Chapter III: Part 3

John Burroughs, whose essays have been a joy upon many an evening and a stimulating remembrance upon many a tramp, with a similar freshness and unworldliness carried on the tradition of the earlier men. From his fruit farm upon the Hudson he continually sends us messages to forget our tea parties, our moving pictures, our country clubs, and really to find ourselves in the discoveries of beauties and life in the growing, nesting, and flowering things about us. One of the happy thoughts that we derive from him is the knowledge that to obtain the beneficence to soul and mind we (poor suburbanites tied to the necessity of earning our daily bread in the city) need not follow the "Long Trail" to the ends of the world of the furious globe trotter, Rudyard Kipling, but must only take store of the things at hand, find the same happiness in the quiet, civilized, thoroughbred-cattled meadow as we would hope to find up against a rugged blow in the Northern Seas off the coast of which "you've lost the chart of overside." You do not have to go so far from home to know the world. Thoroughly know the garden that you cultivate, study all that happens along the hedgerow upon the way to the station, and you will be richer than he who has racketed with half blind eyes from the Yukon to Patagonia,

Or East all the way into Mississippi Bay,
Or West to the Golden Gate.

In conjunction with the reflection of nature in books, I mentioned our scaly friends, the fish, without paying due homage to the king of all philosophic fishermen, Izaak Walton. How many devotees of the gentle art of angling have made of their own the wisdom, the beauty, the thoughtful content of the fisherman's classic, "The Compleat Angler"? A man once said to me that the next best thing to taking a walk was to read the accounts of Walt Whitman's rambles upon Timber Creek. I answered that upon the days you could not go a-fishing, you had best read "The Compleat Angler." I hold to this! Will not the men who stand by the trout, the bass, the salmon, the weak fish, or the gallant tuna and tarpon, and the boys who put their faith in the catfish, the sucker, the eel, or the perch, fall in together and be one in believing as the Venerable Izaak believed,

O the gallant fisher's life,
It is the best of any!
'Tis full of pleasure, void of strife,
And 'tis beloved by many;
Other joys
Are but toys;
Only this
Lawful is;
For our skill
Breeds no ill,
But content and pleasure.

There is many another writer who opens the door to the traveller who wishes to enrich his enjoyment of Nature as it is to be seen along life's highway. I mention but a few who may give you new worlds for which you would not trade a mint of silver. Have you ever gone with Stevenson upon his walking trips? If not, do so, and perhaps you will agree with him that it is pleasant to have a companion upon your journeys; as Lawrence Sterne expresses it: "Let me have a companion of my way were it but to remark how the shadows lengthen as the sun declines." If you prefer to be alone, Hazlitt will tell you that no companion is necessary, as thoughts need no companions: "I want to see my vague notions float like the down of the thistle before the breeze, and not to have them entangled in the briars and thorns of controversy."

Or have you read the books of the Homer of the Insects, the Frenchman I have mentioned, Fabre? There is a treat ahead of you--he wrote of the crawling, burrowing and flying things of his beloved Provence, and if there is anything in this realm more interesting than his records of observing the daily lives of the House Fly, the Praying Mantis, and many another beetle, cricket and creeper, I have yet to find it. To say that you must immediately line your room with aquariums, jars, and boxes, in which to preserve and watch the births, loves and deaths of all the spiders, whirligigs, and butterflies that come within your reach is relating the result in its mildest form that this author has had upon me. Such books introduce you to a thousandfold intensity of existence, as every great book must.

Intensive agriculture is heralded as the saving factor of human progress. Let us make a plea for truly intensive living. As the crops that come from a rich, well-cultivated soil are bountiful, so is the life that is the product of a fertile mind. A poor crop is a superficial existence of discontented pleasures and shallow unhappiness; a rich crop is a life in which the heart and mind are at least attune to the joy which may be derived from the living of it,--brave when courage is needed, patient when patience is a virtue. The word "culture" is sometimes derided as a synonym for pretentious high-browism, but let us remember that the farmer respects the word "cultivate," as he knows that it is necessary if he wishes to make the harvest a season of happiness and rich reward. A man's harvest season is his every minute of existence--his bounty is the depth and pleasure of that existence. Our future life is or is not a "great perhaps," but our present life is assuredly a reality. It is _here_--what are you going to do with it? If you can make every day a day of intense interest you have won the greatest battle! You have stormed the world's richest citadel! The Children of Pan, who have loved and written of Nature, charm and transport you to a world of infinite interest. They offer rich fertilizer that gives promise of a bumper crop--Open that Door into their Realm.

*CHAPTER VIII*

*MEN BEHIND BOOKS*

Every word man's lips have uttered Echoes in God's Skies. ADELAIDE A. PROCTER

Books contain the accumulated store of human thought and scientific attainment--this is a treasure without which there would be no civilization--yet in addition, we may say that the most potent inheritance, that books vouchsafe, is the personalities of the great authors who have inscribed their souls within them. Personal character affects our lives as does nothing else. In the back of the mind of every one there are men and women who, we appreciate, have been the makers of our souls. Most often it is a mother or a father, sometimes a teacher of our youth, or a friend and fellow worker of whose nature we realize we have absorbed a part. Contact between human personalities is the most profound mover for good and evil. A preacher may declaim against sin for ever and a day, but you know that your great friend who scorns sin has infinitely more influence upon you. The greatest doers of good are men and women who lead others by the examples of their own lives. It is unfortunately not given to many to come into intimate personal contact with the most supreme human souls, but fortunate we are that many have extended their personalities without limit into the future, by truly encasing themselves in books that will remain as the leaven and inspiration of all ages and all peoples.

