it would be the other way, it is
difficult, indeed, to sell a book to a friend of the author.  "Oh, I
know the man who wrote that," is the reply.  "I wouldn't read a book of
his."  You see, a great writer must be dead.  A common error of book
buyers is to confuse the words edition and copy.  "Let me have a clean
edition of this," is frequently asked.  Once a lady asked for something
"bound in gingham."  No one, it is our belief, ever sold a light book
to a Japanese.  They are the book clerk's dread.  Terribly intelligent,
somewhat unintelligible in their handling of our language, they always
want something exceedingly difficult to find, something usually on
military or political science, harbour construction or the most
recondite form of philosophy.

Then there are the remarkable people who "keep up" with the flood of
fiction; who say, "Oh, I've read that," in a tone which implies that
they are not so far behind as that!  "Have you no new novels?" they
inquire.  Novels get "old," one might suppose, like eggs, in a couple
of days.  The quest of these seekers of books suggests the story of the
lady at a public library who, upon being told that seven new novels had
come in that morning, said, "Give me, please, the one that came in
last."  There are, too, those singular folks who appear regularly every
year just before Christmas, buy a great quantity of books for presents,
and disappear again until the next year just before the holiday season.
What, we have wondered, do they do about books the rest of the time?
Ministers are always very trying characters to book clerks.  "Beware of
the gallery," says a fellow serf to us, "there's a minister browsing
around up there."  The official servants of the Lord fall, in the book
clerk's mind, into that class technically described by him as
"stickers." All gentlemen wearing high hats also belong to this
classification.  Deaf customers are embarrassing, for the reason that
one always addresses one's next customer as though he were deaf, too.
Foreigners are invariably very polite to clerks.  They bow when they
enter and take off their hats upon leaving.  Very respectful people.
"There," said a fellow thrall, "come two old women in at the door.
Now, if I were my ancestor, I'd dance around that table with a stone
club and brain them."  As it is, they ask, "Have you Hopkinson Smith's
'Gondola Days'?"  He says, "I think so."  A lady, very rich and
important looking, wants a book "without an unpleasant ending."  "I
wonder how this is" (looking at the last page).  "No" (closing the book
with a thump), "that won't do."  A gentleman orders two sets of the
Prayer Book and Hymnal, to be marked upon the cover with his name, the
words Grace Church and his pew number.  He informs us that every year
while he is away in the summer his set of these books is stolen.

'Tis a merry life, the book clerk's, and a hard one.  Customers: Two
youngish women.  "Can you wait on us?"  They want to get something, do
not know just what, for a present.  "Oh, no!" they say, "we don't want
anything like so big a set as that.  Something nicely bound."  A copy
of "Cranford" is near by.  "Oh, when I read it I didn't think it much
good." "Poetry?"  "No, I don't think she is much interested in poetry."
"Do you suppose an art book?"------"No, she is not interested in art."
"Memoirs, then?"  "No, she would not care for that."  "Why, I had no
idea," said one somewhat reprovingly to us, "that it would be as hard
as this."

A calling which requires the practitioner to turn easily from the
recondite gentleman inquiring the author of "Religious Teachers of
Ancient Greece" to consideration of the problem (no less recondite) of
a lady anxious to find something to entertain a child of five and a
half inculcates some degree of mental agility.  "I want," said the very
fashionable lady, "to get a book for an old man--a" (with some
petulance) "very stupid old man."  "I want," from a serious old lady,
"to get a book for a young man studying for the ministry."  "I want,"
exclaimed a very smart apparition, "a dashing book for a man!"  "What
is the best book on Russia?"  "Do you know, now, if this is a good
story?--there are so many poor books nowadays."  Says a large,
uncommonly black lady, "I want 'Spears of Wheat, No. 3.'"  (Discovered
to be a prayer book.)  "I want the latest book, please, on how to bring
up a baby."  "I'd like to see what you have on 'physical research.'"
"Can you recommend a book for a young man with softening of the brain?
Poor fellow, he's in Bloomingdale."  "Is there any discount to
Christian workers?"  "Do you know," a demure person, an awful blank
look coming over her face, "what I want has gone quite out of my head."
There is an appealing look for help.  "Something American," in a
patrician voice, "for the ladies to read going over on the boat.  This
is American, now, is it?  New York society?  Ah, very good!  Have you
anything about the Rocky Mountains, or that sort of thing?"

Now we see coming the man who has been directed in a letter from his
wife to get a certain book, about which he knows nothing, and the title
of which he can not decipher.  Here is a person asking for "comfort
books" for the sick.  Here is Mrs. So-and-So, who tells us her husband
is very ill, unconscious; she has to sit up by him all night, and must
have something "very amusing" to divert her mind.  Here is the angry
man to whom by mistake was sent a book inscribed "to my good wife and
true." Heaven help the poor book clerk when the same good wife and true
comes in with her present of a naughty book with humorous remarks
written in it!

Now, how do you like the job?

XX

THE DECEASED

I think it was William Hazlitt's brother who remarked that "no young
man thinks he will ever die."  Whoever it was he was a mysterious
person who lives for us now in that one enduring observation.  That is
his "literary remains," his "complete works."  And many a man has
written a good deal more and said a good deal less than that concerning
that "animal, man" (in Swift's phrase), who, as Sir Thomas Browne
observes, "begins to die when he begins to live."

