 The Philosophy of Composition by Edgar Allan Poe. Recording by Leon Meyer. Charles Dickens, in a note now lying before me, alluding to an examination I once made of the mechanism of Barnaby-Rudge, says, By the way, are you aware that Godwin wrote his Caleb Williams backwards? He first involved his hero in a web of difficulties, forming the second volume, and then, for the first, cast about him for some mode of accounting for what had been done. I cannot think this the precise mode of procedure on the part of Godwin, and indeed what he himself acknowledges is not altogether in accordance with Mr. Dickens' idea, but the author of Caleb Williams was too good an artist not to perceive the advantage derivable from at least a somewhat similar process. Nothing is more clear than that every plot, worth the name, must be elaborated to its denouement before anything be attempted with a pin. It is only with the denouement constantly in view that we can give a plot its indispensable air of consequence, or causation, by making the incidents, and especially the tone at all points, tend to the development of the intention. There is a radical error, I think, in the usual mode of constructing a story. Whether history affords a thesis, or one is suggested by an incident of the day, or at best the author sets himself to work in the combination of striking events to form merely the basis of his narrative, designing generally to fill in with description, dialogue, or authorial comment, whatever crevices of fact or action may from page to page render themselves apparent. I prefer commencing with the consideration of an effect, keeping originality always in view, for he is false to himself who ventures to dispense with so obvious and so easily attainable a source of interest. I say to myself, in the first place, of the innumerable effects or impressions of which the heart, the intellect, or more generally the soul is susceptible, what one shall I, on the present occasion, select? Having chosen a novel, first, and secondly, a vivid effect, I consider whether it can be best wrought by incident or tone, whether by ordinary incidents in peculiar tone, or the converse, or by peculiarity both of incident and tone, afterward looking about me, or rather within, for such combinations of event or tone as shall best aid me in the construction of the effect. I have often thought how interesting a magazine paper might be written by any author who would, that is to say, who could, detail, step by step, the processes by which any one of his compositions attained its ultimate point of completion. Why such a paper has never been given to the world, I am much at a loss to say. But perhaps the authorial vanity has had more to do with the omission than any one other cause. Most writers, poets and a special, prefer having it understood that they can pose by a species of fine frenzy, an ecstatic intuition, and would positively shudder at letting the public take a peep behind the scenes, at the elaborate and vacillating crudities of thought. At the true purposes seized only at the last moment. At the innumerable glimpses of idea that arrived not at the maturity of full view. At the fully matured fancies discarded in despair as unmanageable. At the cautious selections and rejections. At the painful erasures and interpolations. In a word at the wheels and pinions, the tackle for scene shifting, the step-ladders and demon-traps, the cox feathers, the red paint and the black patches, which in ninety-nine cases out of the hundred constitute the properties of the literary history. I am aware, on the other hand, that the case is by no means common, in which an author is at all in condition to retrace the steps by which his conclusions have been attained. In general, suggestions, having arisen pal-mal, are pursued and forgotten in a similar manner. For my own part I have neither sympathy with the repugnance alluded to, nor at any time the least difficulty in recalling to mind the progressive steps of any of my compositions. And since the interest of an analysis or a reconstruction, such as I have considered a desideratum, is quite independent of any real or fancied interest in the thing analyzed, it will not be regarded as a breach of decorum on my part to show the modus operandi by which some one of my own works was put together. I select the raven, as the most generally known. It is my design to render it manifest that no one point in its composition is referable either to accident or intuition, that the work proceeded step by step to its completion with the precision and rigid consequence of a mathematical problem. Let us dismiss, as irrelevant to the poem per se, the circumstance, or say the necessity, which in the first place gave rise to the intention of composing a poem that should suit at once the popular and the critical taste. We commenced then with this intention. The initial consideration was that of extent. If any literary work is too long to be read at one sitting, we must be content to dispense with the immensely important effect derivable from unity of impression. For if two sittings be required, the affairs of the world interfere, and everything like totality is at once destroyed. But since Cateris Paribus, no poet can afford to dispense with anything that may advance his design, it but remains to be seen whether there is in extent any advantage to counterbalance the loss of unity which attends it. Here I say no at once. What we term a long poem is, in fact, merely a succession of brief ones, that is to say of brief poetical effects. It is needless to demonstrate that a poem is such only in as much as it intensely excites by elevating the soul, and all intense excitements are, through a cycle necessity, brief. For this reason at least one half of the Paradise Lost is essentially prose, a succession of poetical excitements interspersed inevitably with corresponding depressions, the whole being deprived, through the extremeness of its length, of the vastly important artistic element totality or unity of effect. It appears evident then that there is a distinct limit, as regards length, to all works of literary art, the limit of a single sitting, and that, although in certain classes of prose composition, such as Robinson Caruso demanding no unity, this limit may be advantageously over-past, it can never properly be over-past in a poem. Within this limit the extent of a poem may be made to bear mathematical relation to its merit, in other words, to the excitement or elevation, again in other words, to the degree of the true poetical effect which it is capable of inducing. For it is clear that the gravity must be in direct ratio of the intensity of the intended effect. As with one proviso, that a certain degree of duration is absolutely requisite for the production of any effect at all. Holding in view these considerations, as well as that degree of excitement which I deemed not above the popular while not below the critical taste, I reached at once what I can see the proper length for my intended poem, a length of about one hundred lines. It is, in fact, a hundred and eight. My next thought concerned the choice of an impression, or effect, to be conveyed. And here I may as well observe that, throughout the construction, I kept steadily in view the design of rendering the work universally appreciable. I should be carried too far out of my immediate topic were I to demonstrate a point upon which I have repeatedly insisted, and which, with the poetical, stands not in the slightest need of demonstration. The point, I mean, that beauty is the sole legitimate province of the poem. A few words, however, in elucidation of my real meaning, which some of my friends have evinced a disposition to misrepresent. That pleasure which is at once the most intense, the most elevating, and the most pure, is, I believe, found in the contemplation of the beautiful. When indeed, men speak of beauty, they mean precisely not a quality, as is supposed, but an effect. They refer, in short, just to that intense and pure elevation of soul, not of intellect, or of heart, upon which I have commented, and which is experienced in consequence of contemplating the beautiful. Now I designate beauty as the province of the poem, merely because it is an obvious rule of art that effects should be made to spring from direct causes. That objects should be attained through means best adapted for their attainment. No one, as yet, having been weak enough to deny that the peculiar elevation alluded to is most readily attained in the poem. Now the object, truth, or the satisfaction of the intellect, and the object passion, or the excitement of the heart, are, although attainable to a certain extent in poetry, far more readily attainable in prose. Truth in fact demands a precision, and passion a homeliness. The truly passionate will comprehend me, which are absolutely antagonistic to that beauty which I maintain is the excitement or pleasurable elevation of the soul. It by no means follows from anything here said that passion, or even truth, may not be introduced, and even profitably introduced into a poem, for they may serve in elucidation, or aid the general effect, as discords in music, by contrast. But the true artist will always contrive first to tone them into proper subservience to the predominant aim, and secondly to unveil them, as far as possible, in that beauty which is the atmosphere and the essence of the poem. Regarding then, beauty as my province, my next question referred to the tone of its highest manifestation, and all experience has shown that this tone is one of sadness. Beauty of whatever kind in its supreme development invariably excites the sensitive soul to tears. John Colley is thus the most legitimate of all the poetical tones. The length, the province, and the tone, being thus determined, I betook myself to ordinary induction, with the view of obtaining some artistic pecancy which might serve me as a keynote in the construction of the poem, some pivot upon which the whole structure might turn. In carefully thinking over all the usual artistic effects, or, more properly, points in the theatrical sense, I did not fail to perceive immediately that no one had been so universally employed as that of the refrain. The universality of its employment suffice to assure me of its intrinsic value, and spared me of the necessity of submitting it to analysis. I considered it, however, with regard to its susceptibility of improvement, and soon saw it to be in a primitive condition. As commonly used, the refrain, or burden, not only is limited to lyric verse, but depends for its impression upon the force of monotone, both in sound and thought. The pleasure is to do solely from the sense of identity, of repetition. I resolve to diversify, and so vastly heighten, the effect by adhering in general to the monotone of sound, while I continually varied that of thought. That is