I have a number of volumes upon my shelves that I choose to consider not as books, but as men. Instead of printed pages, cloth bindings, and labels, they are living personalities with whom I can pass an evening. The reading is over, and I have within me the character of a great human being. As have my Mother and Father and the old fisherman, whose knowledge of the sea and storm beaten coast fed my boyish spirit, they have become part of me. The greatest books are those that present the greatest men. It is not the artistry of telling a story or writing a poem that really counts; the sincerity and intensity with which a man, whom we may call our "guide, philosopher and friend," is revealed forms the most cherished treasure of our bookshelf. In sorrow, in dejection, in need of mental or spiritual sustenance, when the joy of living is blunted, when lazy, discouraged or annoyed, you can go to these great fellows, converse with them and return again to the world with a bird's-eye view, an enlarged vision, a quickened spirit.

Have you read Walt Whitman? _There_ is a glorious human being--so magnificent, so all-embracing in his love, so turbulent, so large in his personality that to know him, to feed upon him, you must become submerged in his book, his soul,--"The Leaves of Grass." Of this volume containing his poems he himself said,

This is no book;
Who touches this, touches a man.

You do indeed touch a man! A great spirit who saw in all things God; a Democrat who saw in all men the spark of the divine; a leader who raced out to the farthest reaches of the soul and beckons and begs you to follow; a lover who embraced all, the prostitute, the poet, the lowly, the exultant, Christ himself, in a spirit of human fellowship; a physical giant who gloried in his sex and makes you consider sacred the relationship of the sexes; a nurse who brought upon himself paralysis by caring for the wounded in the Civil War; a prophet who could no more believe that the spirit of an individual man could die than that it had never been born. Perhaps you think I write extravagantly--I do not--I but attempt to present what the personality of Walt Whitman has meant to me, and to many, many others. I but ask that you go to the "Leaves of Grass," and come in contact with that man to whom so many look and say--"A great part of myself is you, Walt Whitman! My life has been renewed since first I touched your hand."

Tolstoy! There is another one who believed in humanity and God,--there is another who has put a huge, rugged, loving soul within books. Probably no one has so influenced the humanitarianism of our day as did this bearded old warrior from Russia; but it was the deep human sympathy of the actual living Tolstoy that moved the world, not the arguments he deduced nor the warnings he gave. He was always a moralist,--even in his masterpiece "Anna Karenina" it is not the story he tells, but the human love which he reveals that has made the eternal monument. Afraid of nothing,--the Czar, convention, hatred, oppression,--he lived his life according to the dictates of his own conscience, the most punishing conscience that has ever been the attribute of a master soul. If you do not know him, read his short story "Master and Man." There you will find enunciated, in a manner as poignant, as powerful, as even that of the Sermon on the Mount, the doctrine of happiness found in living your life for others. Selfishness, pride, materialism, the sins that spoil the world, cannot stand in the way of the burning words of Tolstoy. Your conscience will receive a stiffening medicine, your sympathies for the sins and sufferings of your neighbors will deepen to bed rock, and your life will become proportionately more true, more happy, more Christian. Six years ago in the lowly hut near the Caucasus, when the mighty soul of Tolstoy left the body, the World missed a leader, a lover, a prophet--but his word still remains, and the doctrine as told by him of universal betterment through love and human sympathy will reach mankind whilst there are men left to read, and to communicate.

We all know the poems of Robert Burns, most of us know something of his life. His life and character are revealed in his poetry. He too was a lover, but a weak rather than a rugged one. We love him for his very weakness. His heart was his strength and his undoing. He loved until his heart would break, ruthlessly and impetuously, and of his sufferings, his remorses, regrets, and forlorn hopes he sang. In this cruel world, where might so often makes right, what a benediction it is to read a poem written from the depth of a simple, sorrowing, yet deeply human heart upon the suffering that he has caused the "wee sleekit, cow'rin, tim'rous beastie" in turning up her nest with the plowshare. As with all the personalities that are "great" in the deepest sense, his was one that felt a companionship for all that lives upon the earth, and from his sympathy for the drunken, the heart-broken, and the meadow mice, and his joy in patriotism, true lovers, and beauteous roses, we derive a depth of sentiment that needs must mellow our hearts. A brave spirit in a weak body had Bobbie Burns--he drank and was unfaithful, but he felt deeply. We love him for his depth, we sympathize with him in his weaknesses. As a friend he purifies rather than stimulates our souls, but he is a true friend and a loving one.

Francois Villon, the greatest ballad singer of all time, the tavern lover, the vagabond, the heavy-hearted sorrower, the lighted-hearted laugher, the bosom companion of thieves, cut-throats, chattering grisettes, old courtesans, rioters, and brawlers of the narrow streets, Cathedral shadows, Seine banks of mediaeval Paris, was another of those great-hearted human lovers who had the gift of telling his heart secrets in words of wondrous beauty. By twentieth century standards Villon's actions, thieveries, and suspected murder, would have been neither moral nor proper, but by the standard of all ages, in all true hearts, his feelings towards the people among whom he moved will stand the test of the most austere morality. He loved all men and women for the best that was in them, he did not scorn them for the worst. He was unselfish and true to his friends, and more than that we cannot desire. Where there is hypocrisy there is vice; where there is selfishness there is lack of Christianity and humanity; our tavern poet, Francois Villon, had neither of these, and if you want a friend who will make you see the good in the bad, the beautiful in the ugly, go to your bookshelf and become acquainted with the fervid soul of this ancient ballad singer.