No young man, I should say, reads obituary notices.  They are hardly
"live news" to him.  Most of us, I fancy, regard these "items" more or
less as "dead matter" which papers for some reason or other are obliged
to carry.  But old people, I have noticed, those whose days are
numbered, whose autumnal friends are fast falling, as if leaf by leaf
from the creaking tree, those regularly turn to the obituary column,
which, doubtless, is filled with what are "personals" for them.

And yet, if all but knew it, there is not in the press any reading so
improving as the "obits" (to use the newspaper term), none of so
softening and refining a nature, none so calculated to inspire one with
the Christian feelings of pity and charity, with the sentiment of
malice toward none, to bring anon a smile of tender regard for one's
fellow mortals, to teach that man is an admirable creature, full of
courage and faith withal, constantly striving for the light,
interesting beyond measure, that his destiny is divinely inscrutable,
that dust unto dust all men are brothers, and that he, man, is (in the
words of "Urn Burial") "a noble animal, splendid in ashes and pompous
in the tomb."  I doubt very much indeed whether any one could read
obituaries every day for a year and remain a bad man or woman.

In many respects, the best obituaries are to be found in country
papers.  There, in country papers, none ever dies.  It may be because,
as it is said, the country is nearer to God than the town.  But so it
is that there, in country papers, in the fulness of time, or by the
fell clutch of chance, one "enters into his final rest," or "passes
from his earth life," or one "on Wed. last peacefully accepted the
summons to Eternity," or "on Thurs." (it may be) "passed to his eternal
reward."  "Died" is indeed a hard word.  It has never found admittance
to hearts that love and esteem.  Whitman (was it not?) when he heard
that Carlyle was dead went out in the night and looked up at the stars
and said that he did not believe it.  Even so, are not all who take
their passing "highly esteemed" in country papers?  In small places,
doubtless, death wears for the community a more tragic mein than in
cities, where it is more frequent and where we knew not him that lies
on his bier next door but one away.  In the country places this man who
is now no longer upright and quick was a neighbour to all.  And the
provincial writer of obituaries follows a high authority, another
rustic poet, deathless and known throughout the world, who sang of his
Hoosier friend "he is not dead but just away."

When one enters upon his last role in this world, which all fill in
their turn, he becomes in rural journals that personage known
throughout the countryside as "the deceased."  It might be argued that,
alas! the only thing you can do with one deceased is to bury him.  It
might be held that you cannot educate him.  That he, the deceased,
cannot enter upon the first steps of his career as a bookkeeper.  That
he cannot marry the daughter of the Governor of the State.  That
whatever happened to him, whatever he accomplished, enjoyed, endured,
in his pilgrimage through this world he experienced before he became,
as it is said, deceased.  That, in short, he is now dead.  And that it
should be said of him, as we say in the Metropolitan press, as a young
man Mr. Doe did this and later that.  But in places simpler, and so
more eloquent, than the Metropolis the final fact of one's existence
colours all the former things of his career.  In country obituaries all
that has been done was done by the deceased.  In this association of
ideas between the prime and the close of life is to be felt a sentiment
which knits together each scene.  This Mr. Some One did not merely
apprentice himself to a printer at fourteen (as city papers say it) and
marry at twenty-one.  But he that is now deceased was once full of hope
and strength (at fourteen), and in the brave days of twenty-one did he,
that is now struck down, plight his troth.  So, doubtless, runs the
thought in that intimate phrase so dear to country papers, "the
deceased."

And there are no funerals in the country.  That is a word, funeral, of
too forbidding, ominous, a sound to be under the broad and open sky.
There where the neighbours gather, all those who knew and loved the
departed from a boy, the "last sad rites are read," and the "mortuary
services are performed."  Then from the fruitful valley where he dwelt
after his fathers, and their fathers, he mounts again the old red hill,
bird enchanted.

He is not buried, though he rests in the warm clasp of the caressing
earth.  Buried has an inhuman sound, as though a man were a bone.  The
deceased is always "interred," or he may be "laid to rest," or his
"interment takes place."

Now, it is in these biographical annals of small places that one finds
the justest estimates of life.  There folks are valued for what they
are as well as for what they do.  Inner worth is held in regard equally
with the flash and glitter of what the great world calls success.  I
was reading just the other day of a late gentleman, "aged 61," whose
principal concern appeared to be devotion to his family.  His filial
feeling was indeed remarkable.  It was told that "after the death of
his parents, three years ago, he had resided with his sister."  After
his attachment to his own people, his chief interest, apparently, was
in the things of the mind, in literature.  He had "never engaged in
business," it was said, but he "was a great reader," he could "talk
intelligently on many topics which interested him," and in the circles
which he frequented he was admired, that is it was thought that he was
"quite a bright man."  Who would not feel in this sympathetic record of
his goodly span something of the charm of the modest nature of this
man?  Again, there was the recent intelligence concerning William
Jackson, "a coloured gentleman employed as a deck hand on a pleasure
craft in this harbour," who "met his demise" in an untimely manner.
Clothes do not make the man, nor doth occupation decree the bearing.
This is a great and fundamental truth very clearly grasped by the
country obituary, and much obscured elsewhere.

