Book And Heart Essays On Literature And Life - free ebook by Thomas Wentworth Higginson

Book And Heart: Essays On Literature And Life

Thomas Wentworth Higginson...

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Discontinuance Of The Guide-Board

Perhaps the last indulgence yet to be won by the writer of fiction will be that of discontinuing the time-honored institution of the guide-board. Many still expect it to stand visible on his closing pages, at least, and to be marked, when necessary, “Private way,” “Dangerous passing,” that there may be no mistake. Yet surely all tendencies now lead to the abandonment of that time-honored proclamation; and this change comes simply from the fact that fiction is drawing nearer to life. In real life

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A Keats Manuscript

“Touch it,” said Leigh Hunt when he showed Bayard Taylor a lock of brown silky hair, “And you will have touched Milton's self.”The magic of the lock of hair is akin to that recognized by nomadic and untamed races in anything that has been worn close to the person of a great or fortunate being. Mr. Leland, much reverenced by the gypsies, whose language he speaks and whose lore he knows better than they know it, had a knife about his person which was supposed by them to secure the granting of any

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A Shelley Manuscript

Were I to hear to-morrow that the main library of Harvard University, with every One of its 334,000 volumes, had been reduced to ashes, there is in my mind no question what book I should most regret. It is that unique, battered, dingy little quarto volume of Shelley's manuscript poems in his own handwriting and that of his wife First given by Miss Jane Clairmont (Shelley's “Constantia” ) to Mr. Edward A. Silsbee, and then presented by him to the library. Not only is it full of that aroma of fasc

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A World Outside Of Science

It is a commonplace saying— and I think it is Quintilian who recommends that in treating every important subject we should begin from the commonplace, though this is indeed not difficult— that we live in an age of science. We are assured without ceasing, and it is, within just limits, perfectly true, that modern science has transformed the world of thought. The world of action it has certainly transformed. Scientific mechanics are keeping pace, in the most astounding way, with abstract science;

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A Bit Of War Photography

After the applause won by Mr. Stephen Crane's Red Badge of Courage, a little reaction is not strange; and this has already taken, in some quarters, a form quite unjust and unfair. Certainly any One who spent so much as a week or Two in camp, Thirty years ago, must be struck with the extraordinary freshness and vigor of the book. No One except Tolstoi, within my knowledge, has brought out the daily life of war so well; it may be said of these sentences, in Emerson's phrase, “Cut these and they bl

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Lowell's Closing Years In Cambridge

Mr. Smalley's recent paper in Harper's Weekly on “Mr. Lowell in England” is One so thoroughly delightful and instructive that it is, perhaps, to be ranked even above the volumes of English reminiscence by the same author-volumes which Lowell was always ready to praise, and his presentation copy of which he bequeathed expressly to the Cambridge Public Library. They show, as does this magazine paper, those especial qualities of trained style which have been familiar to Americans for so many years

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“A Very Moral And Nice Book”

It was once the good-fortune of the present writer to read, in the Island of Fayal, a letter just written by a young lady of Portuguese-English birth who had been reading the New Testament for the First time. It was worth while to see such a letter, for many persons must have felt, First or last, with Thoreau, that it would be a delightful thing for any One to encounter those wonderful narratives as a fresh discovery, in maturer years, apart from all the too familiar associations of Sunday-schoo

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Local Fiction

The writer can remember when people habitually spoke of the Waverley Novels as “The Scotch novels,” and now we all speak of the Scotch novels again. It is a refreshing bit of sanity, after various literary whims and extremes, to find a bit of wholesome local life, such as Ian Maclaren gives us, holding its own month after month in popularity at the book— stalls. There has been a curious analogy in the experience of Scottish and New England fiction. Both representing a rugged soil and a severely

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The New Spelling-Book

It is said that a certain literary household was rather taken by surprise the other day at the statement of a perhaps over-vehement brother author, to the effect that “Only half-baked prigs” now use the full forms of verbal expressions-such as “I do not,” “Have we not,” and the like. All reasonable persons, according to this authority, say “Don't” and “Haven't,” and the press should follow the practice. To this anecdote the husband is said meekly to have remarked that he frequently used these ph

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Favorites Of A Day

“Criticism on English writers,” wrote Edward Fitzgerald to Mrs. Kemble, “Is likely to be more impartial across the Atlantic and not biased by clubs, coteries, etc.”True as this is, the fact must also be borne in mind that the American critic is always limited by knowing that what he writes will probably not be read in England, and therefore will not reach the persons most concerned. It is not strange if the English author judges America by his balance-sheet, since it is his only point of contact

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The Foe To Eloquence

It is a curious fact that the greatest foe to eloquence, just now, is that same enterprising daily press which at First did so much to promote it. It is not merely that the press secures a better-informed community, although this has been sometimes thought to be less favorable to good public speaking than a more ignorant body of hearers. A Southern justice of the Supreme Court once told the present writer that there could be no really good oratory in a well-educated region; it could only be deve

