The Saint Paul globe. (St. Paul, Minn.) 1896-1905, 1901-12-25

library of many families. Successive
numbers hung from string by the ch1m-
ney or ranked by years and generations
on the cupboard shelves. If much PEI
rusal is the test of literature no ancient
or modern classic could compete sue
cessfully with these mixtures of dates
and mystic hierogyphics, figures and
facts, wit and wisdom, scraps of verso
and selected prose. Their range was from
the barnyard to the stars, Rabelais to
Solomon. They brought 10 the farmer
and the fisherman. the mason and the
carpenter chips from a worldwide lit
erature. The almanac was their ency-
clopedia, gazetteer and literary store
house. Little fault was to be found with
it as far as it went.
American almanacs were purged of the
astrological nonsense which had made
foreign year books attractive since Mo-
hammed's hegira. Still there We're
things which the colonists would not
Undertake in the wane of the moon or
when the sign was below the heart. But
he would read his almanac on every day
of the year-Sundays excepted In this
he had the example of kings, queens and
courtiers whose daily companion was the
expensive calendar of Purbeck or Regio-
mortamus as far back as Columbus day
when better reading was scare and read
ers few This was not the case when, in
1725, Nathaniel Ames published his as
Economical diary, or when Franklin
brothers followed him with the Rhode
Island and Philadelphia limitations a lit
tie later Poor Richard deserves a
great praise for giving colonists a nibble
of Swift, Defoe, Steele, Bacon and others
whose entire works would have met the
fate of taxed tea 10 New England's ports
,,e,NN nit
proverbs and predictions, accustomed the
provincial taste to contemporary classics
and prepared the way for a broader cul-
tivation and more catholic literary SYM
pathies The camers nose was getting
under the tent and his body was sure to
follow, but with camel slowness When
thousands were tasting samples of re-
spectacle literature, whose total sum
was only six weeks away by trading
packet, why did invoices of books run in
titles of medieval sound far on toward
the nineteenth century? Silks and spices.
teas and wines came here in abundance;
literature was ho1nespun or worse ,.as the
inventories and book lists of the first
half of the eighteenth century show.
Accordingly the day of the small alma
nae is not to be despised. 1t was not
much in itself, but it baited a starved
people on a banquet which they had
been accustomed to regard as Belshaz-
zar's feast, if perchance they had heard
of it at all. With the coming of the
almanac then, the nope of the American
letters dawned, for the author would
write as he read. The grist that the col
onist ground was according to the grain
he put into the hopper. In the NORTH
it had been yellow maize, and white In
the South; coarse meal and hominy ~
both possibly rye and Indian at best. A
hundred years later he will buy N
raise it and make the finest -four ~
gritty polemics and strong contrOf
and crude history will be among
curiosities of his colonial life when In
American of the next century readT
worldwide literature and sells his oW
products in the markets of the worlt
But the time is not yet The year tn q
the first almanac comes out Jos
Dwight sends forth his Essay to Silei
the Cutlery Against Regular Sngln,
and Samuel Willard his Two Hundred
and Fifty Lectures on the Shorter Cate
chism," and an anonymous writer in
his Hoop Petticoats Arraigned and
Condemned by the Light of Nature and
the Law of God" John Bernard will
try to make a little sunburst with his
Adventures of Philip Ashton and AN
Account of Nicholas Merits Escape
from the Pirates" and Roger Wolcott
will perpetrate his "Poetlcal MedltatlonS
of Improvement of Some Vacant Hours.
LET us close the period by singing with
the poet one of his stanzas on A
WOUNDED Spirit Who Can Bear"
The fire within my conscience
Is grown so fervent and intense
T cannot long its force endure
But rather shall my end procure;
Grisly deaths pale image lies
On my CHASTITY piercing eyes:
Nv hands made for life's defense
Are ready to do violence
Unto my life. And lo send me hence
1tlera 70 he filled with that despair
Of which the Negotiations are
4 wounded spirit none can bear
And all must agree with this great gov
ernor of Connecticut in the middle Oh the
last century, when he concludes tnat'
These meditations are
Quite unsupportable to bear
Copyright, 1901