When you are too contented, when your mind feels squidgy with good living, or sultry from the summer heat, go to another man,--George Gordon, Lord Byron. They say that Byron (with Scott) is nowadays out of fashion. "They" are mistaken. The author of Childe Harold and Don Juan will never be truly out of fashion, so long as there is a flare in youthful hearts, a discontent in ambitious minds. He is the poet of a great revolt, a kicker at the traces, and then again he is the singer of the bleeding heart, of lost causes; he hurries you across the seas upon his speeding bark; he tops the crags of human loneliness and leaves you desolate. His songs are of the rollicking wine of life with its excitements, its depressions, its sentiments of hatred, beauty, joy. For youth he is the poet of liberty, of intense individualism; for age the poet of thwarted desires, for everyone he has a chestnut burr to put beneath dull content; his mockery is for stupidity, dryness, stagnation. Get under the crust of his effusive egotism and you will meet a sombre, lonely, sensitive individual, who needs you as a friend and who will be to you a hypodermic stimulative.

How different a one from this poet is his contemporary, the essayist, Charles Lamb. The essays we love the best are those that reveal the point of view, the little personalities of the writer, and no man of letters ever had a more magnetic personality, or knew better how to preserve himself in little literary gems, than did the author of "The Essays of Elia." Lamb spent his days in the South Sea Counting House transferring figures from one great ledger to another. But his evenings with his books, his family and his friends! Ah!--there was a companion! A booklover whose enthusiasm, for musty duodecimos has become a classic allusion, a punster whose puns are sometimes good and sometimes bad, but always original, a relisher of good conversation, a man of many petty weaknesses, a lover of good food, with a taste for old wine, and with an infinite appreciation of the fads and foibles of himself and others, he seems to have been altogether the most lovable individual with whom it would be possible to scrape up an acquaintance. Read but one hundred pages of his essays and he becomes your chuckling, appreciative, inimitable companion. Every old book shop, every roast pig, every glass of rich wine, every threadbare clerk stooping over his ledger--these and many such will take on fresh and romantic aspects for the friend of Elia.

Thomas Carlyle was an historian and philosopher who wrote his name over every page of his work. His was the voice and the soul of the Old Testament prophets, who railed at men from the depths of their bitter yet anxious hearts. The Preacher of the Nineteenth Century, when he spoke the world listened! Have you read "Sartor Resartus"? Among his works this is even the most personal. It is rough and jagged in style, turbulent and confused in arrangement, but behind it all, or rather under it all, is revealed the spiritual message to his age. The message is Carlyle's own personality: his bravery, his sincerity, his fine hatred of muddle-headed thinking, of credulity, of cant; his love and admiration for the fundamental greatnesses of human nature, his belief in an omnipotent God. He wished men to believe, and the thunder he bellowed in his endeavor still resounds. His soul was a battery of twelve-inch guns directed against the forces of ignorance and hypocrisy. It is to the reading of "Sartor Resartus" that many men point as the turning stake in their spiritual lives. It was not in the book that they found their spiritual bulwarks, but in the soul of the great Scotchman with whom they came in contact.

There is our own Emerson, whose admiration for Carlyle was probably only outdone by Carlyle's admiration for him! "Self Realization," "The American Scholar," "Friendship," "Politics"--how many of his essays have become part and parcel of America's loftiest thought and action. The metallic acuteness of his personality was not of the kind with which you can become familiar, but its very aloofness holds our respect and devotion. The austerity of George Washington in public life can only be compared with the cold distance at which this philosopher holds us, and yet upon their pedestals we recognize them as men from whom the best in American character has derived nourishment. In every sentence of his every essay, we feel the soul at peace, the intellect enthroned, the power of will predominant.

A man without friends is a man without life, and I have but told you of some of my boon companions. Never to have shared in the fellowship of the great spirits who are preserved for us in books is to cut one's self off from the most rewarding of human relationships. The chums of our boyhood, our companions at college, too often drift away to distant parts, or diverge from us in pursuits other than our own; although remembrances of our times together are sacred and of sweet recalling, too often they are of the past and renewal forever impossible. The friends of our books, however, are forever with us, they cannot die, they cannot depart, they remain fresh and vigorous, hearty sojourners upon our road, forever willing to lend a hand over the rocks and bumpy places. Without disparaging those with whom I sit before the fire, and chat, and smoke, I must confess that I value equally with them the friends of eternal character that exist there in the book-case. They lighten the path of life; they are ready for converse when my spirit calls.

Go to the greatest books for your most enduring friends, but upon having formed their friendship do not leave them in the study, but carry them within your spirit to your business and the marts of men, and in holding their confidences burning in your heart you will find yourself a more thorough human being.

*CHAPTER IX*

*KEEPING UP WITH LIFE*

Reading is the key which admits us to the whole world of thought and fancy and imagination, to the company of saint and sage, of the wisest and wittiest at their wisest and wittiest moments. It enables us to see with the keenest eyes, to hear with the finest ears, and to listen to the sweetest voices of all time.