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The Next Step In Journalism

It is notorious that every One who does not edit a daily newspaper feels entitled to give advice to those who exercise that high function. The present writer, at any rate, has long held that a great revolution in journalism-or, at least, a great step in its evolution— must yet occur. Clearly the process of simply gathering the news, such as it is, has almost approached perfection; it seems impossible to carry it much further than the point which the metropolitan press has already attained. The n

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The Dream Of The Republic

A question has lately come up which lies behind all other matters involved in either the Venezuelan or the South African question, and upon which all sensible men and women should form an opinion. Is there, after all, any advantage in living in a republic; and is it not better, in truth, to dwell in a colony, whose final control rests in some government a few Thousand miles off, so that the colony will be well taken care of? How our grandparents or great-grandparents answered this question we kn

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A Disturbed Christmas

Once more this last Christmas-day the choirs sang of peace on earth and good— will to men. Then the guests at the Christmas dinner discussed with various. opinions the possibilities and the ethics of war. Even now it seems we are not ready to give ourselves wholly to the works of peace. How dependent is our action, and even our moral standard, upon the circumstances of the time! All agree in denouncing the Sultan and his Kurds and Bashi-Bazouks, but we forget that these hardened offenders do not

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The Cant Of Cosmopolitanism

This is the period when young people just coming out of college are receiving a good deal of advice, and giving some. As it is the period when they feel oldest for themselves, and are regarded as youngest by their elders, most of the advice is superfluous, and is pretty sure not to be heeded. They are at a time when they must learn, not by the wisdom or unwisdom of others, but by their own-and particularly by their own-blunders. They may, for instance, fall into either of Two forms of cant— that

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Anglomania And Anglophobia

It must always be borne in mind that the range of our alleged Anglomania is not very wide nor its depth very great. It touches mainly a few points of dress and social usage, sometimes caught up foolishly for imitation, but more often wisely. Yet even among the class most charged with it the costliest things, the domestic architecture, the furniture, the internal decorations of houses, are almost all brought from the continent of Europe, not from England; while we go mainly to France for pictures

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English And American Gentlemen

A report is going the rounds of the newspapers-and may, nevertheless, be true-that some Cornell University students were ruled out from rowing in the Henley regatta because they had crossed the ocean in a cattle-steamer; and had therefore earned money by the work of their hands. The college oarsmen, it was stated, “Must be gentlemen,” and no gentleman could have worked with his hands. The rumor looks a little improbable, because in Tom Brown at Rugby, written nearly half a century ago, a college

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The Future Of Polite Society

Dr. Lyman Abbott, in a late paper, thinks that polite society, in the exclusive sense, is hardly destined to sustain itself. His reason is that wealth is superseding birth as its basis. In this respect, however, his inference is doubtful, while his facts are true. He says that “Some communities, like Boston, New York, and Philadelphia, make a brave attempt to maintain a respect for old families; but this is an inheritance from colonial days, and visibly wanes.”He might have gone further and have

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The Problem Of Drudgery

It is a curious fact that, as society goes on, the very things that once stood for luxury come to be laid aside, and people revert to what is simpler. Feather-beds, for instance, were the former symbol of wealth and grandeur; the luxurious aristocrats of a former age were addressed as, “Now all you on down beds sporting,” and the like. Yet it is only the most rustic tavern that now offers One of these rather than a mattress, and only the newly arrived Irish woman who counts among her chief treas

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Classes And Masses

When we read in the newspapers of balloon-flying or horseless vehicles, it hardly comes home to us that impending changes in human invention may transform our lives anew and make these days of bicycles and electric trains seem very far away. The most impressive thought inspired by the great Columbian Exposition was the reflection that the vast Machinery Hall, if locked up for Fifty years, might be valued only as a museum of antiquities. Men always feel for a time that the inscription Ne Plus Ult

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International Marriages

What are called by the high-sounding name of “International marriages” not only serve as material for gossip in our vast and hungry newspaper press, but also for matter of thought to those who study social tendencies. The thoughts they suggest lie in the same direction with those aroused whenever a rich American buys a castle in Europe, or even leases a shooting preserve in Scotland. All these are chiefly interesting because they bear on the problem of the position and prospects of wealth in a r

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More Mingled Races

When we see in New York city a group of stolid Russian Jews just landed, or notice a newly arrived party of gayly attired Italian women who are being conducted behind a shed by their friends that they may exchange their picturesque attire for Second-hand American gowns, we are apt to be thankful that we are not such as they. Or when we hear of an arrival of Finnish stone-cutters at Gloucester, Massachusetts, or of Armenian iron-workers at Worcester, we reflect that the landing of the Pilgrims of

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The Alphabet As A Barrier

There lies before me a document more than Two centuries old, signed by the daughter of a Puritan clergyman, a woman who was also a minister's wife. She had what Dr. Holmes called Brahmin blood, for she probably descended, in the Sixth generation, from the sister of Chaucer the poet, an ancestress described in the English family tree as “Caterina, soror Galfridi Chaucer, celeberrimi poetae Anglicani.”This descendant of Caterina lived in Salem, Massachusetts, during the witch period; and it is on

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On The Natural Disapproval Of Wealth

