Life — November 10, 1892 — page 8: what you’re looking at

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

PROF, VOLT, THE ELECTRICIAN, HAS PERFECTED AN INGENIOUS DEVICE TO SUPPLANT THE OLD- FASHIONED ALARM CLOCK. HE KNOWS HE WILL BEING A RESTLESS SLUEPER, MIS FEET BECOME ENTANGLED IN THE WIRES, BUT HE WAS AWAKENED AT SIX. £*X TO force, Bill,” cried the fair Demo- cratic maid, as her lover tried to kiss her. HE time when a man really discovers how very original he is occurs shortly after he is sued for slander for repeating a story told to him by seven different people. “OUR FRIENDS, THE BOOKS.” \ one of her pleasant * Essays in Miniature,” Agnes Repplier, telling of Hazlitt’s delight in re-reading the books of his youth, says: ‘* He opened a faded, dusty volume, and behold ! the spot where first he read it, the day it was received, the feeling of the air, the fields, the sky, all returned to him with charming distinctness, and with them returned his first rapturous impression of that long-closed, long-neglected romance.” This natural association of ideas is such a part of every man's mental furniture that the wonder is a more intelligent choice is not used in associating a particular pleasure with a particular book. Why should you allow a train-boy to determine any part of the memories of your old age? Think of that part of your autobiography which has to do with travel (a large portion nowadays) being colored for all time by the mere accident of a news-boy’s vending certain book on a certain day! Perhaps a score of people in the same train, in similar surroundings and rushing through the same scenery, are also leisurely absorbing, with the car-window view, a similar set of emotional impressions from the pages of what happens to be the book of the hour. And yet we often wonder why people are so much alike, and for the most part uninteresting! Whether it be accident or choice which has determined your reading, you need not be very old to have discovered how pleasant a part of your recollection of an excursion is the book which accompanied you—often more vivid than the people who shared it. I know an ordinary man, given to long walks, and to camping in the forest. It is one of the mild delights of the evening pipe around the camp-fire to hear him tell the story of a famous romance as it has become an inseparable part of the scenes in which he was living when he read it. Each tale for him has its own peculiar atmosphere of which the author never dreamed. T have heard him say that for him Sant Mario” is not more than half a tale of modern Rome ; the other half moves among the islands of a beautiful lake in the Adiron- He will never finish ** Lorna Doone," because he will probably never again visit dacks. the Muskoka lakes in Ontario, and for him John Ridd and Lorna lived, and are still living, on the shores of the Great Manitou. When the mood is on him he will tell you with all sincerity of the great hardships he endured with Jokn Ridd, shooting the rapids of the Amable du Fond. Sometimes, I half believe, he thinks JoAn saved his life when they crossed Tea Lake in a gale. One day 1 mentioned ‘The Mill on the Floss.” ‘Oh, yes. I've been there,” he growled out of his cloud of smoke. ‘* Down on Long Island not far from Wainscott and Sagg. I stopped there for lunch one day on a twenty-mile tramp. Was just getting interested in Jom and Maggie when the old lady brought in the trout, cooked to the queen's taste. Bright boy and girl those—but seemed discontented with their narrow way of life. I wonder what became of them?” We never disillusionize our friend at these times, For a month of the year he is a man of imagination ; for the rest of the time he figures close on the manufacture of hydraulic cement to outsell the English brands. This summer he took ‘* Calmire" with him into the Maine woods ; and the other night T overheard him tell some men in a club corner that “There was a young Harvard chap, named Muriel, up at Murray Cunningham's camp in August, who was a first-rate fisher- man, but nearly killed us with philosophical discussions in the evening. That boy knows a little of a great many things, and believes nothing. I've heard since I got back, that there is a pretty factory girl, up the Hudson where he lives, who is setting her cap for him. And I predict that she'll get him into trouble. It's always those agnostics, who only believe what they experience, who get into scrapes." The crowd had never read ‘* Calmire,” and took the story asa bit of real life. One man said he believed Murie? was a non-resident member, and sent for a club book to find out his fall name. THERE are many other interesting things in Miss Repplier's volume of essays (which has led us into this ghost-land of books)—but best of all is its charming attitude toward lit- erature of comradeship—of reading books because they are lovable—of living your own life naturally and having for your book-friends only those which belong in your circle. With that outlook no reader will ever suffer from * literosity.” Droch. NEW BOOKS. Riyaes AND BALLADS FOR GIRLS AND BOYS. By Susan Coolidge. Boston: Roberts Brothers. comicbooks.com