On the other hand, positively nowhere else does the heart to dare and
the power to do find such generous recognition as in the obituaries of
country papers.  The "prominence" of blacksmiths, general store
keepers, undertakers, notaries public, and other townspeople bright in
local fame has been made a jest by urban persons of a humorous
inclination, who take scorn of merit because it is not vast merit.
Pleasing to contemplate in contrast to this waspish spirit is the noble
nature of the country obituary, inspiration to humanism.  Here was a
man, to the seeing eye, of sterling stamp: "He attended public grammar
school where he profited by his opportunities in obtaining as good an
education as possible, etc."  Later in life, be became "well and
favourably known for his conservative and sane business methods," and
was esteemed by his associates, it is said, "fraternally and
otherwise."  He was "mourned," by those who "survived" him, as people
are not mourned in cities, that is, frankly, in a manner undisguised.
Country obituaries are not afraid to be themselves.  In this is their
appeal to the human heart.

They are the same in spirit, identical in turn of phrase, from Maine to
California, from the Gulf to the Upper Provinces.  That is one of the
remarkable things about them.  You might expect to come across, here or
there, a writer of country paper obituaries out of step, as it were,
with his fellow mutes, so to put it, one raising his voice in a
slightly off, or different key, a trace, in short, of the hand of some
student of the modes of thought of the world beyond his bosky dell or
rolling plain.  But it is not so in any paper truly of the countryside.
And, perhaps, that is well.

A type of obituary which very likely is read rather generally in cities
is that of slow growth and released from the newspaper-office "morgue"
as occasion calls.  One such timely and capable biographical account is
waiting for each of us that is a Vice-President, King, lord of great
dominions, high commander of armed forces, intellectual immortal of any
kind, recognised superman in this or that.  Big Chief anywhere, or
beloved popular idol, nicely proportioned according to our space value.
Of course, if we are a very great Mogul indeed we get a display head on
the first page upon the dramatic occasion of our exit.  But, generally
speaking, this type of matter would run somewhere between the seventh
and the thirteenth or fifteenth page, according to the number of pages
of the issue of the paper coinciding with the date of the ending of our
day's work.  There, if we are pretty important, we should lead the
column, and take a two-line head, with a pendant "comb."  This,
altogether, would announce to the passing eye that we went out (as the
poet, Edwin Arlington Robinson, puts it) in such or such a year of our
age, that pneumonia, or what not, "took" us, that we were a member of
one of the city's oldest families, that a family breach was healed at
the death of our sister, or the general points of whatever it is that
makes us interesting to the paper's circulation.  We are likely to have
a date line and a brief despatch from Rome, or Savannah, or wherever we
happen to be when we shuffle off, stating that we have done so.  This
to be followed by a "shirt-tail dash."  Then begins a beautifully
dispassionate and highly dignified recital of the salient facts
connected with our career, which may run to a couple of sticks, or,
even, did our activities command it, turn the column.

Or, suppose for the sake of our discussion that your achievements have
not been quite of the first rank.  You get a one-line head, a sub-head,
and a couple of paragraphs.  Somebody has exclaimed concerning how much
life it takes to make a little art.  Just so.  How much life it takes
to make a very little obituary in the great city!  Early and late, day
in and day out, week in and week out, month in and month out, in the
sun's hot eye of summer, through the winter's blizzard, year after year
for thirty-six years you have been a busy practising physician.  You
have lived in the thick of births and life and death for thousands of
hours.  What you know, and have lived and have seen would fill rows of
volumes.  You are a distinguished member of many learned societies,
widely known as an educator.  You are good for about a hundred and
fifty words.

Perhaps not.  Perhaps you were a person of rather minor importance.
You are, that is, you were, we will say, an astronomer, or you were a
mineralogist, or a former Alderman, or something like that.  So you
call for a paragraph, with a head.  Your virtues (and your vices) have
been many.  You were three times married.  As Mr. Bennett says of
another of like momentous history, the love of life was in you, three
times you rose triumphant over death.  Goodness! what a novel you would
make.  You call for a paragraph, with a head.  All your clubs are given.

You are doing pretty well.  Many of us, just somebodies but nobodies in
especial particular, do not have a separate head at all but go in a
group into the feature "Obituary Notes."  Our names are set in "caps,"
and we have a brisk paragraph apiece, admirable pieces of composition,
pellucid, compact, nervous.  Our stories are contained in these
dry-point-like portraits stript of all that was occasional, accidental,
ephemeral, leaving alone the essential facts, such as, for instance,
that we were, say, a civil engineer.  I think it would be well for each
of us occasionally to visualise his obituary "note."  This should have
the effect of clarifying our outlook.  Amid the welter of existence
what is it that we are above all to do?  To thine own self be true.
You are a husband, a father, and a civil engineer.  That is all that
matters in the end.

But after all, all obituaries in a great city are for the elect.  The
great majority of us have none at all, in print.  What we were is,
indeed, graven on the hearts that knew us, and told in the places where
we have been.  But in the written word we go into the feature headed
"Died," a department similar in design to that on the literary page
headed "Books Received."  We are arranged alphabetically according to
the first letter of our surnames.  We are set in small type with lines
following the name line indented.  It is difficult for me to tell with
certainty from the printed page but I think we are set without leads.
Here again, frequently, the reader comes upon the breath of affection,
the hand of some one near to the one that is gone: "Beloved husband of
------."  And he is touched by the realisation that even in the rushing
city, somewhere unseen amid the hard glitter and the gay scene, to-day
warm hearts are torn, and that simple grief throbs in and makes
perennially poignant a bromidian phrase.

