WHAT BOOKS WILL DO FOR US J. L. SPALDING Books are a world-they interest and amuse us; they speak to the mind and the heart; they divert from care and sorrow; they awaken the fancy and set the imagination afire. They take us round the globe, travel with us through every land, ready at a sign to recount the rise and fall of nations; they linger with us in quiet vales to tell the stories of happy lovers or to rechant the songs of poets. In the agora or forum they crave our silence while Demosthenes hurls his fierce invective or Cicero marshals the stately phrases of his lofty discourse. They transform ruins and make them loom before us in all their early splendor; from battlefields where waves the ripening grain, they evoke contending armies with all the pomp and circumstance of war. They bring to us, while we sit in our easy chair, before our own hearthfire, the men and women who have served and ennobled mankind, those who have made history, founded religions, framed laws, upbuilt states, created arts and sciences, taught philosophies, withstood tyrants, and endured infinitely. They are many worlds-they take us back to the paradisal home; they lead us to the promised land. At their bidding blind Homer grasps his harp and the Grecian hosts assemble on the windy plains of Troy. The unyoked steeds champ the golden grain beneath the starlit heavens. Hector falls before Achilles, and Priam kisses the hand which slew his son, making us feel that thousands of years ago, as now, love was more divine than strength, pity more godlike than power. To whatever spot on earth is memorable, books will take us. To whoever is in any way capable of human life, they bring refreshment and joy. In the endless variety of races and individuals, of tastes and opinions, they have wherewith to satisfy all. Is there a world to which poets do not offer themselves as guides? They dip their pens in the colors of the dawn and the twilight. The young hear them chant the praises of immortal love; and the strong, the all-subduing power of will; the old, the peace of restful death. They take our every mood; they laugh, they weep, they mock; and suddenly they are afire with the courage of heroes, or are rapt in ecstasy with saints and martyrs. They are the trumpeters of patriots who battle for their country, and to nursing mothers they sing low lullabies. In the presence of the tragedies which try great souls, they take us by the hand to show us that the innocent can suffer no wrong, and that a brave and loving heart is superior to whatever fate or senseless nature may inflict. They humanize all common things, entwining their tender thoughts about broken toys and vacant chairs and locks of faded hair. The bucket that hangs in the well, the deserted house, with its door ajar, the path choked with weeds, whisper to them of joys and sorrows, of effort and failure, of life and death. Whatever hope or despair, faith or doubt, love or hate, ecstasy or agony, has touched a mortal, lies in books, immortal. All that men have planned and done, all that they have dared and borne, their dreams and errors, their gropings and wanderings, their searchings for what others have found after they themselves had crumbled to dust, the miserable outcome of mighty undertakings, the vast results of insignificant beginnings, the rise of obscure tribes to world power, the sinking of great nations into nothingness, all this lies in books. They are for every age, for every type, for every mood. Courage for the great sorrows of life and patience for the small ones. And when you have laboriously accomplished your daily task, go to sleep in peace. God is awake. -VICTOR HUGO. THE BELLS EDGAR ALLAN POE I Hear the sledges with the bells- What a world of merriment their melody foretells! While the stars, that oversprinkle Keeping time, time, time, In a sort of Runic rhyme, To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells Bells, bells, bells From the jingling and the tinkling of the bells. II Hear the mellow wedding bells- What a world of happiness their harmony foretells! How they ring out their delight! From the molten-golden notes, And all in tune, What a liquid ditty floats To the turtle-dove that listens, while she gloats · On the moon! Oh, from out the sounding cells, What a gush of euphony voluminously wells! How it dwells On the Future! how it tells Of the bells, bells, bells, bells, To the rhyming and the chiming of the bells! III Hear the loud alarum bells Brazen bells! What a tale of terror, now, their turbulency tells! In the startled ear of night How they scream out their affright! Too much horrified to speak, They can only shriek, shriek, |