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

If in the minds of some readers this little book has helped to break down the futile distinctions and to show the real relation between the man who reads and the one who enjoys life, between the thinker and the man of action, it has done all that the author dared hope. Let us look upon our library not as an end in itself, but as a means to an end. It is a mistaken ambition to read as many books as possible within a year, or to attempt religiously to read the complete works of a number of authors. The man who buries himself in his library and exists only in the books therein is an unsocial, stagnant creature; but the one who reads as a means of attaining to a more productive life among his fellow men is the one who has gained the true riches of literature.

The world is a world for workers, not idlers. We live in America in the twentieth century, and we are of but little use to the general machinery if our minds are forever sojourning with the mediaeval knights or gossiping in the by-ways of London with Charles Lamb and his contemporaries. Literature for you and me who live, and toil, and hope to obtain joy in the doing of it, must be vivifying nourishment to apply to our living and toiling. Great books and all true education provide this nourishment or else they would not be worth the price of a comic supplement.

Poetry, fiction, philosophy and history are not alone for old maids and retired business men who desire comforting, amusing solace to while away the hours until the race is run, nor alone for college professors and writers whose business it is to read, abstract, and judge,--they are truly, have been, and always will be for the minds of men and women who need and use the spirit of them in their work, their play, their sorrows, and their joys.

When Francis Bacon wrote "Reading maketh a full man," he did not mean "full" to imply a great accumulation of facts and dry-as-dust learning. Bacon was a philosopher, scientist, essayist, of the first order in each, and yet a leading statesman in his age. His mind was "full" in that he had probably as had no other man in England absorbed all the literature and science of all the centuries that had preceded him; his was the fulness of the reservoir from which could be drawn an endless stream of resource with which to undertake new political enterprises, of strength to maintain his position and of philosophy in the face of losing it. He was a literary man in that he knew the literature of the world, a man of letters--he wrote masterpieces, a man of action--he virtually ruled Great Britain. This is the threefold thread of life that we may all have as our ambition,--the connoisseur, the creative artist, the productive worker.

After having considered the bearing the reading of books has upon life, let us consider the bearing that living has upon reading and writing. Elbert Hubbard carried out this thought in his little book upon William Morris, the English poet. Morris, as you may know, was a weaver, a blacksmith, a wood-carver, a painter, a dyer, a printer, a furniture manufacturer, a musician, and withal a great poet. Hubbard said: "William Morris thought literature should be the product of the ripened mind." We have looked at Bacon as one whose literary output must have been the product of a mind that had manfully grappled with worldly affairs, and here is a further list that the Roycrofter gives us: "Shakespeare was a theatre manager, Milton a secretary, Bobbie Burns a farmer, Lamb a bookkeeper, Wordsworth a Government employee, Emerson a lecturer, Hawthorne a custom-house inspector, and Whitman a clerk."

The professional man of letters, except in rather rare instances, is by no means the man who erects the most enduring literary monuments. Literature must come from elemental life to have the true relationship to the affairs of men. We could increase Elbert Hubbard's list to an almost indefinite length--the author of the Gettysburg address had the weight of a nation upon his shoulders, Thoreau was more interested in observing the changing seasons than he was in writing books, Tolstoy was a soldier, an economist and farmer, Balzac an unsuccessful publisher, Bunyan a preacher, Pepys a high government official, Oliver Wendell Holmes a doctor, and countless novelists and poets of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries hard-working, hard-driven newspaper men.

Leisure does not make great literature,--all that is effective must come from interior or exterior experiences, and acute observations. The most effectual reading is that which is done in the light of personal experience, with one's eye upon unliterary activity. There is an endless chain, of which the links are the subject, the artist, the reader and his life as reflected by the author's treatment. To live in a world of books and to have as their profession the spinning of other volumes is the life of too many of our writers. On the other side of the shield, we of course see readers whose lives are entirely absorbed in the volumes they read without an outlet to the practical activities of existence. How tiresome it is to have a bustling man or woman tell us that they have not the time or that they are not literary enough to read great books. They of course, being good Americans, have plenty of time to go through stacks of worthless novels, and absorb a half dozen continuous serial stories in our monthly magazines. I say it is tiresome, and it is foolish, as with a moment's thought we can realize that books are essentially for the man or woman who is most deeply immersed in life.

Break down the barrier between literature and life?--there is none! I have a certain friend who has more to do within the twenty-four hours of the day than has anyone else I know. Politics, municipal corporations, railroads--these are apparently his life--absorbed in men and affairs. And yet if I run across a book that especially appeals to me, I go to him and ask his ideas upon it. He has probably read it and with his greater experience in the actual turmoil of living than I have had, he can enlighten me with a dozen new points of view upon the book under consideration. He interprets it in the light of his experience, as the author had written in the light of his.

It was said that during President Wilson's first winter in the White House, society in Washington was much exercised as to how he passed his evenings. It later developed that those evenings in which he was not absorbed in official business were spent in reading poetry, preferably Wordsworth, to his family. Washington stood amazed! Perhaps there is no truth in this story, but the ingredients are certainly there, which, if brought into conjunction, would make a true yarn. The active helmsman of the ship of state, with innumerable matters weighing upon him, seeking wisdom and spiritual fibre from a great poet; Washington society, without much to do, yet frightfully busy, amazed at his wasting or dreamily passing his hours of possible recreation!