There is a natural feeling of distrust and even disapproval of wealth, especially on the part of those who have never possessed it. It is natural also that this should be a sliding scale, and that each person should regard the next largest tax-payer as too rich. Thirty years ago, at the sea-side resort called Pigeon Cove, or Cape Ann, there was a village wit known habitually as Old Knowlton, a retired fisherman, who delighted to corner in argument a set of eminent clergymen who then resorted the

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The Complaint Of The Poor

It is impossible for a prosperous and comfortable person to understand the point of view of the dissatisfied-whether in the case of the ordinary socialist or of Mr. Howells-without keeping in mind such facts as the following, which the writer happens to know pretty directly: A poor cobbler was troubled, as many men are, with an insatiable love of mechanical invention; and this was finally concentrated on a mechanism for “Tying and binding” in connection with a “Reaper.”It was for a need then ver

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Summer People And County People

In that very interesting book The English Peasant, by Richard Heath, the author chooses as his starting-point the Fourteenth century, and calls his Second chapter “In worse than Egyptian bondage.”He selects, as the crowning instance of the social extremes of that period, the account given by the old historian Holinshed of the Earl of Leicester's expenses in 1313. This earl, it seems, spent on “His family and people” an amount equal to the wages of 1825 laborers. But in a newspaper statement abou

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The Antidote To Money

One can hardly read the letters from Europe describing fashionable society without discovering that it is perfectly possible for Americans, even those who have been regarded at home as rather vulgar and pushing, to get at least far enough in the English circles of fashion to see and describe the grandest functions. How the knowledge is obtained is not the question. Like the snubbed man of the world in the inimitable Dolly Dialogues, these witnesses may at least claim that if they do not meet Lor

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The Really Interesting People

A newly arrived English authoress, sitting beside an American author at the dinner-table a few years since, looked up and said to him with the cheerful frankness of her nation, “Isn't it a pity, don't you think, that all the really interesting Americans are dead?”It was not, perhaps, a very encouraging inducement for a surviving American to make himself interesting; and probably the talk which followed became a series of obituaries. As a matter of fact, it always seems as if the interesting peop

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Acts Of Homage

The members of that highly respectable semi-military association, “The ancient and Honorable artillery company” of Boston, will probably be rather amused— if their arduous military and civic duties permit any moments of levity— to hear that their pleasant little London outing was regarded by high editorial authority in that city as an act of international “Homage.”In the narrative written, apparently by One of the corps, in a Boston newspaper, Her Majesty the Queen was described as “A pleasant-f

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Our Criticism Of Foreign Visitors

Few things seem more unreasonable than the demand we habitually make on foreign visitors that they should know something of American geography, because we know something of European geography. It seems unreasonable that we should even be surprised that they expect, as they often do, to see the Rocky Mountains from New York Harbor. It is as if a son who has removed far from his old home should expect his father to find his way about a newly built house in Omaha, merely because he himself remember

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The Prejudice In Favor Of Retiracy

Miss Alcott, when serving as nurse in a soldiers' hospital, justified her demand of a small curtain for her chamber window on the fact of “The female mind having a prejudice in favor of retiracy during the nightcapped periods of existence.”But the truth is that if people could only be induced to believe it, such a prejudice exists not only for women, but for many men also, and during much more extended periods. An able Western critic, a lady, writes in despair that of Three different poets of he

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The Disappearance Of Ennui

The Rev. Dr. Prince, of Salem, Massachusetts, who had a vein of old-fashioned eccentricity, used to include among his Sunday petitions the request that “All vacant young ministers might be provided with parishes.”The prayer was in many cases heeded, and it is so, as we know, too frequently to this day; but times have changed, and youthful divines of this class are now punished with vacant pews. More solicitude is now found for the vacant young women, who are, the newspapers constantly tell us, r

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The Test Of Talk

We are all unconsciously testing ourselves, all the time, for the information of those around us, and One of the most familiar tests is that of talk. Emerson says that every man reveals himself at every moment; it is he himself, and nobody else, who assigns his position. After spending an hour in the dark with a stranger, we can classify him pretty surely as to education, antecedents, and the like, unless he has had the wit to hold his tongue. In that case he is inscrutable. In Coleridge's well-

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Overclubbableness

The word Clubbable has come slowly into the dictionaries, though it originated with the prince of lexicographers, Dr. Samuel Johnson. Surely a word will soon be necessary to represent the higher degrees of Clubbableness, so rapid is the growth, for both sexes, of this joint form of existence or action. Chinese and Japanese have their secret societies, and a net-work of these formed itself during the later Middle Ages in Europe; but never yet, and nowhere, probably, have quiet and respectable cit

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Living By The Church

The clown in “Twelfth night” tells Viola that he lives by the church, and adds by way of explanation that he lives at his house, and his house doth stand by the church. The present writer has a similar juxtaposition, and finds it in many ways advantageous. My roses and lilies in the garden-bed are safer than if they stood next to the police-office; and when on One occasion Two boys in the street had insulted some ladies, I collared One of them— the other running away— and took him before my reve

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