to say, I determined to produce continuously novel effects by the variation of the application of the refrain, the refrain itself remaining, for the most part, unvaried. These points being settled, I next bethought me of the nature of my refrain. Since its application was to be repeatedly varied, it was clear that the refrain itself must be brief, for there would have to be an insurmountable difficulty in frequent variations of application in any sentence of length. In proportion to the brevity of the sentence would, of course, be the facility of the variation. This led me at once to a single word as the best refrain. The question now arose as to the character of the word. Having made up my mind to a refrain, the division of the poem into stanzas was, of course, a corollary, the refrain forming the close to each stanza. That such a close to have force must be sonorous and susceptible of protracted emphasis admitted no doubt, and these considerations inevitably led me to the long O as the most sonorous vowel in connection with R as the most producible consonant. The sound of the refrain being thus determined, it became necessary to select a word embodying this sound, and at the same time in the fullest possible keeping with that melancholy which I had predetermined as the tone of the poem. In such a search it would have been absolutely impossible to overlook the word never more. In fact it was the very first which presented itself. The next decideratum was a pretext for the continuous use of the one word never more. In observing the difficulty which I had once found in inventing a sufficiently plausible reason for its continuous repetition, I did not fail to perceive that this difficulty arose solely from the pre-assumption that the word was to be so continuously or monotonously spoken by a human being. I did not fail to perceive in short that the difficulty lay in the reconciliation of this monotony with the exercise of reason on the part of the creature repeating the word. Here then immediately arose the idea of a non-reasoning creature capable of speech, and very naturally a parrot in the first instance suggested itself, but was superseded forthwith by a raven, as equally capable of speech and infinitely more in keeping with the intended tone. I had now gone so far as the conception of a raven, the bird of ill omen, monotonously repeating the one word never more, at the conclusion of each stanza in a poem of melancholy tone and in length about one hundred lines. Now never losing sight of the object's supremeness or perfection at all points, I asked myself, of all melancholy topics, what, according to the universal understanding of mankind, is the most melancholy? Death was the obvious reply. And when, I said, is this most melancholy of topics most poetical? From what I have already explained at some length, the answer here also is obvious, when it most closely allies itself to beauty. The death, then, of a beautiful woman, is, unquestionably, the most poetical topic in the world. Equally is beyond doubt that the lips best suited for such topic are those of a bereaved lover. I had now to combine the two ideas, of a lover lamenting his deceased mistress and a raven continuously repeating the word never more. I had to combine these, bearing in mind my design of varying at every turn the application of the word repeated, but the only intelligible mode of such combination is that of imagining the raven employing the word in answer to the queries of the lover. And here it was that I saw at once the opportunity afforded for the effect on which I had been depending, that is to say the effect of the variation of application. I saw that I could make the first query, propounded by the lover, the first query to which the raven should reply, never more, that I could make this first query a common place one, the second less so, the third still less, and so on, until at length the lover, startled from his original nonchalance by the melancholy character of the word itself, by its frequent repetition, and by a consideration of the ominous reputation of the foul that uttered it, is at length excited to superstition, and wildly propounds queries of a far different character, propounds them half in superstition, and half in that species of despair which delights in self-torture, propounds them not altogether because he believes in the prophetic or demoniac character of the bird, which reason assures him is merely repeating a lesson learned by rote, but because he experiences a frenzied pleasure in so modeling his questions as to receive from the expected, never more, the most delicious because the most intolerable of sorrow. Perceiving the opportunity thus afforded me, or more strictly thus forced upon me in the progress of the construction, I first established in mind the climax, or concluding query, that to which never more should be in the last place an answer, that in reply to which this word never more should involve the utmost conceivable amount of sorrow and despair. Here then the poem may be said to have its beginning, where all works of art should begin, for it was here, at this point in my pre-considerations, that I first put pen to paper in the composition of the stanza. Profit, said I, thing of evil, profit still of bird or devil, by that heaven that bends above us, by that God we both adore, tell this soul sorrow laden, if within the distant aiden it shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels name Lenore, clasp a rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore, quote the raven, never more. I composed this stanza at this point, first that, by establishing the climax, I might the better vary and graduate, as regards seriousness and importance, the preceding queries of the lover, and secondly, that I might definitely settle the rhythm, the meter, and the length and general arrangement of the stanza, as well as graduate the stanzas which were to proceed, so that none of them might surpass this in rhythmical effect. Had I been able, in the subsequent composition, to construct more vigorous stanzas, I should, without scruple, have purposely enfeebled them, so as not to interfere with the climacteric effect. And here I may as well say a few words of the versification. My first object, as usual, was originality. The extent to which this has been neglected in versification is one of the most unaccountable things in the world. Admitting that there is little possibility of variety in mere rhythm, it is still clear that the possible varieties of meter and stanza are absolutely infinite, and yet for centuries no man in verse has ever done or ever seemed to think of doing an original thing. The fact is, originality, unless in mind a very unusual force, is by no means a matter as some suppose of impulse or intuition. In general, to be found, it must be elaborately sought, and although a positive merit of the highest class demands in its attainment less of invention than negation. Of course, I pretend no originality in either the rhythm or meter of the raven. The former is trochaic, the latter is octameter acatalectic, alternating with heptameter catalectic, repeated in the refrain of the fifth verse, and terminating with tetrameter catalectic. Less pedantically, the feet employed throughout, trochies, consist of a long syllable followed by a short. The first line of the stanza consists of eight of these feet, the second of seven and a half, in effect two-thirds, the third of eight, the fourth of seven and a half, the fifth the same, the sixth three and a half. Now each of these lines, taken individually, has been employed before, and what originality the raven has is in their combination into stanza. Everything even remotely approaching this combination has ever been attempted. The effect of this originality of combination is aided by other unusual and some altogether novel effects arising from an extension of the application of the principles of rhyme and alliteration. The next point to be considered was the mode of bringing together the lover and the raven, and the first branch of this consideration was the locale. For this the most natural suggestion might seem to be a forest or the fields. But it is always appeared to me that a close circumscription of space is absolutely necessary to the effect of insulated incident. It has the force of a frame to a picture. It has an indisputable moral power in keeping concentrated the attention, and of course must not be confounded with mere unity of place. I determined then to place the lover in his chamber. In a chamber rendered sacred to him by memories of her who had frequented it. The room is represented as richly furnished. This in mere pursuance of the ideas I have already explained on the subject of beauty as the sole true poetical thesis. The locale, being thus determined, I had now to introduce the bird, and the thought of introducing him through the window was inevitable. The idea of making the lover suppose, in the first instance, that the flapping of the wings of the bird against the shutter is a tapping at the door, originated in a wish to increase, by prolonging, the reader's curiosity, and in a desire to admit the incidental effect arising from the lover's throwing open the door, finding all dark, and then adopting the half fancy that it was the spirit of his mistress that knocked. I made the night tempestuous, first, to account for the raven seeking admission, and secondly, for the effect of contrast with the physical serenity within the chamber. I made the bird a light on the bust of Pallas, also for the effect of contrast between the marble and the plumage. It being understood that the bust was absolutely suggested by the bird. The bust of Pallas being chosen, first, as most in keeping with the scholarship of the lover, and secondly, for the sonorousness of the word Pallas itself. About the middle of the poem, also, I have availed myself of the force of contrast, with a view of deepening the ultimate impression. For example, an air of the fantastic, approaching as nearly to the ludicrous as was admissible, is given to the raven's entrance. He comes in with many a flirt and flutter. Not the least obeisance made he, not a moment stopped or stayed he, but with mean of lord or lady perched above my chamber door. In the two stanzas which follow, the design is more obviously carried out. Then this abony bird beguiling, my sad, fancy into smiling, by the grave and stern decorum of the countenance at war. Though thy crest be shorn in shaven now, I said, art sure no craven, ghastly grim in ancient raven, wandering from the nightly shore, tell me what thy lordly name is, on the night's plutonian shore. Quote the raven, never more. Much I marveled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly, though its answer little meaning, little relevancy bore. For we cannot help agreeing that no living human being ever yet was blessed with