Many another great public man has well appreciated that books are not for the closet but for life. Theodore Roosevelt is the apostle of strenuosity, statesman, ranchman, hunter, and yet a writer upon a wide range of subjects and an omnivorous reader. The plays of Shakespeare were the school books and college education of our rail splitter, Abraham Lincoln. A great English liberal, Charles James Fox, would charm the House of Commons for hours with his oratory, go to Brooks' and lose a fortune at cards, and then home to his bed to read the Plays of Euripides,--probably to absorb wisdom and courage for his thinking and gaming upon the following evening. Of the men and women to whom books mean life, we could go on with our list indefinitely, not only through the ranks of kings and queens, soldiers and statesmen, financiers and merchants, but sea captains, mechanics, farmers, clerks, and coal miners. In every walk of life we find the true philosophers, the true adepts in the art of living, seeking sustenance from the printed page.

Go into a public library, and study the faces of those who are reading there--ambition, inspiration, delight will be expressed by those who have found _the open door_, the way to riches and plenty. Observe the homes of your acquaintances! Cicero said that books are the soul of a room, and we may expand this epigram in saying that the use of books in a family brings all the members into a communion with each other, creating an atmosphere far removed from that of the home in which books are infrequent sojourners.

Oh no, it is not the professed gentleman of literature with the pedantic knowledge and bookish phraseology, but the men and women who seek explanation of and relief from sorrow, stimulus to higher attainment, pleasure that mellows activity, to whom the authors are truly the path of life. Those whom you see on the elevated trains reading Shakespeare, the ranchman with his pocket edition of Dickens, the country doctor who hates to buy an automobile as when driving his old buggy he could read his Boswell upon his round of visits,--they are the ones to whom the poet can truly say,

You will hardly know who I am, or what I mean;
But I will be health to you nevertheless,
And filter and fibre your blood.

You need never be afraid of becoming intellectual. To be sure it is somewhat the fashion in America to think that a man who reads Meredith should be a college professor or the editor of a book review--but this is only a fashion and held to by the most stupid. It is smart to laugh at good books and "culture," but it is the same sort of smartness at which all Europe has been sensibly sneering for a century. Reading should not be a profession; those that make it such invariably become world weary, book weary, at sea in an ocean in which life is necessarily a more vital thing than they are able to swallow. Do not give your life over to your library, but make of it an electric battery with which to vivify life. It can be done, and is done by the great and the little, the sorrowful and the joyful, the leading warriors in the battle for civilized progress.

Call upon the supreme minds of past ages to support you in the strife of this and they will prove stalwart, faithful legions. Read as is your need and inclination; not as a duty, not as a feat, but as an acknowledgment that you are glad to win the best and most helpful of friends. Aristotle said that all men desire knowledge. If knowledge means deeper human sympathy, a more profound enlightenment, a richer, happier, more productive life, let each one of us admit that the attainment of knowledge is in truth our endeavor. Let us try the experiment of finding this knowledge in the volumes of the deepest, the most intensive livers.

Make the book you read to-day play a part in the world of to-morrow, and you will rise above the reader in the closet who carps and criticizes, thus cutting himself off from the work of men. You will disprove all statements about the lack of practicability of education, the other-worldiness of books.

* * * * *

There was a boy who wandered out along an unknown highway into a far country. The way seemed sombre, foreign and meaningless. His questions were unanswered, his desires unsatisfied; there seemed no by-paths into which he could turn in the hope of finding a solace or a reason for his journey.

A never-ending vista without rhyme or reason lay before him of flat, uninteresting solitudes, only broken by dark pits or rugged obstructions which he had either to circle about or climb over or under. They always annoyed and provoked him, as there seemed no set plan for meeting such difficulties, no apparent purpose in wandering on. He knew, however, that there was no turning back, he had to stagger, and stumble, and plod forward, ever forward.

It was the way of life, and it was a meaningless road, a disappointing journey undertaken with great expectations.

After a deal of suffering, impatience and profound discouragement, he came upon a great Palace standing in his way. It was the first that he had ever seen, and he wondered at it.

With hesitancy he determined to walk about it and to follow the beaten road, uninteresting but familiar, which he felt must stretch beyond. He spied, however, a small door at the side of the great barred gate and he determined to enter and to see what could be found within. The panel yielded to his timorous push, and he found himself in a mighty hall where there were wondrous things!

Many another wanderer had already arrived, and many others were to follow,--there was a happiness, a purpose, a vitality in life that had been sadly lacking upon the road of his journeying. Wisdom, riches, the answers to his questions, the reasons for his arduous pilgrimage lay before him. He grasped them and was content.

* * * * * * * *

*J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY'S
IMPORTANT NEW BOOKS*

*Betty at Fort Blizzard*

By MOLLY ELLIOT SEAWELL. Four illustrations in color and decorations by Edmund Frederick. $1.50 net.

This is a straightaway army love story, with the scene laid at a post in the far Northwest. It is a sequel to the famous "Betty's Virginia Christmas" so popular a few years ago. It is realistic and yet as light as Betty's laugh,--presented in a delightfully dainty gift book style, it makes a charming Christmas present.

*Behold the Woman!*

By T. EVERETT HARRE. $1.35 net.

A child of the Alexandrian gutter, a redeemed woman seeing a vision of Christ upon the Judean hills, and finally a mystic saint upon the desert, was Mary of Egypt, the heroine of this historical novel. "From beginning to the end I found 'Behold the Woman!' gripping and thrillingly interesting."--_Mrs. Minnie Maddern Fiske_.

*The Finding of Jasper Holt*

By GRACE L. H. LUTZ. Three illustrations in color by E. F. Bayha. $1.25 net.

Another great Lutz novel,--wholesome, uplifting, interesting and amusing. "This tale ... is one of the kind one reads with interest refusing to be quenched when the hall light goes out."--_Detroit Free Press_.

*Adam's Garden*

By NINA WILCOX PUTNAM. Frontispiece in color by H. Weston Taylor. New Second Edition. $1.25 net.

The _New York Sun_ aptly termed this "An Idyl of Manhattan." "It is full of warmth and sunlight, and its inner urge is that come what may--the world is a good place to live in if we only make the best of that which lies nearest to hand."--_Review of Reviews_.

*A Man's Reach*

By SALLY NELSON ROBINS. Three illustrations in color by Edmund Frederick. $1.25 net.

A Virginia story by a Virginian. Randolph Turberville is the scion of an aristocratic Virginia house; his struggle against evil forces begins at the University of Virginia. Fascinating, he is adored by all, especially by Lettice Corbin, for whom he saves himself.

*The Curved Blades*

By CAROLYN WELLS. Frontispiece by Gayle Hoskins. $1.35 net.

"As bizarre a mystery as any which she has hitherto provided ... The stage is there set for a thrilling and puzzling story ... One worthy of the talents of Stone."--_The Boston Transcript_.

*The Conquest*

By SIDNEY L. NYBURG. $1.25 net.

"Originality and dramatic strength are marked on many pages of this production of a promising writer."--_Springfield Republican_. "Sidney L. Nyburg is a man who writes a man's book."--_San Francisco Call and Post_.

*The Strange Cases of Mason Brant*

By NEVIL MONROE HOPKINS. Illustrated in color by Gayle Hoskins. $1.25 net.

"The stories are very entertaining and are more human than the usual detective stories."--_New York Sun_. "Out of the beaten track of detective stories."--_Philadelphia North American_.

*Ten Beautiful Years*

By MARY KNIGHT POTTER. Net, $1.25.

Those who desire knowledge of the most brilliant work in American fiction should read this series of short stories on psychological subjects. They are clean but intensely emotional; most of them appeared in the _Atlantic Monthly_, _Harper's_, etc.

*The Practical Book of Early American Arts and Crafts*

By HAROLD DONALDSON EBERLEIN and ABBOT McCLURE. Profusely illustrated. Colored frontispiece. In a box. $6.00 net.

There is an eminently proper revival of interest in the arts and crafts of early American workmanship. In glass, wood, metal and textile stuffs our forefathers obtained results of a delightful nature. Amateur collectors still have a rich field of investigation, owing to the present opportunity for obtaining desirable specimens. This book is a thorough and practical guide for the collector and general reader.

*The Practical Book of Architecture*

By C. MATLACK PRICE. Profusely illustrated. In a box. $6.00 net.

Not only a book for the man or woman who wishes to build a home (and for whom it is more helpful than any work previously published), but a book which tells the general reader what he needs to know about architecture--about the buildings he sees in America or Europe, public as well as private. A valued addition to the Home Life Enrichment Series.

*The Practical Book of Period Furniture*

By HAROLD DONALDSON EBERLEIN and ABBOT McCLURE. 225 illustrations in color, doubletone and line. In a box. $6.00 net.

This book places at the disposal of the general reader all the information he may need in order to identify and classify any piece of period furniture, whether it be an original or a reproduction. The authors have greatly increased the value of the work by including an illustrative chronological key.

*The Practical Book of Oriental Rugs*

By G. GRIFFIN LEWIS. New Edition, revised and enlarged. Twenty full page illustrations in color, 93 illustrations in double-tone, and 70 designs in line. In a box. $6.00 net.

"From cover to cover it is packed with detailed information compactly and conveniently arranged for ready reference. Many people who are interested in the beautiful fabrics of which the author treats have long wished for such a book as this and will be grateful to G. Griffin Lewis for writing it."--_The Dial_.

*The Practical Book of Garden Architecture*

By PHEBE WESTCOTT HUMPHREYS. Frontispiece in color and 125 illustrations. In a box. $6.00 net.

This beautiful volume has been prepared from the standpoints of eminent practicability, the best taste, and general usefulness for the owner developing his own property,--large or small,--for the owner employing a professional garden architect, for the artist, amateur, student, and garden lover.

*The Practical Book of Outdoor Rose Growing*

By GEORGE C. THOMAS, JR. New Edition, revised and enlarged. 96 perfect photographic reproductions in full color. Slip case. $4.00 net.

There are a number of pages in which the complete list of the best roses for our climate with their characteristics are presented. One prominent rose grower said that these pages were worth their weight in gold to him. The official bulletin of the Garden Club of America said:--"It is a book one must have." It is in fact in every sense practical, stimulating, and suggestive.

*Parks: Their Design, Equipment and Use*

By GEORGE BURNAP. Official Landscape Architect, Public Buildings and Grounds, Washington, D.C. Profusely illustrated. Frontispiece in color. $6.00 net.

This, the only exhaustive book on the subject and by the foremost authority on the subject, is an amazing addition to the literature of civic planning. It is a thorough resume of the finest European and American examples of Park work. To the owner of a country estate and to all who are interested in park and playground establishment and up-keep, it will be a stimulating and trustworthy guide.

*The Book of the Peony*

By MRS. EDWARD HARDING. Twenty full page color illustrations, 25 in black and white. $5.00 net.

The glory of the illustrative work and the authoritative treatment by the author mark this book as one which will stand alone amidst the literature upon this popular flower. It is a thorough and complete guide to the culture of the peony and proves a fitting companion volume to the famous "Practical Book of Outdoor Rose Growing."

