American nights entertainment
Louis Stevenson: A Critical Study_. The interest is literary rather
than biographical.
_Tennyson: A Modern Portrait_, by HUGH I’ANSON FAUSSET. Both literary
and biographical in its interest. Richard Le Gallienne, in the New York
Times, says: “The manner of this portrait is very attractive. Biography
and criticism are artfully and suggestively blended, and the influence
of Tennyson’s environment throughout his life on the development of his
character and his poetry is vividly and for the most part convincingly
illuminated.”
_The Life of William Hazlitt_, by P. P. HOWE. The only biography we
have of a remarkable literary figure.
_Victor Hugo: His Work and Love_, by ANDREW C. P. HAGGARD. A new
account. The romantic element in Hugo’s life is emphasised, although
not unduly.
_Embassies I Have Known_, by WALBURGA, LADY
PAGET. The English, German and Austrian Courts in the last half-century.
Two Books About English Seats.
_Knole and the Sackvilles_, by V. SACKVILLE-WEST. See Chapter 6.
_Earlham_, by PERCY LUBBOCK.
_9. Alice in Authorland and Penrod’s Five-Foot Shelf_
Alice in Authorland.
Stuff and nonsense!” said Alice, to the White Queen, flinging the book
on the floor.
“Exactly,” the White Queen replied.
“Haven’t you anything a self-respecting person can read?” Alice
inquired.
“A self-respecting person,” answered the White Queen, “would not ask
such a silly question. She would accompany me into Authorland and make
the acquaintance of the people there and learn to find her way about.
Instead,” added the White Queen, cuttingly, “instead of bothering me. I
am very busy.”
“Well, if you’re very busy, you won’t want to take me with you and
introduce me to all those people,” Alice observed, a trifle sulkily.
“Of course I will!” The White Queen spoke with annoyance but also
with cheerfulness, for she prided herself on seldom being one-sided.
“I am never too busy to loiter. And let me tell you that when _you_
become too busy to loiter you will find everyone else too lazy to live
with--and then what will you do?”
Alice admitted she didn’t know. The White Queen was in a great hurry
because, as she said, once in Authorland it would only be possible to
make haste slowly. They looked up the timetable and found any number of
editions just leaving. As they were entering a compartment the guard
came along, crying: “Here! You can’t go in there! That’s reserved for
fairies”--but a very pleasant-looking woman who was already seated
inside stuck out her head and said: “Oh, do let the little girl come
in. Besides, she’s with the White Queen, who may ride anywhere.” So the
guard let them in, with a good deal of grumbling, slammed the door and
blew his whistle and they were off. The pleasant-faced woman smiled at
Alice, and Alice took courage to ask:
“Are you a fairy, then?”
“No, my dear, but I write about them. It’s more fun than being one,
really. My name is Rose Fyleman and I live part of the time in London
and part of it in Fairy Hills--that’s the nice residence section of
Authorland, you know.”
“What are your books, please?” Alice asked, primly.
“Oh, there’s _Rose Fyleman’s Fairy Book_, and _The Fairy Flute_, and
_The Fairy Green_ and _Fairies and Chimneys_--all poems--and _The
Rainbow Cat_, whom I knew very well and admired no end. He used to walk
about the Child’s Garden of Verse--that’s the little village green with
flower-beds in Fairy Hills.”
Rose Fyleman lent Alice some of her books to read on the train. The
White Queen slept in a corner, but finally sprang up, crying: “We’re
here, we’re here!”
“But the train isn’t stopping,” protested Alice. Rose Fyleman and the
White Queen laughed. “Silly,” said the White Queen, “it isn’t a train,
it’s an edition, and editions never stop in Authorland. You just jump
off anywhere.” And with that she jumped. So did Rose Fyleman, pausing
to say: “You won’t mind it. Landing in a heap of books is such fun.”
Alice finally summoned her courage and jumped, too. A man six feet tall
and over caught her nicely and set her down right side up. Then he very
politely introduced himself. He was Frederick Arnold Kummer, he said,
and it was his business to catch girls and boys and set them down right
side up. “With care,” he added.
Alice thanked him and took the two books he handed her, _The First Days
of Man_ and another called _The First Days of Knowledge_. “You won’t
need these here,” he explained, “but you’ll find them very useful and
probably interesting and maybe exciting when you go back.”
There was no trace of the White Queen, so Alice went down the
road, picking her way among the books planted everywhere, until a
white-haired and smiling old lady sent out her boy, Nils, to show her
the way about. Nils said the white-haired woman was Selma Lagerlöf, and
she had written for him two sets of wonderful adventures. He had been a
rather bad boy and Selma Lagerlöf had turned him into an elf and later
had sent him through animal land. “I’ll give you the books,” said Nils,
picking out a couple that stood between two book ends at corners of
the road. “Here they are--_The Wonderful Adventures of Nils_ and _The
Further Adventures of Nils_.”
Alice thought she should like to go back and talk with Selma Lagerlöf,
whose smile had seemed mysterious and wonderful, but Nils was bent on
showing her the animals. Of these there were quantities, and Nils knew
them all, it appeared, and their owners.