As this column lengthens the paragraphs shorten, until is reached what
seems to me the most moving obituary of all, that most eloquent of the
destiny of men.  "ROE.  ------ Richard.  1272 West 96th St., Dec. 30,
aged 54."  It is like to the most moving line, perhaps, in modern
literature.  For nowhere else, I think, is there one of such simplicity
and grandeur as this from "The Old Wives' Tale": "He had once been
young, and he had grown old, and was now dead."

XXI

A TOWN CONSTITUTIONAL

There is certainly no more grotesque fallacy than that humorously
bigoted notion so generally entertained, particularly by our friends of
other nations (at any rate, before the war), that the only thing in the
world for which we as a people care is success as measured by money.  A
walk about any day will give this ridiculous idea a black eye.  Any one
with ears to his head will perceive that we scorn things which are to
be had for money.  Money!  What is that?  Phew!  Everybody has it.  It
is mine, it is yours, it is nothing--trash.  Any one with a brain-pan
under his hat will recognise inside of half an hour that we are
anything but a nation of shopkeepers spiritually.  It is as plain as a
pike-staff that we are a nation of perfectly rabid idealists.  It is
sounded on every side that the things which we most fervently prize,
inordinately covet, envy possession of, and hold most proudly, are
precisely those things which the wealth of the Indies would not
procure.  To wit:

Jimmy was a waiter, humble, but celebrated--as a waiter--among a
circle.  An admirer of Jimmy's, a journalist continually on the lookout
for copy, wrote him up for the paper at space rates.  Thence till the
day Broadway suffered his loss by untimely death did Jimmy fold and
unfold his worn clipping to exhibit with a full heart this tribute to
him which was of a kind (as he never failed to say) which "money could
not buy."  It is reported upon reasonably reliable authority that
Jimmy's last words, in a faint whisper, were: "Money could not have
bought------"  And then he went on his way.

So it was, too, with a tobacconist whom I knew--who had an article
framed which referred to his shop.  "In such a paper, too!" he
exclaimed a hundred times a day, "money could not have bought it."

Your aunt has a lot of old spavined furniture which would bring about
tu'pence at public sale.  Some of it was your great-aunt's.  All of it
has been in the family from time immemorial; and its peculiar and
considerable value, your aunt and her neighbours are agreed, resides in
the esoteric fact that it is the kind of thing which "money couldn't
buy."

Health is a great blessing, and, we are repeatedly told, we should
prize it beyond measure,--as it is a thing that money will not buy.

His money, it is commonly said of a rich man in bereavement, will not
bring his son back to life.  The impotency of money in the life of the
spirit is notorious among us.  Of a deceased miser we declare with
satisfaction: "Well, he can't take his money with him."  And money--the
righteous well know--will get none into heaven.

What is the moving theme that holds the multitude at the movie theatre
bound in a spell?  What is it that answers deep unto deep between the
literature vended at drug stores and the people?--Concern for money
overthrown by idealism!  The triumph of ethereal love over the base
temptation of lucre!  Is it not so: the rich wooer in the top hat and
the elegant Easter-parade coat is turned away, and the poor lover with
his flannel shirt open at the collar and a dinner-pail hung upon his
arm is chosen for bluebird happiness--and the heart of the maligned
masses is satisfied.

Money (the conviction has passed into an industrious bromideum) will
not buy happiness.

I knew a man who had a wife; and he was told by sage counsellors that
if he would treat her right she would give him "what money could not
buy."

But what need is there to multiply examples?  Take a turn around the
block and return with the wisdom that money can not buy.  Come; get
your stick and let us go.

A beneficent Providence, sir, has caused it to be that the finest shows
in this world are free of all men.  Nature charges no admission fee.
The dawn and the evening are gratis.  In the matter of art, the
performances of the little men of the passing hour are to be seen in
Bond Street, on the Avenue, and at the academies and societies, for a
price; but those treasure houses of the enduring masterpieces, the
great museums of the world, demand naught from him that hath nothing.
A collector of customs sitteth at the golden door of the movies; but
the far more delightful and far more human shows shown in the show
windows are quite free for all to see.  And to those blessed ones whose
eyes have not lost their innocence and whose hearts remain sweet and
simple the costly spectacles of the world are but tawdry vanity as
compared with the feasts of entertainment enacted daily in show windows.

One of the very best theatres in this country for entertainments of
this nature is lower Sixth Avenue, though the Bowery is not to be
overlooked, and the passionate lover of pleasure should not neglect any
business thoroughfare which presents a particularly shabby appearance.
The actors and actresses in these fascinating histrionic presentations
are not called comedians and tragedians, comediennes and
tragediennes--but "demonstrators."  The effect of their performances
thus is twofold: they gratify the spectator's sense of the humorous or
the curious, and they demonstrate to his intelligence the value of
something with whose merits possibly he is not acquainted.

There are not many things in life, I think, which you find pleasanter
than this: You are slightly obstructed in your perambulations on a fine
afternoon by a small knot of loiterers pausing before a shop window in
which an active young man of admirably mobile countenance is holding
forth in dumb show.  Your progress is slackened as you edge about the
throng with the intention of proceeding on your way.  As it were, you
poise on the wing.  Then, like a warming liquor stealing through the
veins, the awakening of your interest in the artful antics of this
young man makes fainter and fainter your will to proceed on your
course, until it dies softly away.  What is this ridiculous thing he is
doing?  By its magnetism it has, at any rate, become for you the
supreme interest, for the moment, of the universe.