*The Civilization of Babylonia and Assyria*

By MORRIS JASTROW, JR., PH.D., LL.D. 140 illustrations. In a box. $7.00 net.

This work covers the whole civilization of Babylonia and Assyria and by its treatment of the various aspects of that civilization furnishes a comprehensive and complete survey of the subject. The language, history, religion, commerce, law, art and literature are thoroughly presented in a manner of deep interest to the general reader and indispensable to the historian, clergyman, anthropologist, and sociologist.

*Winter Journeys in the South*

By JOHN MARTIN HAMMOND. Profusely illustrated. $3.50 net.

The kingdoms of wonder for the golfer, the automobilist and almost every other type of pleasure-seeker are revealed in this book. Mr. Hammond is an enthusiastic traveller and a skilful photographer. He believes in the pleasures that may be found in America. He has wandered about the South from White Sulphur to Palm Beach; Aiken, Asheville, Charleston, New Orleans, and many other places of fascinating interest have been stopping points upon his journeyings.

*English Ancestral Homes of Noted Americans*

By ANNE HOLLINGSWORTH WHARTON. Twenty-eight illustrations. $2.00 net.

Miss Wharton so enlivens the past that she makes the distinguished characters of whom she treats live and talk with us. She has recently visited the homelands of a number of our great American leaders and we seem to see upon their native heath the English ancestors of George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, William Penn, the Pilgrim Fathers and Mothers, the Maryland and Virginia Cavaliers and others who have done their part in the making of the United States.

*Quaint and Historic Forts of North America*

By JOHN MARTIN HAMMOND. Photogravure frontispiece and sixty-five illustrations. In a box. $5.00 net.

Mr. Hammond, in his excellent literary style, with the aid of a splendid camera, brings us on a journey through the existing old forts of North America and there describes their appearances and confides to us their romantic and historic interest. We follow the trail of the early English, French and Spanish adventurers, and the soldiers of the Revolution, the War of 1812, and the later Civil and Indian Wars.

*Joseph Pennell's Pictures of the Wonder of Work*

Profusely illustrated. $2.00 net.

Mr. Pennell is notably a modern, and has found art in one of the greatest phases of modern achievement--the Wonder of Work--the building of giant ships, railway stations, and the modern skyscraper; giant manufacturing, marble-quarrying; oil-wells and wharves--all the great work which man sets his hand to do. The crisp and wonderful and inspiring touches of introduction to each picture are as illuminating as the pictures themselves.

*Nights: Rome, Venice, in the Aesthetic Eighties; Paris, London, in the Fighting Nineties.*

By ELIZABETH ROBINS PENNELL. Sixteen illustrations from photographs and etchings. $3.00 net.

The pleasure of association with equally famous literary and artistic friends has been the good fortune of the Pennells. The illustrations, photographs, and some etchings by Joseph Pennell are unusual.

*Our Philadelphia*

By ELIZABETH ROBINS PENNELL. Illustrated by Joseph Pennell, with 105 reproductions of lithographs. In a box. $7.50 net.

Joseph Pennell's Pictures of the Panama Canal

Twenty-eight reproductions of lithographs made on the Isthmus of Panama, with Mr. Pennell's Introduction giving his experiences and impressions. $1.25 net.

*Joseph Pennell's Pictures in the Land of Temples*

Forty plates in photogravure from lithographs. $1.25 net.

*Life of James McNeill Whistler*

By ELIZABETH ROBINS and JOSEPH PENNELL. Thoroughly revised Fifth Edition of the authorized Life. Ninety-seven plates reproduced from Whistler's works. Whistler binding. $4.00 net. Three-quarter grain levant. $8.50 net.

*Rings*

By GEORGE FREDERICK KUNZ, PH.D. Profusely illustrated in color and doubletone. In a box. $6.00 net.

The origin, purposes and methods of wearing, the forms and materials, the historic interest and talismanic powers of rings as they have played a part in the life and associations of man. It is an authoritative volume, magnificently illustrated.

*Shakespeare and Precious Stones*

By GEORGE FREDERICK KUNZ, PH.D. Four illustrations. $1.25 net.

Treating of all the known references to precious stones in Shakespeare's works, with comments as to the origin of his material, the knowledge of the poet concerning precious stones, and references as to where precious stones of his time came from.

*The Curious Lore of Precious Stones*

By GEORGE FREDERICK KUNZ, PH.D. Profusely illustrated in color, doubletone and line. In a box. $6.00 net.

Being a description of their sentiments and folk lore, superstitions, symbolism, mysticism, use in protection, prevention, religion and divination, crystal gazing, birth stones, lucky stones and talismans, astral, zodiacal and planetary.

*The Magic of Jewels and Charms*

By GEORGE FREDERICK KUNZ, PH.D. Profusely illustrated in color, doubletone and line. In a box. $6.00 net.

Magic jewels and electric gems; meteorites or celestial stones; stones of healing; fabulous stones; concretions and fossils; snake stones and bezoars; charms of ancient and modern times, etc.

*Open that Door!*

By R. STURGIS INGERSOLL. $1.00 net.

A stimulating volume with a "kick" upon the relation of books to life; the part great books play in our goings and comings, in the office, in the street, and in the market place. The relation of poetry to the suburbanite, etc. A book for the man who never reads and for the one who does.

*From Nature Forward*

By HARRIET DOAN PRENTISS. Limp leather binding. $2.00 net.