“That there’s Brer Rabbit,” he was beginning, when Alice interrupted
to say, “You can’t say ‘that there.’” “Yes, I can,” he retorted, “I’ve
just said it.” Alice saw he was hopeless, like all boys, and paid no
further attention to his grammar, while Nils discussed the creatures,
both wild and tame, all about. Some grazed peacefully, some were
frisking and playing, and a few gyred and gimbled in the wabe like
the slithy toves Alice had heard her friend, Mr. Lewis Carroll, tell
about. Brer Rabbit didn’t in the least resemble the White Rabbit, being
brown in colour and having no vest pocket with a watch and chain. Uncle
Remus and Uncle Remus’s friend, Joel Chandler Harris, kept tabs on
Brer Rabbit. Forrestine C. Hooker was feeding lumps of sugar to the
Comanche pony named Star that she has written about in _Star: The Story
of an Indian Pony_, and Prince Jan, the St. Bernard of her other book,
stood gravely by her. Ernest Thompson Seton, looking more wild than his
wildest animals, was racing about, trying to keep track of his grey
squirrel, Bannertail, of Krag and Randy and Johnny Bear and Chink, of
Lobo, Rag and Vixen, and especially of the Sandhill Stag. “It’s the
hardest work,” he assured Alice, stopping for a moment to subdue his
hair and wipe his forehead, “to observe all their habits. I simply
couldn’t ever do it if I didn’t have wide margins in my books and
make a little drawing whenever I noted a new habit. Bad habits in the
lefthand margins, good habits in the righthand margins.” “But,” said
Alice, wonderingly, “the drawings all look alike to me.” “You might as
well say all animals look alike to you,” said Mr. Seton, impatiently.
“But they don’t know good and bad, though; all they know is habits.
Now, if children only had habits they would be as interesting as
animals.” “I’m sure I don’t know,” answered Alice, doubtfully.
Nils had disappeared and the White Queen was nowhere in sight, either.
“It’s a strange place,” thought Alice. “It is, indeed,” said a man who
was busy painting magnificent pictures in most glowing colours. “It’s
strange because no one ever stays long enough to bore you.” “Oh, is
that it?” Alice answered. But she was really much impressed. She looked
at the gorgeous paintings, each signed “N. C. Wyeth” and each outdoing
the one before. She thought with secret ecstasy: “I’m only going
to have books with his pictures in them.” Mr. Wyeth, who seemed to
understand her thought, said out loud: “You’ll find others--Kay Nielsen
and Arthur Rackham and Edmund Dulac and Noel Pocock.” Alice said, “Yes,
no doubt,” but in her own mind she decided it must be because he was as
modest as he was wonderful.
“Do you like boys’ stories?” asked a boy much older than Nils, who had
come up suddenly. “Of course!” Alice responded. She looked at him
more closely. “Why you must be the boy in _High Benton_, aren’t you?”
He grinned. “I guess I am. I was only going to say, if you like boys’
stories--and all the girls I know do--my friend, William Heyliger, has
written a new one, _The Spirit of the Leader_. It’s stuff like _High
Benton_, a high school story. Great!” Alice was about to ask him for
the book when all the editions began running past so rapidly that she
became dizzy and screamed and shut her eyes. When she opened them a
moment later, Authorland had vanished and she was back at her starting
place and the White Queen was asking with sharpness:
“Have you been all this time deciding on something to read? You have to
read, you know, in order to grow up; and at this rate you’ll never grow
up at all!”
Penrod’s Five-Foot Shelf.
Feeling the need of solitude, Penrod Schofield moved slowly toward the
barn. As he walked he kicked desultorily at such objects, animate and
inanimate, as obtruded themselves in his path--the round top of the
water cutoff in the lawn, on which he had broken the blades of the
lawn mower last Saturday; a bag of clothes pins reposing harmlessly
on its side, and the white cat, Sherlock Holmes. “Ole cat!” Sherlock,
untarnished by the hostile toe, trotted off complacently. Creatures
like Penrod were little in the life of one who had been victor over the
hound of the neighbouring Baskervilles.
Choosing Entrance Two, the youth ascended to Apartment B-3 of the barn,
a second-story location offering an outside window with no bath but
with proper seclusion. Here on a conscientiously measured shelf of his
own manufacture was the beginning of the Penrod Schofield Library.
The shelf, constructed in his leisure hours, was exactly five feet in
length, a noted educator having assured Penrod and others, through the
medium of many full-page advertisements, that the books on a five-foot
shelf could furnish the equivalent of a college education. With a
passion for exactitude, and in pursuance of a further condition, Penrod
was devoting to the books on his five-foot shelf a requisite fifteen
minutes a day.
“Five feet divided by fifteen minutes a day makes--makes----.” The
youth struggled for a while with this intricate problem in arithmetic,
at length muttering: “I know. Y’ count the pages, and then divide
by fifteen; no, by the number of pages y’ c’n read in fifteen
minutes;--no, that ain’t right either, is it?” There was no answer;
there would be none if he looked in the back of one of the books,
either; and for a while Penrod had a doubt whether, on looking in the
back of the noted educator’s head, any answer would be found there. He
did not understand how the educator could possibly be right, nohow, for
of course the first and indispensable item for any book shelf was the
complete works of G. A. Henty. He ran his eye along these:
_Bravest of the Brave; or, With Peterborough in Spain_
_By Sheer Pluck: A Tale of the Ashanti War_
_With Clive in India; or, The Beginnings of an Empire_
Few, but still a beginning. A catalogue recently procured assured him
that there were at least thirty-five more that he should possess.
Allowing an inch per volume, which he had found necessary, fully three
feet of the five must be reserved for the author of _By Pike and Dyke:
A Tale of the Rise of the Dutch Republic_ and other classical studies
in the historical field. Still, the two feet remaining gave probable
space for a coupla dozen lesser masterpieces. He examined the volumes
already in place: