The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1902-01-26
SATED WITH BOOKS.
Personal Experience of One Who Has
Turned from Literature TO Life.

Resolved not to be like the unhappy young
Mr. Green who neither for love nor birch
would get his lessons, and who. therefore,
came to a very bad end l became diligent
although superficial reader of books. All
knowledge interested me and for years 1
grew as enthusiastic over metaphysics and
mathematics as over poetry and romance.
But about five years ago this habit palled
upon me. Books. instead of a delight be-
came a WEAKNESS and as a thorn in the
flesh. And now my reading is mostly con-
fined to the wild-eyed headlines of our
daily newspapers or those magazine ar
ticles that are mainly made up of pictures.
A couple of months ago L resolved TO re-
read the Waverly novels. After persistent
efforts 1 am still foundering in the first
hundred pages of RED Gauntlet"
What is the cause of this change? One
of the current incentives to studious habits
is that books are the solace and inspiration
of old age. One reason is their deteriora-
ton in quality and vast Increase in guam
tity. No mortal can possibly keep up with
our current literature except in one or per-
haps two special lines. Since January, 1900,
there has not been, 1 verify believe. a novel
or book of poems put forth which will be
quoted five years hence. The best brains
seem TO be turned now to inventions and
industrial activities. Hence each day brings
forth new wonders in wireless biography
and telephoning, gigantic ships and COM
binations of all sorts. financial and COM
mercial, new methods of transportation
and education, new styles in science, and,
not TO be left behind, new patterns-some
of them very loud-in theology and phi
losophy.
Asked hundred times, why don't you
pool your wisdom into a book?" my answer
is: ut is quite likely could We fair
average book, one which fifty years ago
would have attracted an audience. But
that is not the kind of book that is worth
writing now. Every day in the year thir-
teen such books are published. and three
times thirteen die the death of neglect Be
sides. it is the name which to-day floats the
book-not the book which floats the name.
Some of Kiplings recent volumes are the
veriest trash, but the magazine editor an
nounces that they cost him dollar line,
and so the public makes haste to buy them.
No man in the United States ever wrote
better books than the late Prof. Francis
Bowen, of Harvard, yet who can now,
twenty years after his death, recall the
title of a single one?
Fortunately my interest in books has
been superseded by another quite as fas-
clnating a study-life. For many years,
whenever 1 visited Indianapolis. my leisure
hours were spent in moping over the book
shelves of its libraries and shops. Seldom
did l leave the city without carrying away
a few unfortunates. Now those same hours
are spent in the swirls and eddies of life
which food Washington street and in
watching at such corners as the Bates
House the big, rosy, Hibernian policeman
officially taking care that nobody steps
upon nobody's toes" How fascinating the
study of these hundreds and even thou
sands of human faces and forms. OF late
all sorts and conditions of men and women
interest me. l spend the time which was
formerly given to books talking with
plumbers, railroad firemen, market garden
ers and all sorts and sizes of hand workers
The other day 1 got some most interesting
facts from a man with big pair of pinch
ers in one hand and a stove pipe in the
other l always talk to any one who will
be sociable. He who has a dumb devil
within will never entertain any angels I'M
awares. Lincoln once said; God must
love the plain people-there are so many
of them" He quantity called them his
peoples bath" Babyhood. he she, in
sexless garments, very early, and late boy
hood and girlhood, the half-grown boy OPP
Grating on a cigarette to look manly;
woman. in all her wonderful varieties;
mostly given over to bread
winning-all fascinate me. More and more
am learning the meaning of that great
scripture, $50 God made man-in. His own
image made He him; male and female
created He them. Each year / become
more and more of transcendentalist in
believing that the divine spirit planted in
the beginning in the human bosom is the
source of all truth. In other words, that
man makes his religion just he makes
his government, science, art and literature.
This, however, does not imply that in some
bosoms the spark burns brighter than in
others or that in our Savior the spark did
not become a sun.
books even for literary purposes. Life is
the fountain-books the stream; in books
we have life filtered through the brain OF
the author and with all his or her weak
nesses Invariably, except in the hands Of
a great artist, the product suffers in the
process. Occasionally, with such man as
Howels or such a woman as George Eliot,
we have an almost faultless reproduction.
But even here, in ''SilaS Lapham," the
is overdone. ThSckeray's greatest
creation is doubt Becky Sharpe. But in
real life a worldly woman-even when she
cuts loose from truth, faith and family
seldom never makes similar shipwreck.
No; life is better than books and truth
than fiction. If / only had the gift
of expression 1 could make out Of my thirty
years experience in the practice of law in
this little country city a splendid novel. 1t
would not be necessary to go beyond the
courtroom TO record all the gamut OF hu-
man experience; its comedy and tragedy,
its hopes and fears, its triumphs and its
they have actually come
under my observation.
And so the change from books to life is
not without its compensations and satisfac-
lions. If 1 can, in approaching old age,
can manage always to look out and not
within, up and not down. forward and not
1 shall grasp an invaluable
secret. MY child" saiddhe old man, you
will never see anything worse than your
own self and selfishness" And yet that
is an extreme statement. One who has
not learned the great art of being alone
and never less alone than when alone
has not got TO the bottom OF things For
all about us-above us and below us-is a
inspira ton. EhJah-so says the Hebrew
up to heaven in a chariot of
fire Unhappy the man or woman who has
not discipline enough to hitch up in a mo-
ment his or her fiery chariot and mount
the skies in a golden cloud of beautiful
thoughts and emotions He or she who can
NOT like cid Moses, meet God in the nearest
bush has not learned how TO live.
Two circumstances l count as the most
fortunate in my life-one that l passed the
daily contact with two 'full-cup" Christian
women who lived their religion. neither OF
whom had the slightest doubt of the abso-
lutte truth of every sentence OF holy writ:
and both of whom died in the enthusiastic
belief that death was a gate and not a wall
The other circumstance was that in my
sixteenth year / had read and pondered ain
Of Emerson's essays. and had learned by