The public mind is unsettled; the individual lives a day-to-day existence, wrestling with disease, mental troubles and unsatisfactory issues. This book outlines a system of psychological reforms that can be followed by every man and woman, as the author says, to "buoyant physical health, release of mental tension, and enlarged and happy outlook on life."

*Peg Along*

By DR. GEORGE L. WALTON. $1.00 net.

Dr. Walton's slogan, "Why Worry," swept the country. His little book of that title did an infinite amount of good. "Peg Along" is the present slogan. Hundreds of thousands of fussers, fretters, semi- and would-be invalids, and all other halters by the wayside should be reached by Dr. Walton's stirring encouragement to "peg along."

*A Short History of the Navy*

By Captain GEORGE R. CLARK, U.S.N., Professor W. O. STEVENS, Ph.D., Instructor CARROL S. ALDEN, Ph.D., Instructor HERMAN F. KRAFFT, LL.B., of the United States Naval Academy. New Edition. Illustrated. $3.00 net.

This standard volume is used as a text at the United States Naval Academy. This edition brings the material to date and is an especially timely book.

* * * * *

*LIPPINCOTT'S TRAINING SERIES*

For Those Who Wish To Find Themselves

A series of handbooks by authorities for young men and women engaged or anticipating becoming engaged in any one of the various professions. The aim is to present the best methods of education and training, channels of advancement, etc.

*Training for the Newspaper Trade*

By DON C. SEITZ, Business Manager of the New York World. Illustrated. $1.25 net.

*Training for the Street Railway Business*

By C. B. FAIRCHILD, JR., Executive Assistant of the Philadelphia Rapid Transit Co. Illustrated. $1.25 net.

*Training for the Stage*

By ARTHUR HORNBLOW, Editor of The Theatre Magazine. Preface by DAVID BELASCO. Illustrated. $1.25 net.

*Training of a Forester*

By GIFFORD PINCHOT, New Edition, illustrated. $1.25 net.

*IN PREPARATION*

*The Training and Rewards of a Doctor*

By DR. RICHARD C. CABOT.

*The Training and Rewards of a Lawyer*

By HARLAN STONE, Dean of the Columbia Law School.

*Fundamentals of Military Service*

By CAPTAIN LINCOLN C. ANDREWS, U.S. Cavalry. Prepared under the supervision of Major-General Leonard Wood, U.S.A. Bound in limp leather. $1.50 net.

This book is especially prepared for citizens who wish in the militia, in training camps or in military courses to equip themselves thoroughly for the responsibility that may come upon them. "A really capital handbook."--_Theodore Roosevelt_. "This little handbook is one which each and everyone should read."--_General Leonard Wood_.

*Fight For Food*

By LEON A. CONGDON, Advising member of Kansas State Board Health. $1.25 net.

The high cost of living is everybody's problem. This book presents the reason and stimulating thoughts upon the solution. It treats the problem from the producer's, the middleman's and the consumer's viewpoints.

*The Rise of Rail Power in War and Conquest*

By E. A. PRATT. $2.50 net.

The basis upon which military railway transport has been organized alike in Germany, France and the United Kingdom, with a presentation of the vast importance of railway facilities in modern warfare and a thorough discussion of the subject from the standpoint of the American looking to his country's needs.

*First Aid in Emergencies*

By ELDRIDGE L. ELIASON, M.D. 106 illustrations. $1.50 net.

Nowhere will be found a better First Aid guide for the soldier, the camper, the sportsman, the teacher, scout master, and the father and mother of the family.

* * * * *

*LIPPINCOTT'S READER'S
REFERENCE LIBRARY*

Each volume: crown octavo, half morocco, gilt top.

HEROES AND HEROINES OF FICTION. Modern Prose and Poetry. By William S. Walsh. $3.00 net.

HEROES AND HEROINES OF FICTION. Classical, Mediaeval and Legendary. By William S. Walsh. $3.00 net.

HANDY-BOOK OF LITERARY CURIOSITIES. By William S. Walsh. $3.50 net.

HANDY-BOOK OF CURIOUS INFORMATION. By William S. Walsh. $3.50 net.

A DICTIONARY OF MIRACLES. By Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D. $2.50 net.

DICTIONARY OF PHRASE AND FABLE. By Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D. $1.75 net.

BENHAM'S BOOK OF QUOTATIONS. By W. Gurney Benham. $3.50 net.

THESAURUS OF ENGLISH WORDS AND PHRASES. By Peter Mark Roget, M.D., F.R.S. $2.50 net.

A DICTIONARY OF ENGLISH SYNONYMS. By Richard Soule. $2.50 net.

CHAMBERS'S CONCISE GAZETTEER OF THE WORLD. $3.00 net.

THE WRITER'S HANDBOOK. $2.50 net.

CHAMBERS'S BIOGRAPHICAL DICTIONARY. Edited by David Patrick and Francis Hindes Groome. $3.00 net.

CURIOSITIES OF POPULAR CUSTOMS. By William S. Walsh. $3.50 net.

THE HISTORIC NOTEBOOK. By Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D. $3.50 net.

THE READER'S HANDBOOK. By Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D. $3.50 net.

FACTS AND FANCIES FOR THE CURIOUS. By Charles C. Bombaugh. $3.00 net.

WORDS, FACTS AND PHRASES. By Eliezer Edwards. $2.50 net.

CHAMBERS'S TWENTIETH CENTURY DICTIONARY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. $2.00 net.