With a horrible grimace the young man yanks fiercely at his cravat.  It
does not budge, or at least only very slightly.  With still further
display of energetic effort, accompanied by a ferocious expression of
pained and enraged exasperation, he yanks again.  No, the cravat is
stuck fast behind within the collar.  With a gesture of hopeless
despair and a face of pitiful woe the young man abandons his struggle
with the ordinary kind of cravat which loops around the neck, and
which, foolishly enough, is so universally worn.  You see, so his
eloquent flinging out of the hands saith, it is of no use.  He shakes
his fist.  Then, registering the extremity of disgust, he rips the
loathesome, cravat-clogged collar from his neck and flings it from him.

What will he do now? is the thought that holds his audience bound in a
spell.  Ah!  His face breaks into light.  He snatches up his collar and
industriously adjusts it without a cravat.  He picks up a small object
which he holds aloft between thumb and forefinger, turning it this way
and that.  It is the ready-made bow of a bow tie, the bow and nothing
more.  Yes, there are patent prongs to it, which he deftly slips
beneath the wings of his collar.  So!  No trouble whatever.
Instantaneous.  A smile of luxurious blandness spreads over the face of
the young man.  Thus he stands for a moment.  Then stoops and places in
a corner of the window a large card inscribed "Ten Cents."  With a
pleasing sense of curiosity satisfied, the current of your own life as
distinct from show-window shows flows back again into your
consciousness.  You turn, and the great movement of the city takes you,
although some souls of spacious leisure and of apparently insatiable
curiosity linger on to drink in the happiness of witnessing a
repetition of the fascinating exhibition.

Of such shows is the freedom of the kingdom of heaven.  There is the
other young man in a show window a bit further on who all day long
gashes blocks of wood with a magic razor, only to sharpen it to greater
keenness, so that before you he continually cuts with it the finest
hairs.  There is the young woman garbed as a nurse who treats the corns
on a gigantic plaster foot.  In show windows cooks are cooking
appetising dishes; damsels are combing magnificent, patent-medicine
grown tresses; and in show windows are spectacles of infinite variety
and without number.  All for the delight without cost of a penny of
those whose hearts are as a little child.  There is the trim maid who
folds and unfolds a Davenport couch.  I had a friend one time of a
roving disposition (alas! he is now in jail) who once got the amazingly
enviable job of doing nothing but smoke an endless succession of cigars
in a show window.

Brother (as Lavengro used to say), there is nothing high about the cost
of pleasure.  But hold! would you, without a thought, pass by here?
Though this, yon show, is without its rapt throng to do it reverence,
it is, to an ardent mind, the most enticing, and the most instructive,
of all the classic exhibitions to be seen from the pavement, the one
fullest of all of (in the words of one Quinney) "meat and gravy."
Always tarry, fellow man, before the cheap photographer's.

Any one who has ever been enough interested in human matters to examine
the sidewalk exhibitions of the cheap photographer does not need to be
told that the fine old star character there, a character somewhat
analogous in popular appeal and his permanency as an institution to the
heavy villain of melodrama, a character old as the hills, yet fresh as
the morning, is the naked baby.  Nobody ever saw a cheap photographer's
display without its naked baby.  Just why he should be naked is not
clear.  However, there is undoubtedly inherent in the mind of the race
this instinct,--that you should begin your photographic life naked.
Perhaps this is in response to a sentiment for symbol: naked came ye
into the world.  Perhaps it is because your face at the time of your
initial photograph is as yet so uncarved by time that it is deemed more
interesting to display the whole of you, clothed, as it were, in
innocence.  The art of painting, of course, from the earliest rendering
of the Child of the Virgin down to Mary Cassatt, has been fond of
portraying infants nude,--the photographer may be said only to continue
a very old tradition.  But painting has always observed the baby with
ceremonious respect; painting stripped him to admire him and softly
caress him.  The broad humanity of the cheap photographer "jokes" him,
as you may say.

The most popular way of presenting the baby at the cheap
photographer's,--seated, standing, on his back, or on his belly; stark
naked, or (as sometimes he is found) girded about the loins, or (as,
again, he is seen) less naked and wearing an abbreviated shirt, and in
various other stages of habilimentation,--is on a whitish hairy rug.
No background but the hairy rug.  It is background (very largely), one
suspects, that gives one the sense of a baby's value.  The idea occurs
to a thoughtful observer of his photograph that it is to a considerable
degree from background, surrounding atmosphere, local colour, that the
baby derives personal identity.  Twenty cabinet-sized naked babies,
each on a hairy rug:--one conceives how an unscrupulous photographer
(as may very likely commonly be the case) might save money on
negatives, after he had a stock of a little variety, by snapping babies
with an unloaded camera and printing from old plates, without anybody's
being the wiser.  (Here, indeed, would be a utilitarian motive behind
the baby's being naked of articles of identification.)  It is, alas!
undermining to the pride of race to reflect that that photograph of
one's cousin's fine new baby Edward, which reminded every one so much
of the infant's mother, may not impossibly have been the original
likeness of some baby now long extinct.

History, so called, deals exclusively with persons of distinction;
fiction, though more catholic, sees man in a glamour, with the various
prejudices this way and that of a mortal eye.  The development of the
discovery announced by Daguerre in 1839, and first applied to portraits
by one Draper,--this is the great historian.  The photograph business,
sir, alone sees life steadily and sees it whole.  Photography is the
supreme sociologist, master psychologist.  In the sidewalk display of
the cheap photographer is the poor, naked, human story,--poignantly
touching, chastening of pride, opening the heart of the responsive
beholder to deeper knowledge of the inherent kinship of all humankind.

How does the consummate realism of the cheap photographer show its
babies of yester-year, clothed now in the raiment of mature years and
simple honours?

That appealing spectacle, the girl who has performed somewhere in
curiously home-made-looking "tights," and, laughing roguishly at the
camera, been photographed afterward (from this sight what roue would
not turn away his sinful eyes in shame and pity?).  The highly
satisfied young man in the very rented-appearing evening clothes
(photographed, it is apparent, in the day time).  The blank-looking
person who for some cryptic reason is enamoured of the studious,
literary pose, and appears, in effect like a frontispiece portrait,
glancing up from a writing table (an obviously artificial cigar between
the fingers of one hand, apparently made of carbon, and, presumably,
the property of the photographer).  The aspiring amateur boxer, in
position, with his sparing trunks on and an American flag around his
waist (or sometimes, in default of trunks, he is seen in his nether
undergarment).  The jolly girl in boy's clothes (who has not seen
her?).  The little child in costume performing a cute dance.  The
coloured beau, a heavy swell, in spats and a van Bibber overcoat.  The
gay banqueters of the So-and-So Association, around their festive board
(one man, devilish fellow! holding aloft a beer bottle).  The young
girl in confirmation attire, standing awkwardly by a table (her slip of
a mind, as she stands there, very probably less upon her God than upon
her common, foolish dress).  The team of amateur comedians (sad
spectacle!).  The bride and groom (perennial as the naked baby)
standing, curiously enough, upon our old friend, the hairy rug.  The
family group (all the figures of which have a curious wax-work effect,
reminiscent of the late Eden Musee).  The policeman, in uniform
(sitting in a chair of cathedral architecture).  The fireman (a hero,
perhaps,--though no man is a hero, merely amazingly human, to the cheap
photographer's camera).  The youthful swains posed beside that
indestructible stage property of the popular photographer, the
artificial tree stump.  The immortal woman vain of that part of her
which Mr. Mantalini referred to as "outline," and careful to keep her
near arm from obstructing the spectator's view (sometimes she is
clothed; sometimes simply wound in a sheet; sometimes, in either case,
she is like the Dowager whose outline Mr. Mantalini described as
"dem'd").  All these--and many others--are the traditions of the cheap
photography.

Nobody, apparently, is so unattractive, nobody so poor, nobody wears
such queer clothes, nobody is so old, or faded, or fat, or "skinny," or
short, or tall, or black, or bow-legged, or so anything at all, that he
or she won't pose for a photograph.  So that it may reasonably be said,
that to have lost the instinct to have one's "picture taken" is to have
lost the love of life.  Nobody, no doubt, but is interesting to
somebody.  And, as Stevenson has said, can any one be regarded as
useless so long as he has a friend?

And when--brother--at length, one has withdrawn forevermore from the
tawdry stage of the cheap photographer's, a last view is taken of one,
as it were, in the grave.  Side by side at the cheap photographer's
with the naked baby and with the bride and groom--is the "floral
emblem."

XXII

READING AFTER THIRTY

Somewhere in the mass of that splendid, highly personal journalism of
his, William Hazlitt declares that he was never able to read a book
through after thirty.  That penetrating man, Samuel Butler, reflecting
in his "Note-Books" on "What Audience to Write For," says: "People
between the ages of twenty and thirty read a good deal, after thirty
their reading drops off and by forty is confined to each person's
special subject, newspapers and magazines."  Thirty again, you see.

We all have friends who have been omniverous readers, persons who, to
our admiration and despair, seem to have read everything in
"literature."  It may have struck us, however, as a curious thing that,
except possibly in rare instances, such persons appear not to read much
now, beyond newspapers and magazines.  The upshot of what they are able
to say, when you ask them why this is true, is that one simply reaches
a time of life when one "quits reading," as one ceases to dance, or
cools in interest toward the latest fashions in overcoats.

But, undoubtedly there are persons who continue to read, apparently
with unabated industry and zest, no matter how old they may become.
Dr. Johnson, of course, was a constant reader all his life, and would
cheerfully read anything whether it was readable or not.  Though did
not he somewhere confess to himself that he did not read things
through?  Mr. Huneker, who is well on the richer side of thirty, would
seem to read everything printed about five minutes after it has left
the press, and before anybody else has had a chance to see it.  There
are so many capital letters on the pages of his own books that it makes
one dizzy to look at them.  Whether or not he reads through all the
books he mentions is of course (as he is a reviewer) a question.  And,
then, both Mr. Huneker and the Doctor belong to the trade, so to say.
Another startlingly prodigious reader is Theodore Roosevelt,
hilariously past thirty, and not exclusively identified with literary
"shop."  He is continually discovering and vigorously recommending new
poets and short-story writers whom professional critics have not yet
had time to get around to.  It does not appear that a fundamental or
organic change in the composition of the human brain which inhibits
reading occurs more or less suddenly at thirty.