seeing bird above his chamber door, bird or beast upon the sculptured bust above his chamber door, with such name as never more. The effect of the dénu-mâne being thus provided for, I immediately dropped the fantastic for a tone of the most profound seriousness. This tone commencing in the stanza directly following the one last quoted, with the line, But the raven, sitting lonely on that placid bust, spoke only, etc. From this epic the lover no longer jests, no longer sees anything even of the fantastic in the raven's demeanor. He speaks of him as a grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt and ominous bird of yore, and feels the fiery eyes burning into his bosom's core. This revolution of thought, or fancy, on the lover's part, is intended to induce a similar one on the part of the reader, to bring the mind into a proper frame for the dénu-mâne, which is now brought about as rapidly and as directly as possible. With the dénu-mâne proper, with the raven's reply never more, to the lover's final demand, if he shall meet his mistress in another world, the poem and its obvious phase, that of a simple narrative, may be said to have its completion. So far everything is within the limits of the accountable, of the real. A raven, having learned by rote the single word never more, and having escaped from the custody of its owner, is driven at midnight, through the violence of a storm, to seek admission at a window from which a light still gleams, the chamber window of a student, hide half and pouring over a volume, half in dreaming of a beloved mistress deceased. The casement being thrown open at the fluttering of the bird's wings, the bird itself perches on the most convenient seat out of the immediate reach of the student, who, amused by the incident and the oddity of the visitor's demeanor, demands of it, in jest, and without looking for a reply, its name. The raven addressed, answers with its customary word, never more. A word which finds immediate echo in the melancholy heart of the student, who, giving utterance aloud to certain thoughts suggested by the occasion, is again startled by the foul's repetition of never more. The student now guesses the state of the case, but is impelled, as I have before explained, by the human thirst for self-torture, and in part by superstition, to propound such queries to the bird, as will bring him, the lover, the most of the luxury of sorrow, through the anticipated answer, never more. With the indulgence to the utmost extreme of this self-torture, the narration, in what I have termed its first or obvious phase, has a natural termination, and so far there has been no overstepping of the limits of the real. But in subjects so handled, however skillfully, or with however vivid an array of incident, there is always a certain hardness, or nakedness, which repels the artistical eye. Two things are invariably required. First, some amount of complexity, or, more properly, adaptation. And secondly, some amount of suggestiveness, some undercurrent, however indefinite of meaning. It is this latter, and a special, which imparts to a work of art so much of that richness, to borrow from colloquy a forcible term, which we are too fond of confounding with the ideal. It is the excess of the suggested meaning. It is the rendering this the upper, instead of the undercurrent of the theme, which turns into prose, and that of the very flattest kind, the so-called poetry of the so-called transcendentalists. Using these opinions, I added the two concluding stanzas of the poem, their suggestiveness being thus made to pervade all the narrative which has preceded them. The undercurrent of meaning is rendered first apparent in the lines, Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door. Quote the raven. Nevermore. It will be observed that the words from out my heart involve the first metaphorical expression in the poem. They, with the answer Nevermore, dispose the mind to seek immoral in all that has been previously narrated. The reader begins now to regard the raven as emblematical, but it is not until the very last line of the very last tanza that the intention of making him emblematical of mournful and neverending remembrance is permitted distinctly to be seen. In the raven, never-flipping, still is sitting, still is sitting, on the pallet bust of palace just above my chamber-door. And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon that is dreaming, and the lamplight or him streaming throws his shadow on the floor. And my soul, from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor, shall be lifted Nevermore. End of The Philosophy of Composition by Edgar Allan Poe. A plea for Old Cap Collier by Irvin S. Cobb. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. To Will H. Hogg, Esquire. For a good many years now I have been carrying this idea around with me. It was more or less of a loose and unformed idea, and it wouldn't gel. What brought it round to the solidification point was this. Here the other week, being half-sick, I was laid up over Sunday in a small hotel in a small sea-coast town. I had read all the newspapers and all the magazines I could get hold of. The local bookstore, of course, was closed. They won't let the oysters stay open on Sunday in that town. The only literature my fellow guests seemed interested in was mail-ordered tabs and price currents. Finally, when despair was about to claim me for her own, I ran across an ancient fifth reader, all tattered and stained, and having that smell of age which is common to old books and old sheep. I took it up to bed with me, and I read it through, from cover to cover. Long before I was through, the very idea which for so long had been sloshing round inside of my head, this idea which, as one might say, had been aged in the wood, took shape. Then and there I decided that the very first chance I had I would sit me down and write a plea for old Cap Collier. In my youth I was spanked freely and frequently for doing many different things that were forbidden, and also for doing the same thing many different times and getting caught doing it. That of course was before the Boy Scout movement had come along to show how easily and how sanely a boy's natural restlessness and a boy's natural love for adventure may be directed into helpful channels. That was when nearly everything, a normal, active boy, craved to do, was wrong and, therefore, held to be a spankable offense. This was a general rule in our town. It did not especially apply to any particular household, but it applied practically to all the households with which I was in any way familiar. It was a community where an old-fashioned brand of applied theology was most strictly applied. Heaven was a place which went unanimously democratic every fall because all the Republicans had gone elsewhere. A smell was a place full of red-hot coals and clinkered sinners and unbaptized babies and a smell like somebody cooking ham, with a deputy devil coming in of a morning with an asbestos napkin draped over his arm and flicking a fire-proof cockroach off the tablecloth and leaning across the back of Satan's chair and saying, Good morning, boss. How are you going to have your lost souls this morning, fried on one side or turned over? Sunday was three weeks long, and longer than that it rained. About all a fellow could do after he'd come back from Sunday school was to sit round with his feet cramped into the shoes and stockings which he never wore on weekdays, and with the rest of him encased in starchy, uncomfortable, dress-up clothes. Just sit around and sit around and itch. You couldn't scratch hard, either. It was sinful to scratch audibly and with good, broad, free strokes, which is the only satisfactory way to scratch. In our town they didn't spend Sunday. They kept the Sabbath, which is a very different thing. Looking back on my juvenile years, it seems to me that, generally speaking, when spanked, I deserved it. But always there were two punishable things against which, being disciplined, my youthful spirit revolted with this sort of inarticulate sense of injustice. One was for violation of the Sunday Code, which struck me as wrong, the Code, I mean, not the violation, without knowing exactly why it was wrong. And the other, repeated times without number, was when I had been caught reading nickel libraries, erroneously referred to by our elders as dine novels. I read them at every chance, so did every normal boy of my acquaintance. We traded lesser treasures for them. We swapped them on the basis of two old volumes for one new one. We maintained a clandestine-circulating library system, which had its branch offices in every stable loft in our part of town. The more daring among us read them in school behind the shelter of an open geography propped up on the desk. Shall you ever forget the horror of the moment when carried away on the wings of adventure with Nick Carter, or Bigfoot Wallace, or Frank Reed, or a bully old cap? You forgot to flash occasional glances of cautious inquiry forward in order to make sure the teacher was where she properly should be, at her desk up in front, and read on and on until that subtle sixth sense which comes to you when a lot of people begin staring at you, warned you something was amiss. And you looked up and round you and found yourself all surrounded by a ring of cruel, gloating eyes. I say cruel, advisedly, because up to a certain age children are naturally more cruel than tigers. Civilization has provided them with tools as it were for practicing cruelty, whereas the tiger must rely only on his teeth and his bare claws. So you looked round, feeling the shadow of an impending doom encompassed you. And then you realized that for now telling how long the teacher had been standing just behind you, reading over your shoulder. And at home were you caught in the act of reading them, or what from the parental standpoint was almost as bad in the act of harboring them? I was. House cleaning times when they found them hidden under furniture or tucked away on the back shelves of pantry closets, I was paddled until I had the feelings of a slice of hot buttered toast, somewhat scorched on the underside. And each time, having been paddled, I was admonished at boys who read dime novels. Only they weren't dime novels at all but cost uniformly five cents a copy. Always came to a bad end, growing up to be criminals or republicans or something equally abhorrent. And I was urged to read books which would help me to shape my career in a proper course. Such books were put into my hands and I loathed them. I know now why when I grew up my gorge rose and my appetite turned against so-called classics. Their style was so much like the style of the books which older people wanted me to read when I was in my early teens. Such were the specious statements advanced by the Oldsters. And we had no reply for their argument or if we had one could