If his art served no other
purpose, his friend would be grateful to him for that alone, for many
great days would have gone without their 'white stone' but for him;
when, for instance, J.A.W. took that brave plunge of his, which has
since so abundantly justified him and more than fulfilled prophecy; or
when Samuel Dale took that bolder, namely a wife, he being a
philosopher--incidents, Reader, on which I long so to digress, and for
which, if you could only know beforehand, you would, I am sure, give me
freest hand. But beautiful stories both, I may not tell of you here;
though if the Reader and I ever spend together those hinted nights at
the 'Mermaid,' I then may.
But to return. I said above that if I were to enumerate all the books,
so to say, 'implicated' in the love of Narcissus and his Thirteenth
Maid, I should have to catalogue quite a small library. I forgot for the
moment what literal truth I was writing, for it was indeed in quite a
large library that they first met. In 'our town' there is, Reader, an
old-world institution, which, I think, you would well like transported
to yours, a quaint subscription library 'established' ever so long ago,
full of wonderful nooks and corners, where (of course, if you are a
member) one is sure almost at any time of the day of a solitary corner
for a dream. It is a sweet provision, too, that it is managed by ladies,
whom you may, if you can, image to yourself as the Hesperides; for there
are three of them; and may not the innumerable galleries and spiral
staircases, serried with countless shelves, clustered thick with tome on
tome, figure the great tree, with its many branches and its wonderful
gold fruit--the tree of knowledge? The absence of the dragon from the
similitude is as well, don't you think?
Books, of all things, should be tended by reverent hands; and, to my
mind, the perfunctory in things ecclesiastical is hardly more
distressing than the service of books as conducted in many great
libraries.
Pages:
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102