Why then do so many reading animals cease at about that time to read?
Butler does not say.  Arnold Bennett (was it not?) has asked what's the
use of his reading more, he knows enough.  Hazlitt, in his own case,
surmised that the keener interest of writing rather asphyxiated the
impulse to read.  And, doubtless, that generally is about the size of
it.  As in the cure of the drink habit, a new and more intense interest
will drive out the old.  The reader, of course, is a spectator, not an
active participant in the world's doings.  After thirty, desirable
citizens of ordinary energy have little opportunity for the role of
noncombatant, and the taste of action and of success, like the taste of
war, makes them impatient with quieter things.  Failures read more than
successful men.  Bachelors no doubt read much more than husbands.  And
fathers seldom are great readers.  This last fact may explain the
observation that even college professors do not read fanatically.  When
they are "off" awhile they "play with" their children (children are
great enemies everywhere to reading), who are much more real to them
than study.

In one of his later books George Moore chronicles his resolve to
cultivate the habit of reading, to learn to read again.  And he sucks
much naive pleasure from the contemplation of this prospective
enterprise; but he finds it very difficult to persevere in it, and
drifts away instead into reveries of what he has read.  There is a
thought here, however, to be hearkened to: the idea of learning to read
again.

What is it that happens to one in consequence of his ceasing to read?
He suffers a hardening of the intellectual arteries.  There are quaint
old codgers one knows here and there who declare that in fiction there
has "been nothing since Dickens."  They are delightful, of course; but
one would rather see than be one.  We all know many persons whose
intellectual clock stopped some time ago, and there are people whose
minds apparently froze at about the time when they should have begun to
ripen, and which are like blocks of ice with a fish (or a volume of
Huxley) inside.  Nothing now can get in.

At those times of earnest introspection, when one would "swear off"
this or that, would reduce one's smoking, would adopt the principle of
"do it now," and so on--at those times an excellent New Year's
resolution, or birthday resolution, or first day of the month
resolution, would be to re-learn to read, to keep, as Dr. Johnson said
of his friendships, one's reading continually "in good repair."

EPILOGUE

ON WEARING A HAT

There is a good deal to be said about wearing a hat.  And yet this
humorous custom, this rich topic, of wearing a hat has been sadly
neglected, as far as I can make out, by scholars, scientists, poets,
composers, and other "smart" people.

Man has been variously defined, as the religious animal, and so on; but
also, to the best of my knowledge and belief, he is the only animal
that wears a hat.  He has become so accustomed to the habit of wearing
his hat that he does not feel that he is himself out of doors without
it.  Mr. Howells (I think it was) has told us in one of his novels of a
young man who had determined upon suicide.  With this intent he made a
mad dash for the sea.  But on his way there a sudden gust of wind blew
off his hat; instinctively he turned to recover it, and this action
broke the current of his ideas.  With his hat he recovered his reason,
and went home as alive as usual.  His hat has come to mean for man much
more than a protection for his head.  It is for him a symbol of his
manhood.  You cannot more greatly insult a man than by knocking off his
hat.  As a sign of his reverence, his esteem, his respect, a man bares
his head.  Though, indeed, the contentious Mr. Chesterton somewhere
argues that there is no more reason for a man's removing his hat in the
presence of ladies than for his taking off his coat and waistcoat.

In the more complex social organisms of Europe the custom of lifting
the hat to other men whom one thus acknowledges as superiors is much
more prevalent than in our democratic country.  Though in America we
remove our hats in elevators upon the entrance of ladies, a practice
which is not followed in England.  It was Mrs. Nickleby who indicated
the extreme politeness of the noble gentlemen who showed her to her
carriage by the celebrated remark that they took their hats "completely
off."  We express great joy by casting our hats into the air.  If I
wish to show my contempt for you I will wear my hat in your house; if I
wish you to clear out of my house I say: "Here's your hat"; if I am
moved to admiration for you I say: "I take off my hat to you."  I
greatly enjoy seeing you run after your hat in the street, because you
are thereby made excessively ridiculous.  The comic Irishman of the
vaudeville stage makes his character unmistakable to all by carrying
his clay pipe in his hat band.  The English painter, Thomas
Gainsborough, gave his name to a hat.  The seasoned newspaper man
displays his cynical nature and complete disillusionment by wearing his
hat at his desk.  A hat worn tilted well back on the head indicates an
open nature and a hail-fellow-well-met disposition; while a hat
decidedly tilted over one eye is the sign of a hard character, and one
not to be trifled with.  In the literature of alcoholism it is written
that a common hallucination of the inebriate is that a voice cries
after him: "Where did you get that white hat?"  Upon assuming office
the cardinal is said to "take the hat."  When a man is conspicuously
active in American political life "his hat is in the ring."  Whistler
topped off his press-agent eccentricity with a funny hat.  The most
idiosyncratic hat at present in America is that which decorates the
peak of Mr. Bliss Carman.  The hat-stands in our swagger hotels make a
great deal of money; I know a gentleman who affirmed that a hat which
had originally cost him three dollars had cost him eighteen dollars to
be got back from hat-checking stands.  Cheap people evade the hat-boy.