not find the language in which to couch it. Besides there was another and a deeper reason, a boy being what he is the most sensitive and the most secretive of living creatures regarding his innermost emotions rarely does bear his real thoughts to his elders, for they, alas, are not young enough to have a fellow feeling, and they are too old and they know too much to be really wise. What we might have answered had we had the verbal facility and had we not feared further painful corporeal measures for talking back, or what was worse, ridicule, was that reading Old Cap Collier never yet sent a boy to a bad end. I never heard of a boy who ran away from home and really made a go of it who was actuated at the start by the nickel library. Burning with a sense of injustice, filled up with the realization that we were not appreciated at home, we often talked of running away and going out west to fight Indians, but we never did. I remember once two of us started for the far west and got nearly as far as Oak Grove Cemetery when, the dusk of evening impending, we decided to turn back and give our parents just one more chance to understand us. What also we might have pointed out was that, in a five-cent story, the villain was absolutely sure of receiving suitable and adequate punishment for his misdeeds. Right then and there, on the spot, he got his. And the heroine was always so blue, perfectly pure. And the hero always was a hero to his fingertips, never doing anything unmanly or wrong or cowardly, and always using the most respectful language in the presence of the opposite sex. There was never any sex problem in a nickel library. There were never any smutty words or questionable phrases. If a villain said, Curse you, he was going pretty far. Any one of us might wet up our natural instincts for cruelty on Thor's Book of Martyrs, or read all manner of unmentionable horrors in the Old Testament. But except surreptitiously, we couldn't walk with Nick Carter, whose motives were ever pure, and who never used the naughty word, even in the passion of the death grapple with the top booted forces of sinister evil. We might have told our parents, had we had the words in which to state the case, and they but the patients to listen, that in a nickel library there was logic and the thrill of swift action and the sharp spice of adventure. There invariably virtue was rewarded and villainy confounded. There inevitably was the final triumph for law and for justice and for the right. There embalmed in one thin paper volume was all that Sanford and Merton lacked, all that the Rolo books never had. We might have told them that though the leather stocking tales, and Robinson Crusoe, and Two Years Before the Mask, and Ivanhoe were all well enough in their way, the trouble with them was that they mainly were so long-winded. It took so much time to get to where the first punch was, whereas Ned Buntline, or Colonel Prentice Zingram, would hand you an exciting jolt on the very first page and sometimes in the very first paragraph. You take J. Fenimore Cooper now. He meant well, and he had ideas. But his Indians were so everlastingly slow about getting under way with their scalping operations. Chapter after chapter there was so much fashionable and difficult language that the plot was smothered. You couldn't see the woods for the trees. But it was the accidental finding of an ancient and reminiscent volume one Sunday in a little hotel, which gave me the cue to what really made us such confirmed rebels against constituted authority in a literary way of speaking. The thing which inspired us with hatred for this so-called juvenile classic was a thing which struck deeper even than the sentiments I have been trying to describe. The basic reason, the underlying motive, lay in the fact that in the school books of our adolescents and notably in the school readers, our young mentalities were fed forcibly on a pap which affronted our intelligence at the same time that it cloyed our adolescent palates. It was not altogether the lack of action. It was more the lack of plain common sense in the literary spoon vitals which they ladle into us at school that caused our youthful souls to revolt. In the final analysis it was this or than any other cause which sent us up to the Hamo for delicious, forbidden hours in the company of Calamity Jane and Wild Bill Hickok. Midway of the old dog-eared reader which I picked up that day, I came across a typical example of the sort of stuff I mean. I hadn't seen it before in 25 years, but now seeing it, I remembered it as clearly almost as though it had been the week before instead of a quarter of a century before when for the first time it had been brought to my attention. It was a piece entitled The Shipwreck and it began as follows. In the winter of 1824, Lieutenant G of the United States Navy with his beautiful wife and child embarked in a packet at Norfolk bound to South Carolina. So far so good. At least here is a direct beginning. A family group is going somewhere. There is an implied promise that before they have traveled very far something of interest to the reader will happen to them. Sure enough, the packet runs into a storm in founders. As she is going down, Lieutenant G puts his wife and baby into a lifeboat manned by sailors and then there being no room for him in the lifeboat, he remains behind upon the deck of the sinking vessel while the lifeboat puts off for sure. A giant wave overturns the burden cockle shell and he sees its passengers engulfed in the waters. Up to this point, the chronicle has been what a chronicle should be. Perhaps the phraseology has been a trifle top loftical and there are a few words in it long enough to run as serials yet at any rate we are getting an effect in drama. But bear with me while I quote the next paragraph just as I copied it down. The wretched husband saw but too distinctly the destruction of all he held here but here alas and forever were shut off from him all sublunary prospects. He fell upon the deck, powerless, senseless, a corpse, the victim of a sublime sensibility. There's language for you. How different it is from that historic passage when the crack of little sure shots rifle rang out and another red skin bit the dust. Nothing is said there about anybody having his sublunary prospects shut off. Nothing about the red skin becoming the victim of a sublime sensibility. In 15 graphic words and in one sentence little sure shot croaked him and then with baited breath you moved on to the next paragraph sure of finding in it yet more attractive casualties snappily narrated. No, sir, in the nickel library the author did not waste his time and yours telling you that an individual on becoming a corpse would simultaneously become powerless and senseless. He credited your intelligence for something. For contrast, take the immortal work entitled Deadwood Dick of Deadwood or The Picked Party by Edward L. Wheeler a copy of which has just come to my attention again nearly 30 years after the time of my first reading of it. Consider the opening paragraph. The sun was just kissing the mountaintops that frowned down upon Billy Goat Gulch and in the aforesaid mighty seam in the face of mighty nature the shadows of a warm June night were gathering rapidly. The birds had mostly hushed their songs and flown to their nests in the dismal lonely pines and only the tuneful twang of a well-played banjo aroused the brooding quiet. Save it be the shrill croaking screams of a crow perched upon the top of a dead pine which rose from the nearly perpendicular mountainside that retreated in the ascending from the Gulch bottom. That, as I recall, was a powerfully long bit of description for a nickel library and having got it out of his system Mr. Wheeler wasted no more valuable space on the scenery. From this point on, he gave you action, action with reason behind it and logic to it and the guarantee of a proper climax and a satisfactory conclusion to follow. Deadwood Dick marched many a flowers strewn through my young life, but to the best of my recollection he never shut off anybody's sub-blunary prospects. If a party deserved killing, Deadwood just naturally up and killed them and the historian told about it in graphic yet straightforward terms of speech and that was all there was to it and that was all there should have been to it. At the risk of being termed an iconoclast and a smasher of the pure high ideals of the olden days, I propose to undertake to show that practically all of the preposterous asses and the impossible idiots of literature found their way into the school readers of my generation. With the passage of years there may have been some reform in this direction, but I dare affirm without having positive knowledge of the facts that a majority of these half-wits still are being featured in the grammar-gray literature of the present time. The authors of school readers, even modern school readers, surely are no smarter than the run-of grown-ups, even say as you and as I, and we blindly go on holding up as examples before the eyes of the young of the period, the characters and the acts of certain popular figures of poetry and prose who did but we give them the acid test of reason, would reveal themselves either as incurable idiots or else as figures in scenes and incidents which physically could never have occurred. You remember, don't you, the schoolbook classic of the noble lad who by reason of his neat dress and by his use in the most casual conversation of the sort of language which the late Mr. Henry James used when he was writing his very James theist, secured a job as a trusted messenger in the large city store or in the city's large store if we are going to be purists about it as the boy in question undoubtedly was. It seems that he had supported his widowed mother and a large family of brothers and sisters by shoveling snow and, I think, laying brick or something of that technical nature. After this lapse of years I won't be sure about the brick laying, but at any rate work was slack in his regular line and so he went to the proprietor of this vast retail establishment and procured a responsible position on the strength of his easy and graceful personal address and his employment of some of the most stylish adjectives in the dictionary. At this time he was nearly seven years old. Yes, sir, actually nearly seven. We have the word of the schoolbook for it. We should have had a second chapter on this boy. Probably at nine he was being considered for president of Yale, no Harvard. He would know too much to be president of Yale. Then there was the familiar instance of the Spartan youth who having stolen a fox and hidden it inside his robe calmly stood up and let the animal gnaw his vitals. Rather than be caught with it in his possession. But why, I ask you, why? What was the good of it all? What object was served? To begin with the boy had absconded with someone else's fox or with somebody's else fox, which is undoubtedly the way a compiler of school readers would phrase it. This right at the beginning makes the morality of the transaction highly dubious. In the second place, he showed poor taste. If he was going to swipe something, why should he not have swiped the chicken or something else of practical value? We wave that point though and come to the lack of discretion shown by the fox. He starts eating his way out through the boy, a messy and difficult procedure, when merely by biting an aperture in the tunic he could have emerged by the front way with ease and dispatch. And what is the final upshot of it all? The boy falls dead with a large, unsightly gap in the middle of him. Probably too, he was a boy whose parents were raising him for their own purposes. As it was, all gnawed up in this fashion and deceased besides, he loses his attractions for everyone, except the undertaker. The fox presumably has an attack of acute indigestion. And there you are. Compare the moral of this with the moral of any one of the old Cap Collier series, where virtue comes into its own and sanity is prevalent throughout and vice gets what it deserves at all. In MacGuffey's third reader, I think it was, occurred that story about the small boy who lived in Holland among the dykes and dems. One evening he went across the country to carry a few illustrated postcards or some equally suitable gift to a poor blind man. And on his way back home in the twilight, he discovered a leak in the seawall. If he went for help, the breach might widen while he was gone and the whole structure give way and then the sea would come roaring in, carrying death and destruction and windmills and wooden shoes and pineapple cheeses on its crest. At least this is the inference one gathers from reading Mr. MacGuffey's account of the affair. So what does the quick-witted youngster do? He shoves his little arm in the crevice on the inner side where already the water is trickling through, thus blocking the leak. All night long he stands there, one small half-frozen Dutch boy holding back the entire North Atlantic. Not until centuries later when Judge Alton B. Parker runs for president against Colonel Roosevelt and is defeated practically by acclamation, is there to be presented so historic and so magnificent an example of a contest against tremendous odds. In the morning a peasant going out to mow the tulip beds finds the little fellow crouched at the foot of the dyke and inquires what ails him. The lad raising his weary head, but wait I shall quote the exact language of the book. I am hindering the sea from running in, was the simple reply of the child. Simple, I'll say it is. Positively nothing could be simpler unless it be the stark simplicity of the mind of an author who figures that when the Atlantic Ocean starts boring its way through a crack in a sea wall you can stop it by plugging the hole on the inner side of the sea wall with a small boy's arm. Ned Buntlin may never have enjoyed the vogue among parents and teachers that Mr. McGuffie enjoyed, but I'll say this for him. He knew more about the laws of hydraulics than McGuffie ever dreamed. And then there was Peter Hurdle, the ragged lad who engaged in a long but tiresome conversation with the philanthropic and inquisitive Mr. Lennox, during the course of which it developed that Peter didn't want anything. When it came on to storm he got under a tree. When it was hungry he ate a raw turnip. Raw turnips, it would appear, grew all the year round in the fields of the favored land where Peter resided. If the chill winds of autumn blew in through one of the holes in Peter's trousers they blew right out again through another hole. And he didn't care to accept the dime which Mr. Lennox in an excessive generosity offered him because it seemed he already had a dime. When it came to being plum contented there probably never was a soul on this earth that was the equal of Master Hurdle. He even was satisfied with his name which I would regard as the ultimate test. Likewise there was the case of Hugh Idle and Mr. Toyle. Perhaps you recall that moving story. Hugh tries to dodge work. Wherever he goes he finds Mr. Toyle in one guys or another but always with the same harsh voice and the same frowning eyes bossing some job in a manner which would cost him his boss ship right off the reel in these times when union labor is so touchy. And what is the moral to be drawn from this narrative? I know that all my life I have been trying to get away from work feeling that I was intended for leisure though never finding time somehow to take it up seriously. But what was the use of trying to discourage me from this agreeable idea back yonder in the formative period of my earlier years? In Harper's Fourth Reader, edition of 1888 I found an article entitled The Difference Between the Plants and Animals. It takes up several pages and includes some of the fanciest language the senior Mr. Harper could disinter from the unabridged. In my own case and I think I was no more observant than the average urchin of my age I can scarcely remember a time when I could not readily determine certain basic distinctions between such plants and such animals as a child is likely to encounter in the temperate parts of North America. While emerging from infancy some of my contemporaries may have fallen into the error of the little boy who came into the house with a haunted look in his eye and asked his mother if mulberries had six legs apiece and ran around in the dust of the road. And when she told him that such was not the case with mulberries, he said, then mother, I feel that I have made a mistake. To the best of my recollection I never made this mistake or at least if I did I am sure I made no inquiry afterward which might tend further to increase my doubts. And in any event I am sure that by the time I was old enough to stumble over Mr. Harper's favorite big words I was old enough to tell the difference between an ordinary animal, say a house cat and any one of the commoner forms of plant life such as for example the scaly bark hickory tree practically at a glance. I'll add this too. Nick Carter never wasted any of the golden moments which he and I spent together in elucidating for me the radical points of difference between the plants and the animals. In the range of poetry selected by the compilers of the readers for my special benefit as I progressed onward from the primary class into the grammar grades I find on examination of these early American authorities an even greater array of chuckle heads that appear in the prose divisions. I shall pass over the celebrated instance as read by us in class and a loud tone of voice and without halt for inflection the taking of breath of the Turk who at midnight in his guarded tent was dreaming of the hour when Greece, her knees in suppliance bent would tremble at his power. I remember how vaguely I used to wonder who it was that was going to grease her knees at how she should feel called upon to have them greased at all. Anyway, also I shall pass over the instance of Abu Ben-Adhem whose name led all the rest in the golden book in which the angel was writing. Why shouldn't it have led all the rest? A man whose front name begins with A B whose middle initial is B and whose last name begins with A D will be found leading all the rest in any city directory or any telephone list anywhere. Alphabetically organized as he was, Mr. Adhem just naturally had to lead. And yet for hours on end, my teachers consumed her energies and mine in a more or less unsuccessful effort to cause me to memorize the details as set forth by Mr. Lee Hunt. In three separate school books, each the work of a different compilator, I discover Sir Walter Scott's poetic contribution touching on Young Lock-in-Var. Young Lock-in-Var who came out of the West, the same as the Plum Plan and subsequently came and the Hiram Johnson Presidential Boom and the Initiative and the Referendum and the IWW. Even in those ancient times, the West appears to have been a favorite place for upsetting things to come from. So I can't take issue with Sir Walter there. But I do take issue with him when he says, where he says, so light to the croop, the fair lady he swung, so light to the saddle before her he sprung. Even in childhoods hour, I am sure I must have questioned the ability of Young Lock-in-Var to perform this achievement, for I was born and brought up in a horseback riding country. Now, in the light of yet fuller experience, I wish Sir Walter were alive today so I might argue the question out with him. Let us consider the statement on its physical merits solely. Here we have Young Lock-in-Var swinging the lady to the croop and then he springs to the saddle in front of her. Now to do this, he must either take a long running start and leapfrog clear over the lady's head as she sits there and land accurately in the saddle, which is scarcely a proper thing to do to any lady, aside from the difficulty of springing 10 or 15 feet into the air and coming down crouched out on a given spot, or else he must contribute a feat in contortion, the like of which has never been duplicated since. To be brutally frank about it, the thing just naturally is not possible. I don't care if Young Lock-in-Var was as limber as a yard of fresh tripe and he certainly did shake a lithe some calf in the measures of the dance if Sir Walter in an earlier stanza is to be credited with veracity. Even so, I deny that he could have done that croop trick. There isn't a croopier at Monte Garlo who could have done it. Buffalo Bill couldn't have done it. Ned Butlin couldn't have had, wouldn't have had Buffalo Bill trying to do it. Doug Fairbanks couldn't do it. I couldn't do it myself. Skipping over Robert Selfie's tiresome redundancy and spending so much of his time and mine when I was in the fifth reader stage in telling how the waters came down at Ladur when it was a petrified cinch that they, being waters, would have to come down. Anyway, I would next direct your attention to two of the foremost idiots in all the realm of poesy. One a young idiot and one an older idiot, probably with whiskers, but both embalmed in verse and both mind you stuck into every orthodox reader to be glorified before the aisles of childhood. I refer to that juvenile champion among idiots, the boy who stood on the burning deck and to the ship's captain in the poem called The Tempest. Let us briefly consider the given facts as regards to Ladur. It was winter and it was midnight and a storm was on the deep and the passengers were huddled in the cabin and not a soul would dare to sleep and they were shuddering there in silence. One gathers the silence was so deep you could hear them shuddering and the stoutest held his breath which is a considerable feat as I can testify because the stouter a fellow gets, the harder it is for him to hold his breath for any considerable