Delaware gazette and state journal. (Wilmington, Del.) 1883-1902, 1898-01-20
NEW-CENTURY CLuR.

York, an editor of The Outlook, adj o
dressed large audience Monday even Fl
ing in the New Century Club drawing
room on Literature an Personal
Resource. In response 10 the gracious
and tiattering introduction given by
tho president he quoted Mr.. Howe!s,
who said, Men and women who intro
duce you always say ths things you be-
lieve about yourself" He said Books {
otfar 20 many attractive fields in which
to wander one hardly knows by which &
gate to enter. They give more than
enlightened entertainment and in.
struetion. Ii We are asked, what is
the greatest single thing that man has
madei" We may think of the pyramids,
OF Brooklyn Briuge, or Westminster
Abbey, but the most wonderful thing,
a little book. volume of Hamlet or
Lear, one can carry in hia pocket
Language is the must supreme thing
man has made; by it is registered all
that man has done What is it that
makes book live? One thinks it lives
through its power and beauty. But
there is something greater than power
and beauty. In great library
visited were rows upon rows OF hooks.
the literature of the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuresthe literature Of
the school men. OF all literary men,
mono 81 earnest, none knew so surely
what Milton meant by "Ihey scurned
delights and lived laborious days. T"
Yet only two or three Of the names OF
these old writer's and thinkers would |
be- recognized it | mentioned them. |
But among them l fonud littla |
duodecimo, piece of Immortality that |
has been translated into every modern |
language, THE Imitation Of Christ, "
L.. s. /. a 1. -
this little book is alive ami great books |
Of scholarship and knowledge, like
great ships of state, lie Htranusd2 But
this little book Is part of mans soul.
Because mans life once beat IN it.
1t will live. Nothing lives but life.
nothing transmits itself but lile The
supreme thing in books is life. Genius
is only heightened vitality.
Our spiritual as we'll as physical life
come flooding down from the past
What transmission there was from
the old books Of the Greeks and Latns,
from tho great literature of the past to
the open minds Of the present. Petrarch
opened Virgil and found he was not
dealing with formal aoademician but
with a life-like man. When they spoke
again to Europe there was a wonderful
pushing back of the horizon. Europe
opened its eyes and began to see the
world.
Of late we have had the Scots very
much with us. DIR. johnson said
''Something could be done with
Scotuhman if you caught him early.
For generation after generation there
has been Scotchman touched with
genius, who has spoken words tipped
with fire. Something in the soil has
produced them. In the land hemmed
in by the gray ocsans, nverhung by
mists. fountains of song and story have
flowed as nowhere else. The man OF
genius III never an accident, but the
creation of people about him. Barrie
and Stevenson, Carlyle Scott and
Burns these have known how to open
tho deeps OF life, have conyersed in the
inner speseh which makes us glow.
They are all poets up there. One
morning as the dawn flushed over the
hills of Skye an old man was standing
with head bowed. bonnet In hand.
Are you praying?" he was asked.
No. have come out here every morn
ing for 30 years and taken off my
bonnet to the beauty of the world
Something stirred the imagination OF
the Scotch of all Periods ana believe
it was the transmission of the unsur-
passed literature OF the old and new
Testaments into their hearts that has
fired the imagination and touched
them with imperIshable fire.
The man of genius 10 the man who
stands closest to his kind he has many
ties to bis race. Shakespeare may sur
prise lis with the beauty of his phrases.
but never with his thoughts for he
tells US what We think. If he had only
stood out of the way we might have
said what he said, but the third. rate
Il
constantly wrought in individuals.
When you read tho lives OF great men
you learn how one day they opened a
book and the gatea OF life we're opened
to them, and each received the message
that made his mind clear to him.
Samuel johnson pulled down volume
of Petrarch and passed through a
Roman arch into the possession oil
literature. Hazlitt walked ten miles
TO visit Coleridge, whose talk opened
TO him the larger world. He went hume
by the same ROAD, yet through new
world The stars never hung so low OF
shone so lustroua Goethe at 81 reaG
some plays from Shakespeare. ii;
''felt as if ne had been turning thu
book Of fate with the hurricane of life
tossing it's leaves TO and fro" Homer
and Dante and Shakespeare put thei
ear to the earth and heard the marcel
OF the generations.
What We lose earliest 10 life is tina
precious thing, freshness of feeling
Great men ana women never grow OLD
nothing can exhaust their power
being Interested in life, of keeping il
fresh touch with the wide range o
human interests. Goethe at So looked
with as keen an interest as ever at life
nothing seems able to exhaust Glad
stones vitality. Oliver Wendell Holme
seemed to have imperishable youth an
Lowell said when he passed a HON
for lncurable Children, Z" 81 expec
they will take me there some day.
Why should We sit idle when the Joy {
life is in breasting the storm if one
man enough to stand its blasts? If
had my way would force every one I
read Homer through every year. II
is the greatest of antisepticH One hE
heen forced TO read SO many introspet
tive. analytical. psychological novel;
We have had humanity laid bare to IL
last nerve. We need health, moral an
physical. Homer may be somawh
brutal. One father objected to his &C
reading him; he said some of b
heroes were no better than John
Sullivan. There may be manly wicker
ness. hut no sort of morbidness Fro
the Odyssey wholesome boy can e
no evil, but an immense amount
good. Everything happens in it whit
tends to MAKE man and not softlin