When the present enthusiast for the splendid subject of hats was a
small boy it was the ambition of every small boy of his acquaintance to
be regarded as of sufficient age to possess what we termed a "dice
hat," what is commonly called a "derby," what in England they call a
"darby," what Dickens aptly referred to as a "pot-hat," what, in one
highly diverting form, is sometimes referred to on the other side as a
"billycock."  That singular structure for the human head, the derby
hat, one time well-nigh universally worn, has now gone somewhat out of
fashion and been superseded by the soft hat of smart design, though
there are indications, I fear, that the derby is coming in again.  When
we were young the soft hat was most commonly worn by veterans of the
Civil War, in a pattern called a "slouch hat" or "Grand Army hat."
Though, indeed, such romantic beings as cowboys in popular ten cent
literature and the late Buffalo Bill wore sombreros, and the
picturesque Mexican a high peaked affair.

Our grandfathers wore "stove-pipe hats"; and the hats of politicians
were one time frequently called "plug hats."  This male head-dress even
more extraordinary than the derby, books of etiquette sometimes say you
should not call a "silk hat" but a "high hat."  In London but a few
years ago no man ever went into the City with other than a top-hat, or
"topper" as they say there.  It is said that the going out of general
favour of the silk hat has been occasioned in a considerable degree by
the popularity of raincoats in preference to umbrellas.  If you observe
any great crowd in England to-day you will find in it few hats of any
kind; it is in the main a sea of caps.  The American "dude" and the
anti-bellum British "knut" always wore silk hats.  Gentlemen at the
British race courses and fine old clubmen of Pall Mall affect a white
or grey top hat, of the sort which was so becoming an ornament to the
late King Edward.  The opera hat is said to have startled many persons
who had not seen it before.  Intoxicated gentlemen in funny pictures
have always smashed their silk hats.  Some men have worn a silk hat
only on the occasion of their marriage.  High hats are worn by small
boys in England.  The most useful occupation to-day is that which
envolves the wearing of a "tin hat."

The day in the autumn fixed by popular mandate when the straw hat is to
be discarded for the season is hilariously celebrated in Wall Street by
the destruction by the affronted populace of the straw hats of those
who have had the temerity or the thoughtlessness to wear them.
Coloured men in livery stables, however, sometimes wear straw hats the
year round.  To the habit generally of wearing a hat baldness is
attributed by some.  And the luxuriant hair of Indians and of the
cave-man is pointed to as illustrating the beneficent result of not
wearing a hat.  And now and then somebody turns up with the idea in his
head that he doesn't need a hat on it.  There is a white garbed
gentleman of Grecian mould who parades Broadway every day without a hat.

It is indisputable that the hats women wear to-day are more beautiful
than they have been for generations, perhaps centuries.  Yet this fact
has met with little expression of appreciation.  This present
excellence is because women's hats now are the product of intellectual
design.  In the '80's the idea was entertained that decoration of a
woman's hat was increased by attaching to it something in the way of
beads or feathers wherever there was a space free.  A fashionable
woman's hat to-day may be as simple and, in its way, as effective as
art as a Whistler symphony; a single splotch of colour, it may be,
acting as a foil against a rich mass.  Or the hat is a replica, as it
were, of the celebrated design of a period in history.  But the erudite
subject of women's hats should not be touched upon without a salute to
that racy model which crowns the far-famed 'Arriet, whose Bank-holiday
attire was so delightedly caressed by the pencil of the late Phil May.
None could forget his tenderly human drawing of the lady with the
bedraggled feather over one eye who has just been ejected by the
bar-man, and who turns to him to say: "Well, the next time I goes into
a public house, I goes where I'm _respected_!"

A hat is distinguished from a cap or bonnet by the possession of a
brim.  The modern hat can be traced back to the _petasus_ worn by the
ancient Romans when on a journey; and hats were also thus used by the
earlier Greeks.  Not until after the Norman conquest did the use of
hats begin in England.  A "hatte of biever" was worn by one of the
"nobels of the lande, mett at Clarendom" about the middle of the 12th
century; and Froissart describes hats that were worn at Edward's court
in 1340, when the Garter order was instituted.  The use of the scarlet
hat which distinguishes cardinals was sanctioned in the 13th century by
Pope Innocent IV.  The merchant in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales had

  "On his head a Flaundrish bever hat";

and from this period onwards frequent mention is made of "felt hattes,"
"beever hattes," and other like names.  Throughout mediaeval times the
wearing of a hat was regarded as a mark of rank and distinction.
During the reign of Elizabeth the caprices of fashion in hats were many
and various.

The Puritans affected a steeple crown and broad brimmed hat, while the
Cavaliers adopted a lower crown and a broader brim ornamented with
feathers.  In the time of Charles II. still greater breadth of brim and
a profusion of feathers were fashionable features of hats, and the
gradual expansion of brim led to the device of looping or tying up that
portion.  Hence arose various fashionable "cocks" in hats; and
ultimately, by the looping up equally of three sides of the low-crowned
hat, the cocked hat which prevailed throughout the 18th century was
elaborated.  The Quaker hat, plain, low in crown, and broad in brim,
originated with the sect in the middle of the 17th century.  The silk
hat is an article of recent introduction.  Though it was known in
Florence about a century ago, its manufacture was not introduced into
France till about 1825, and its development has taken place entirely
since that period.  In all kinds of hat-making the French excel; in the
United Kingdom the felt hat trade is principally centred in the
neighbourhood of Manchester; and in the United States the States of New
York and New Jersey enjoy the greater part of the industry.

So much for hats.

End of Project Gutenberg's Walking-Stick Papers, by Robert Cortes Holliday