period of time. Very well then, this is the condition of affairs. If ever there was a time when those in authority should avoid spreading alarm, this was the time. By all the traditions of the maritime service it devolved upon the skipper to remain cool, calm, cool and collected. But what does the poet reveal to a lot of trusting school children? We are lost, the captain shouted as he staggered down the stair. Now he didn't whisper it. He didn't tell it to a friend in confidence. He bellowed it out at the top of his voice so all the passengers could hear him. The only possible excuse which can be offered for that captain's behavior is that his staggering was due not to the motion of the ship but to alcoholic stimulant. Could you imagine little sure shot, the terror of the ponies drunk or sober doing an asinine thing like that? Not in 10,000 years you couldn't. But then we must remember that little sure shot being a moral dime novel hero never indulged in alcoholic beverages under any circumstances. The boy who stood on the burning deck has been played up as an example of youthful heroism for the benefit of the young of our race ever since Mrs. Felicia Dorothea Heemans set him down in black and white. I deny that he was heroic. I insist that he merely was feeble-minded. Let us give this youth the careful once over. The scene is the Battle of the Nile. The time is August 1798. When the action of the peace begins, the boy stands on the burning deck whence all but him had fled. You see, everyone else aboard had had sense enough to beat it but he stuck because his father had posted him there. There was no good purpose he might serve by sticking except to furnish added material for the poetess. But like the leather-headed young imbecile that he was he stood there with his feet getting warmer all the time while the flame that lit the battle's wreck shone round him o'er the dead. After which there came a burst of thunder sound. The boy, oh, where was he? Ask of the winds that far around with fragments strewed the sea. Ask the waves. Ask the fragments. Ask Mrs. Hemons. Or to save time, inquire of me. He has become totally extinct. He is no more and he never was very much. Still we need not worry. Mentally he must have been from the very outset a liability rather than an asset. Had he lived undoubtedly he would have bound up in a home for the feeble-minded. It is better so as it is. Better that he should be spread over about over the surface of the ocean in a broad general way. Thus saving all the expense and trouble of gathering him up and burying him and putting a tombstone over him. He was one of the incurables. Once upon a time writing a little piece on another subject I advanced the claim that the champion half-wit of all poetic anthology was Sweet Alice, who as described by Mr. English wept with delight when you gave her a smile and trembled in fear at your frown. This of course was long before prohibition came in. These times there are many ready to weep with delight when you offer to give them a smile. But in Mr. English's time and Alice's there were plenty of saloons handy. I remarked, what an awful killjoy Alice must have been weeping in a disconcerting manner when somebody smiled in her direction and trembling violently should anybody so much as merely knit his brow. But when I gave Alice first place in the list I acted too hastily. Second thought should have informed me that undeniably the post of honor belonged to the central figure of Mr. Henry W. Longfellow's poem, Excelsior. I ran across it, Excelsior I mean, in three different readers the other day when I was compiling some of the data for this treatise. Naturally it would be featured in all three. It wouldn't do to leave Mr. Longfellow's hero out of a volume in which space was given to such lesser village idiots as Casa Bianca and the Spartan youth. Let us take up this sad case verse by verse. The shades of night were falling fast as through an alpine village past a youth who bore mid-snow and ice a banner with a strange device, Excelsior. There we get an accurate pen picture of this young man's deplorable state. He is climbing a mountain in the dead of winter. It is made plain later on that he is a stranger in the neighborhood. Consequently it is fair to assume that the mountain in question is one he has never climbed before. Nobody hired him to climb any mountain. He isn't climbing it on a bet or because somebody dared him to climb one. He is not dressed for mountain climbing. Apparently he is wearing the costume in which he escaped from the institution where he had been an inmate. A costume consisting simply of low stockings, sandals, and a kind of flowing woollen nightshirt cut short to begin with and badly shrunken in the wash. He has on no rubber boots, no sweater, not even a pair of earmuffs. He also is bareheaded. Well, anytime the wearing of hats went out of fashion he could have had no use for his head anyhow. I grant you that in the poem, Mr. Longfellow does not go into details regarding the patient's garb. I am going by the illustration in the reader. The original Mr. McGuffie was very strong for illustrations. He stuck them in everywhere in his readers whether they matched the themes or not. Being as fond of pictures as he undoubtedly was, it seems almost a pity he did not marry the tattooed lady in a circus and then when he got tired of studying her pictorially on one side, he could ask her to turn around and let him see what she had to say on the other side. Perhaps he did. I never gleaned much regarding the family history of the McGuffies. Be that as it may, the wardrobe is entirely unsuited for the rigors of the climate in Switzerland in wintertime. Symptomatically, it marks the wearer as a person who is mentally lacking. He needs a keeper almost as badly as he needs some heavy underwear, but this isn't the worst of it. Take the banner. It bears the single word Excelsior. The youth is going through a strange town late in the evening in his nightie, and at wintertime, carrying a banner advertising a shredded wood-fiber commodity which won't be invented until 150 years after he is dead. Can you beat it? You can't even tie it. Let us look further into the matter. His brow was sad, his eyes beneath, flashed like a falchion from its sheath, and like a silver clarion rung the accents of that unknown tongue, Excelsior. Get it, don't you? Even his features fail to jibe. His brow is corrugated with grief, but the flashing of the eye denotes a lack of intellectual coherence which any alienist would diagnose at a glance as evidence of total dementia, even were not confirmatory proof offered by his action in huckstering for a product which doesn't exist in a language which no one present can understand. The most delirious typhoid fever patients you ever saw would no better than that. To continue. In happy homes he saw the light of household fires gleam warm and bright. Above the spectral glaciers shone and from his lips escaped a groan. Excelsior. The last line gives him away still more completely. He is groaning now where a moment before he was clarion-ing. A bit later with one of those shifts characteristic of the mentally unbalanced, his mood changes and again he is shouting. He's worse than a cuckoo clock, that boy. Try not the past, the old man said. Dark lowers the tempest overhead. The roaring torrent is deep and wide. And loud that clarion voice replied. Excelsior. Oh, stay the maiden said and rest thy weary head upon this breast. A tear stood in his bright blue eye, but still he answered with a sigh. Excelsior. Beware the pine trees withered branch. Beware the awful avalanche. This was the peasant's last good night. A voice replied far up the height. Excelsior. These three verses round out the picture. The venerable citizen warns him against the past. Past privileges up that mountain have all been suspended. A kind-hearted maiden tenders hospitalities of a most generous nature, considering that she never saw the young man before. Some people might even go so far as to say that she should have been ashamed of herself. Others that Mr. Longfellow in giving her away was guilty of an indelicacy to say the least of it. Possibly she was practicing up to qualify for membership on the reception committee the next time the visiting fireman came to her town or when there was going to be an Elks reunion. So I, for one, shall not question her motives. She was hospitable, let it go at that. The peasant couples with his good night message a reference to the danger of falling pine wood and also avalanches, which have never been pleasant things to meet up with when one is traveling on a mountain in an opposite direction. All about him, firelights are gleaming, happy families are gathered before the hearthstone, and through the windows the evening yodel may be heard percolating pleasantly. There is every inducement for the youth to drop in and rest his poor, tired, foolish face and hands and thaw out his knee joints and give the maiden a chance to make good on that proposition of hers. But no, high up above Timberline, he has an engagement with himself and Mr. Long Fellow to be frozen as stiff as a dried herring. And so, now groaning, now with his eye flashing, now with a tear, undoubtably a frozen tear, standing in the eye, now clarionning, now sighing onward and upward he goes. At break of day, as heavenward, the pious monks of St. Bernard uttered the oft-repeated prayer, a voice cried through the startled air, excelsior. I'll say this much for him, he certainly is hard to kill. He can stay out all night in those clothes with the thermometer below zero and at dawn still be able to chirp the only word that is left in his vocabulary. He can't last forever though. There has to be a finish to this lamentable fiasco sometime. We get it. A traveler by the faithful hound, half buried in the snow was found, still grasping in his hand of ice that banner with a strange device, excelsior. There in the twilight, cold and gray, lifeless but beautiful he lay. And from the sky, serene and far, a voice fell like a falling star, excelsior. Demetioric voice said, excelsior. It should have said, bonehead. It would have said it too if Ned Buntlin had been handling the subject, for he had a sense of verities had Ned. Probably that was one of the reasons why they barred his works out of all the school books. With the passage of years, I rather imagine that Lieutenant G. of the United States Navy, who went to so much trouble and took so many needless pains in order to become a corpse, may have vanished from the school readers. I admit I failed to find him in any of the modern editions through which I glanced, but I am able to report as a result of my researches that the well-known group specialist, young Lockenvarr is still there. And so likewise is Casabianca, the total loss. And as I have said before, I ran across excelsior three times. Just here the other day when I was preparing the material for this little book, I happened upon that advertisement in a New York paper of an auction sale of a collection of so-called dine novels. Dating back to the old Beatles Boy's library in the early 80s and coming on down through the years into the generation when Nick and Old Cap were succeeding some of the earlier favorites. I read off a few of the leading titles upon the list. Bronze Jack, the California thoroughbred, or The Lost City of the Basaltic Buttes. A strange story of a desperate adventure after fortune in the weird wild Apache land by Albert W. Aiken. Tombstone Dick, the train pilot, or The Traitor's Trail, a story of the Arizona wilds by Ned Bundtlin. The Tarantula of Taos, or Giant George's Revenge. A Tale of Sardinebox City, Arizona by Major Sam S. Buxkin, Sam Hall. Red Top Rube, The Vigilante Prince, or The Black Regulators of Arizona by Major E. L. St. Frane. Old Grizzly Adams, The Bear Tamer, or The Monarch of the Mountains. Deadly Eve and the Prairie Rover. Arizona Joe, The Boy Part of Texas Jack. Pacific Pete, The Prince of the Revolver. Kit Carson, King of the Guides. Leadville Nick, The Boy's Sport, or The Mad Miner's Revenge. Lighthouse Leige, or The Firebrand of the Everglades. The Desperate Dozen, or The Fair Fiend. Nighthawk Kit, or The Daughter of the Ranch. Joaquin the Saddle King. Mustang Sam, The Wild Rider of the Plains. Adventures of Wild Bill, The Pistol Prince, from youth to his death by assassination. Deeds of daring adventure and thrilling incidents in the life of J. B. Hickock, known to the world as Wild Bill. These titles and many another did I read. And reading them, my mind slid back of long a groove in my brain to a certain stable loft in a certain Kentucky town. And I said to myself that if I had a boy, say about 12 or 14 years old, I would go to this auction and bid in these books and I would bring, I would back them up and reinforce them with some of the best of the collected works of Nick Carter and Cap Collier and Nick Carter Jr. and Frank Reed. And I would buy if I could find it anywhere. A certain paperbacked volume dealing with the life of the James boys, not Henry and William, but Jesse and Frank, which I read ever so long ago. And I would confer the whole lot of them upon that offspring of mine and I would say to him, here my son is something for you, a rare and precious gift. Read these volumes openly. Nevermind the crude style in which most of them are written. It can't be any worse than the stilted and artificial style in which your school reader is written. And anyhow, if you are ever going to be a writer, style is a thing which you laboriously must learn. And then having acquired added wisdom, you will forget part of it and chuck the rest of it out the window and acquire a style of your own, which merely is another way of saying that if you have good taste to start with, you will have what is called style in writing. And if you haven't that set of good taste, you won't have a style and nothing can give it to you. Read them for the thrills that are in them. Read them remembering that if this country had not had a pioneer breed of buckskin, sams, and deadwood dicks, we should have had no native school of dime novelists. Read them for the brisk and stirring movement, for the spirit of outdoor adventure and life which crowds them, for their swift but logical processions of sequences, for the phases of pioneer Americanism they rawly but graphically portray, and for their moral values. Read them along with your coopers and your Ivanhoe and your main reads. Read them through and perhaps someday, if fortune is kinder to you than ever it was to your father, with a background behind you and a vision before you, you may be inspired to sit down and write a dime novel of your own, almost good enough to be worthy of mention in the same breath with the two greatest adventure stories. Dollar-sized dime novels is what they really were that ever were written, written both of them by sure enough writing men who I'm sure must have based their moods and their modes upon the memories of the dime novels which they, they and their turn read when they were boys of your age. I refer my son to a book called Huckleberry Finn and to a book called Treasure Island. End of A Plea for Old Cap Collier by Irvin S. Cobb, read by Jack Throw, Tokyo, Japan. The production of Vinegar from Honey by the Reverend Jared W. Banks. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org, read by Betsy Bush, March 2009. The production of Vinegar from Honey by the Reverend Jared W. Banks. Vinegar or dilute acetic acid is produced by a process of fermentation from certain vegetable substances. After alcoholic fermentation has taken place, there follows under suitable conditions a further decomposition by means of which the alcohol is converted into a more highly oxidized body acetic acid with water as a byproduct. Note, C2H6O plus O2 equals H2O plus C2H4O2. Alcohol plus oxygen equals water plus acetic acid. The proportions of the chemical constituents of acetic acid are as follows. Carbon, 46.83. Oxygen, 46.82. Hydrogen, 6.35. End note. These conditions require that the liquid shall contain alcohol and water as a byproduct. The amount of oxygen that is produced shall contain alcohol, nitrogenous matter and alkaline salts in certain proportions and that it shall be in contact with the air at a suitable temperature for a sufficient length of time. The researches of Pasteur showed the process of oxidation to be due to a microscopic fungus, mycoderma acidae, possessing the power of condensing oxygen and conveying it to the fermentable substance. This organism, which is a true bacterium as the fermentation proceeds, forms a leathery membrane, slightly differing according to the substance fermenting on the surface of the liquor, which constitutes the so-called mother of vinegar or vinegar plant. The oxidation of alcohol into acetic acid can also be performed independently of the organic agent. Finely divided platinum, for instance, is capable of affecting disintegration of the alcohol and of placing it in immediate contact with the oxygen of the atmosphere, thus accomplishing the acidification. Vinegar on the continent is prepared from weak or sour wine, hence its name, vin agar. In this country it is, to a large extent, produced from an infusion of malt, but considerable quantities of inferior quality are made from sour beer, et cetera. The vinegars thus produced, if properly purified, and providing no injurious adulterance, are resorted to, are for many purposes, almost all that can be desired, but for table use, for sauces and salads, where delicacy of flavor is appreciated, and for medicinal purposes, where pureness and wholesomeness are essential, I venture to say that no vinegar can be compared with that produced from honey. In the first place it possesses a delicious flavor and aroma, altogether lacking in the ordinary vinegar. Agreeable of taste and smell are to a large extent dependent upon the substance from which the vinegar is manufactured, and it is impossible to supply these artificially. That the malt vinegar manufactured in this country is conspicuously wanting in these qualities must be a matter of general experience. Moreover, owing to its great cheapness, acetic acid distilled from wood, besides being employed for pickling and other purposes, for which it is well adapted, diluted and treated with volatile oils, is every year superseding to a large extent the vinegars in general use. That this bears no comparison as regards the agreeable qualities, even with the ordinary vinegars, need scarcely be pointed out. On the other hand, honey of all saccharin substances, containing as it does all the essentials for harmonious bokeh and flavor, is the one par excellence from which we might expect to produce an ideal vinegar. The result is found amply to justify the anticipation, and that its superiority in this respect will be duly appreciated by the connoisseur in salads and condiments, goes without saying. But indeed, so marked is this distinction that I venture to think it would be readily admitted by all who gave it a trial. On the ground of wholesomeness, honey vinegar is to be preferred. It has been clearly ascertained that large quantities of vinegar sold in this country contain injurious adulterants and impurities. Many samples upon analysis have been found to include a considerable percentage of sulfuric acid or nitric acid, added either as a preservative or to increase the acidity. Others have contained, as the results of carelessness in manufacture, such poisonous ingredients as copper, arsenic, and lead. Little wonder that disagreeable consequences so often follow the taking of vinegar, even in small quantities. Immunity from these impurities and adulterants, producing as they so frequently do injurious effects, especially in the case of invalids, is surely greatly to be desired, and every possible improvement, either in respect of the material employed or in the process of manufacturer of so important an article of consumption, surely deserves to receive the most careful attention. Mode of production. If honey and water in proper proportions be exposed to the atmosphere at a suitable temperature for a sufficient length of time, acetic fermentation will in due course ensue. At the same time, to obtain the best results, careful attention must be given to certain details and various precautions taken. The alcoholic ferment must be carried on under suitable conditions in order that it may be complete. The temperature must be neither too high nor too low. Suitable and sufficient nutrient material, also for the ferment germ, must be present. That is a proper proportion of nitrogenous matter, together with certain inorganic salts, which may be added in the form of a little ammonium phosphate and potassium tartrate. The acetic fermentation, which follows, must also be regulated with due care and not allowed to continue longer than necessary or deterioration of the liquor will take place with a gradual loss of acidity. The fining also of the liquor must be carefully attended to in order to render it perfectly clear and bright. And finally, it is only when the alcoholic and acetic fermentations have been affected in a completely satisfactory manner and the vinegar stored for a sufficiently long period under the most suitable conditions that the ripening process is affected, without which it will be found lacking in that agreeable flavor and aroma, which are its special characteristics. Proportion of honey to water. In the first place, we have to determine the proper proportion of honey to water. Commercial vinegar is required by law to contain a minimum of 3% acetic acid. Note, it is frequently found to contain less, the acetic being often replaced by other and injurious acids. And note, proof vinegar contains 5.4% with a specific grativity of 