The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1879-06-21
Yorick's Drawer.


things seen through the distance of regret.
Few of us care to think that it is we, and
not the sky above us and the earth under
our feet, that are changed. Someone told
Yorick the other day that he didn't think
strawberries were as good as they used to be.
Now Strawberries have changed as well as
those that eat them,-but changed for the
better. Many old boys, too old to take part
in field-sports, insist that baseball is a poor
thing compared with the ''game-ball' they
played in their youth. We all know circuses
are not so good as they used to be, the pea
nuts are not so toothsome, the lemonade is
thinner, the clowns jests are really old-and
poor jests are like oysters and do not i'm
prove with age. Holidays certainly are not
what they were. The Fourth of July is a
time of noise and confusion, to be dreaded,
Fast-Day so many hours to be yawned
through, May-Day mockery. One holiday
though has become to the old a holy day
Thanksgiving-a blessed time of family re-
union, festival of the hearth stone, often
times observed with libations of tears, al
ways with invocations to the Names
These trite thoughts are suggested to Yor-
ick by the coming of the magazines AIaga-
zine-Day was red-letter day in his youth, a
movable feast, always falling however in
the last decade of the month. 1t comes
earlier now, usually between the fifteenth
and the twentieth. He looked forward to it
with impatient expectation, and if the maya
zine was delayed beyond its wonted time he
felt sure that the universe had gone wrong
and happiness fled the earth. The day has
suffered the usual fate of the priced things
of our youth. For its coming now he can
patiently wait, and is not in the least vexed
when it is overdue, though its absense
would be seriously felt Yet to this day of
June he cannot hear the announcement
''Harper's is out" without quickening of
the pulse and desire to sieze upon the buff
and bulky pamphlet.
For Harper's was the only magazine he
knew in those youthful days. He was
brought up on that. 1t was a part of his
education, and he verify believes that he
learned more from it than from any other
textbook that figured in thai limited curric-
ulum. Its coming was watc he'd for with in
tense eagerness, its contents were ravenous-
ly devoured, and then the period of impa-
tience set in again. The first twenty vol
umes of that magazine he can see now and
can see how certain papers, that strongly at
tracted his fancy, looked ON certain pages,
and where their position was. Since then
other magazines have risen, admirable mag
azines; but though his judgment may ap-
prove them as highly, they can never hold
the place in his affections Harper's did. In
deed Harper's, though so much better in all
respects than its own self, cannot, in its ma
turity command the affection he gave to it
in his and its youth.
These early pages first made Yorick ac-
quainted with Thackeray, and Dickens and
Bulwer and Lever and Charles Reade. He
can never forget that farrago of fables with
which the Newcomes opened-how it puzzled
him, howhe fastened on to the story, howfor
timehe thought Thackeray was like the needy
| knife-grinder, and how after while he got
| interested in the fortunes of Ethel and Give
and the misfortunes of that finest of all
| heroes of romance, Colonel Thomas New
come. The introduction to Dickens was
| not so fortunate 1t TOOK place IN Bleak
| House, and did little more than set him to
reading other stories by Dickens which were,
people said, and rightly said, better. But
Tom-All-Alone's is place he wants to see,
and he wants to visit an English eating
house, where the waiter will bring in pyr-
amid of dishes like that set before the young
man by the name of Guppy, and his friends.
He is firmly resolved too, that his estate
shall not go into chancery
The acquaintance of Charles Lever was
made while that merry author was masquer-
aiding as Maurice Tiernay, the Soldier of
Fortune, and Yorick believes, though the
common sentiment of mankind is against
him, that Maurice Tiernay is the best of
Levers stories. Nothing can be stronger or
more picturesque than those sketches of
the Revolution and the French army. Bull
wer's "MIy Novel; was published in the ear
lier numbers and made the readers of Har-
pers acquainted with that innocent disciple
of Machiavelli, Doctor Riccabocca lis that
the way it is spelled?) and Parson Dale, and
Burly and his whimsical pursuit of the one
eyed perch. The intercalary chapters con-
cerning the Caxtons puzzled Yorick greatly.
He didn't know the CaXtons then, and as
they got in the way of the story, just to let
the reader know it was only story, he grew
to hate the whole family, and especially the
old man who talked like the List of Words
and Phrases from Foreign Languages in the
last pages of the dictionary Charles Reade's
appearance in Harper's was in short story,
Jack AT All Trades, from which Yorick
learned that the elephant is treacherous and
the hyena cowardly-and that's about all he
remembers of it.
But the novels were scanty part of those
delightful twenty volumes. The gossipy
historical papers, like the Personal Memoirs
OF the House of Romanoff, Abbott's Palaces
and Prisons of France, Lossing's Sketches of
John Paul Jones and Anthony Wayne, ap-
pealed very strongly to a boy. They told
him so much and told it so entertainingly
that he wanted to know more. There was
a story called The Three Visitors of Bernar-
din de Saint Pierre. The visitors were Ma
poleon, Joseph, and Louis Bonaparte, and
they called to see the author of Paul ct Vir-
gtnie. Yorick knew the visitors but neither
the visited nor the book. He could not rest
until he read Paul and Virginia Another
paper was Private Life of Gabriel Honore
Riquetti, Comte de Mirabeau fortunately it
was not full account) which was liked be-
cause the name was such grand mouthful.
Abbott's Napoleon, with its multitude of
pictures, was delight. 1t made Yorick an
imperialist, and this day u! his heart of
hearts he mourns the death of Napoleon ~
as loss to France. Another feature of the
magazine was the travels. Yorick followed
with the intensest eagerness Strain in his
Darien expedition, and later in his gallop
across the Pampas. Ross Brownies charm
ing Crusoe Island he reads whenever he can
put hands on the volume containing 1t.
Porte Crayon, TOO, in the Virginia Illustrated
and other papers, notably q Viroinian Ca