Life — October 27, 1887 — page 5: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

> LIFE: A SONG OF A SHEPHERD. H, little Watteau Shepherdess, With golden-powdered hair ! Thou'rt artificial, I confess, But, oh, thou art so fair! On dainty Dresden jars they paint You charmingly demure, Adored by little cupids quaint, Quite a la Pompadour. Decked out in flowered petticoats, Garnished o'er with buttons, With ribboned crook attending goats, And embryonic muttons, Dost ever dream of love, fair maid, “When woodlands waxeth green, And dryads 'mid the sylvan shade Sound tinkling tambourine ? Oh, little Watteau Shepherdess ! I'm sick of love for thee, Take pity on my dire distress, Elope to Arcadee. Don’t hesitate, but pack your box, I've a chaise outside the town ; I know a priest unorthodox, Who'll join us for a crown, Henry R. Evans. BOOKS THAT HAVE HELPED ME. HAVE been asked by a friend to give him a list of books that have helped me. 1 do not know if he is aware of the fact, but in the course of avery short career I have enjoyed an exceedingly varied experience. In all the professions from that of a youthful Napoleon of bankruptcy up to the one which now claims me as an honored member, I have plied my energies—in all save one. I have yet to lay siege to such honors as the pulpit affords, and until I can combine in my person the graceful agility of a Talmage with the composite eloquence of Robert G. Ingersoll, Roscoe Conkling, George Francis Train and the Rev. Adirondack Murray, I shall content myself with a pulpit on the outside of the church, Having followed, then, so many professions, it is no easy task to enumerate the books that have helped me. Indeed it were far easier to make a list of those which have not helped me. To please a friend, however, I will do what I can, To begin, as a student in college, the books which helped me most were the literal translations of the classics, published by the lamented Bohn, of London, It was a particularly frigid day when [ could not easily overcome a Latin or Greek poet astride of his Pegasus by mounting the Pony of collegiate fame. Upon leaving college during the time that I was trying to forget all I knew so as to fit myself for a business career, I followed the profes- sion of the butterfly of fashion. My only books were the looks of tailor-made girls, and some of the folly which occasionally crops out in my writings may be directly attributed to my devotion to these volumes, In Wall Street, being an ambitious youth, the goal to attain which I strove was the Young Napoleonship of Finance, and by the aid of such books as ‘* How to be Rich though Poor,” ‘* From the Bucket Shop to the Stock Exchange, by a Millionaire,” ‘How I Made my Pile,” “Ten Thousand a Week, or the Autobiography of Peter Penni- less: Born without a cent, Died with Liabilities amounting to Ten Mil- lions,” I got there. Guided by such invaluable text-books I managed to lose all I had and several hundreds of thousands more in a little 229 less than six months, The books which helped me most in the ensu- ing six months were my ledger, cash and day books, which mysteri- ously disappeared the day after my assignment. Next I turned my attention to the law. ‘This step was not entirely a voluntary one, but as I was able to prove an alibi—for the accoun! books—I had no cause to regret it. In the pursuit of my legal studies I derived more profit from ** The Comic Blackstone" than from any other, although when my law library, consisting of the Civil Code in words of one syllable, a scrap-book of clippings from the Mail and Express on the career of David Deadly Field, and an Interlinear Parsons on Contracts, was sold at auction, the scrap-book brought some few dollars more than any of the others, due possibly to the fact that a third or fourth cousin by marriage of the great lawyer wished the book to place on his parlor table. Passing rapidly over the ensuing years of my life, and coming down to the present day, I find that in the pursuit of a literary career the books which are most helpful to me are Seventeenth Century Jest- Books, Records of the Civil War, Webster's Dictionary, a three months’ commutation book on the Hudson River Railroad, the Directory, a book of quotations, and the cheque books of such publishers as see fit to invest their capital in the delicate phantasms of my facile though stub pen, which periodically see the light of day. I think my friend can derive all the assistance he needs from the list Thave given him ; but in closing I cannot but call attention to one book which has afforded me in all my professions the greatest possible satis- faction; a volume which has a larger circulation than the aggregate sale of Plutarch’'s Lives, Pilgrim's Progress, and Leaves from the High- lands ; abook which Robert Louis Stevenson, H. Rider Haggard, John Ruskin, the late Sylvanus Cobb, W. D. Howells and Ella Wheeler Wilcox would unanimously admit has given them more actual, lasting satisfaction than all the libraries of past, present and future ages together can give, That book is the Pocket-book! It is the one book Carlyle Smith, in my library that I do not care to lend. “OH, NELLIE, IT MAKES MY HEART BLEED TO THINK OF THOSE FINE DRESSES BEING WORN BY A DUMB FIGGER! IT ALMOST MAKES ME WISH TO GET RORN OVER AGAIN AN’ BE MADE OF WAX." comicbooks.com