1.006 to 1.019. For all ordinary purposes, this is a convenient strength and first class vinegars contain about this percentage. Of course, the percentage of acetic acid is dependent on a satisfactory alcoholic fermentation and suitable conditions for the development of the acetic germ. But supposing the conditions favorable, it is possible to obtain from an aqueous solution of one part honey to eight of water, about 5% acetic acid. A suitable proportion will thus be one part honey to from seven to eight parts of water by weight. Suitable receptacles. When made in small quantities, almost any open vessel will serve as a receptacle for the liquor, always accepting glazed or metal ones in which vinegar must never be allowed to stand. Owing to the solvent effects of the acid, the liquor is, in these cases, liable to be injuriously contaminated. The vessel used should be covered with muslin or cream cloth to protect from insects, et cetera. A small cask is also a convenient receptacle, but this should not be filled more than three parts full and the bung-hole must be left open, protected with gauze or other coarse material. Note, the process here described has reference only to the production of the vinegar in small quantities. It is impossible to produce it on a large scale with any degree of success without the employment of artificial heat and with special apparatus. And note, starting the fermentation. In due course, if left alone, alcoholic fermentation by a natural process will be set up, but I am inclined to think from my own experience that it is best to add, in the first instance, a small quantity of yeast. If, as sometimes happens, the fermentative action be too slow, putrification of a portion is liable to take place and the vinegar is spoiled. The acetic fermentation is accelerated by the addition of vinegar plant and also by the presence of the commencement of a small quantity of vinegar. Temperature. A suitable temperature is 70 degrees Fahrenheit or from that to 80 degrees. Summer is therefore by far the best time for vinegar making, as this temperature is then easily obtainable, especially if the vessel be exposed to the heat of the sun. At a little over 100 degrees Fahrenheit, the development of the acetic germ ceases while below 68 degrees, it is gradually arrested. Duration of process. The length of time before the completion of the process varies according to circumstances, while usually under completely favorable conditions, in from six to eight weeks, sufficient acidification has taken place, not on frequently a longer period is required. Racking and clearing. When the proper degree of acidification is reached, the liquor should be strained or, if in a cask, be racked into a fresh one without tilting. Then find with ice and glass or allowed to settle for a week or two when it may be drawn off clear and bottled. It may subsequently require decanting and re-bottling. The membrane or plant is useful for restarting the action, but it must not be allowed to remain for any length of time out of the liquor or be exposed to a low temperature or it will be injured. Color. The color will at first be found to be quite light, but in course of time it will assume an amber shade and gradually darken with age. But this coloration may proceed as rapidly as possible. The vinegar should be bottled in light glass bottles and exposed to the light. Dilute acetic acid has been in general use from remote times. The ancient Hebrews used it, as we know from the several allusions to it in the Old Testament. It is mentioned also in the New Testament. The Greeks and Romans too made use of it. It is frequently spoken of by classical writers as Pliny, Livey and others. In our own times it is almost universally employed for culinary and preservative purposes, besides being largely used mendicimally. Vinegar is anti-scorbutic and anti-bilius. Largely diluted it forms a very refreshing beverage. It has been in past ages and in modern times so used by soldiers on long marches and by others employed on hard and exhausting labor with beneficial results. The vapor of vinegar inhaled greatly relieves hoarseness and diluted as a gargle is useful in throat complaints. Honey and honey vinegar in equal quantities and taken a teaspoon full at a time is an excellent remedy for sore throat and cough. Mixed with water it is cooling and invigorating for sponging the body. Taken in moderation owing to its effect upon fatty and other substances vinegar is an aid to digestion. Pure vinegar is usually only unwholesome if taken in large quantities. Raspberry vinegar. Pour one pint of honey vinegar on a quart of bruised raspberries. Let it stand in a closed vessel for three days and stir occasionally. Strain through flannel without squeezing and to one pint of liquor put one and a quarter pound of honey. Boil for 10 minutes, skim and bottle when cold. One great advantage in using honey vinegar is that, being quite free from sulfuric or nitric acid, it does not stain silver or table linen. End of Production of Honey from Vinegar by Jared W. Banks. The second inaugural address of Abraham Lincoln. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Lincoln's second inaugural, read by Jeff McAlvin. Fellow countrymen, at this second appearing to take the oath of the presidential office, there is less occasion for an extended address than there was at the first. Then a statement, somewhat in detail, of a course to be pursued seemed fitting and proper. Now at the expiration of four years, during which public declarations have been constantly called forth on every point and phase of the great contest which still absorbs the attention and engrosses the energies of the nation, little that is new could be presented. The progress of our arms, upon which all else chiefly depends, is as well known to the public as to myself. And it is, I trust, reasonably satisfactory and encouraging to all. With high hope for the future, no prediction in regard to it is ventured. On the occasion corresponding to this four years ago, all thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending civil war. All dreaded it, all sought to avert it. While the inaugural address was being delivered from this place, devoted altogether to saving the union without war, insurgent agents were in the city seeking to destroy it without war, seeking to dissolve the union and divide effects by negotiation. Both parties deprecated war, but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish, and the war came. One eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the union, but localized in the southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was, somehow, the cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the union, even by war, while the government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it. Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with or even before the conflict itself should cease, each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and a sounding. Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes his aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in ringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces, but let us judge not that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered, that of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has his own purposes, woe unto the world because of offenses, for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh. If we shall suppose that American slavery as one of those offenses which in the providence of God must needs come, but which, having continued through his appointed time, he now wills to remove, and that he gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers and a living God always ascribe to him? fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away? Yet if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's 250 years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn by the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said 3,000 years ago, so still it must be said, the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous all together, with malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right. Let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations. End of 2nd Inaugural Address by Abraham Lincoln A town with two persons, the editor in the Postmaster, its population. From the New York Tribune, January 7, 1900, 1916. From the Abilene, Kansas Reflector. This is a LibriVox recording, all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. I had an experience once in running a newspaper which has never been duplicated by any other man in the world, said C. H. Pattison. For three months I ran a weekly paper in a town with two inhabitants, the Postmaster and myself. It was in Congress, Colorado. That was a boom mining town in 1883 and miners flocked in there by the hundreds, on account of a strike. Claims were gobbled up like hotcakes. Under the mining law, after $500 worth of work is done on a claim, it is necessary to insert a legal notice in a newspaper of general circulation for a period of three months. My father held an office in San Juan County, and while out visiting him I saw an opportunity to lease a newspaper plant and make a lot of money running legal notices. I did so. For several months I did a land office business. It was a thriving little town. The business of the town enabled the Postmaster to make about $1,500 a year. A few months before there was to be another readjustment of the Postmaster's salary, things began to drag at Congress. The mines were not panning out well. There was a strike made at Telleride, and all of the miners picked up and went to that place. They were followed by the merchants, saloon men, gamblers, dance hall people, and all. Within a week there was no one left there but the Postmaster, James Edwards, and myself. Edwards did not care to give up his post office as long as it paid so well. He was from Ohio. I was tied up with a lot of legal publications. I was certain to get my money for the notices as soon as they had run the required length of time, so I could not leave. We had everything our own way. I could help him run his post office, and he would help me write hot stuff, set it up, and pull the lever on an old Washington hand press. The post office business was confined almost wholly to handling the circulation of my paper, the Red Mountain Pilot, about 50 copies. The day that the legal notices last appeared, I told Edwards that I was going to pull up stakes and leave. His big salary ran another month, and he wanted me to stay, offering to divide up, but that was no inducement. When he found that I was determined to leave, he said, I'll lock up the post office and go too. He turned the key in the door of the post office, and I locked the door of the newspaper office, and we both locked out of town. End of A Town With Two Persons, recorded by Craig Campbell.