The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac | Page 8

all other women speaketh by
that action the best and highest praise both of his own sex and of hers.

I thank God continually that it hath been my lot in life to found an
empire in my heart --no cramped and wizened borough wherein one
jealous mistress hath exercised her petty tyranny, but an expansive and
ever-widening continent divided and subdivided into dominions,
jurisdictions, caliphates, chiefdoms, seneschalships, and prefectures,
wherein tetrarchs, burgraves, maharajahs, palatines, seigniors, caziques,
nabobs, emirs, nizams, and nawabs hold sway, each over his special
and particular realm, and all bound together in harmonious cooperation
by the conciliating spirit of polybibliophily!
Let me not be misunderstood; for I am not a woman-hater. I do not
regret the acquaintances--nay, the friendships--I have formed with
individuals of the other sex. As a philosopher it has behooved me to
study womankind, else I should not have appreciated the worth of these
other better loves. Moreover, I take pleasure in my age in associating
this precious volume or that with one woman or another whose
friendship came into my life at the time when I was reading and loved
that book.
The other day I found my nephew William swinging in the hammock
on the porch with his girl friend Celia; I saw that the young people
were reading Ovid. ``My children,'' said I, ``count this day a happy one.
In the years of after life neither of you will speak or think of Ovid and
his tender verses without recalling at the same moment how of a
gracious afternoon in distant time you sat side by side contemplating
the ineffably precious promises of maturity and love.''
I am not sure that I do not approve that article in Judge Methuen's creed
which insists that in this life of ours woman serves a probationary
period for sins of omission or of commission in a previous existence,
and that woman's next step upward toward the final eternity of bliss is a
period of longer or of shorter duration, in which her soul enters into a
book to be petted, fondled, beloved and cherished by some good
man--like the Judge, or like myself, for that matter.
This theory is not an unpleasant one; I regard it as much more
acceptable than those so-called scientific demonstrations which would
make us suppose that we are descended from tree-climbing and
bug-eating simians. However, it is far from my purpose to enter upon
any argument of these questions at this time, for Judge Methuen
himself is going to write a book upon the subject, and the edition is to

be limited to two numbered and signed copies upon Japanese vellum,
of which I am to have one and the Judge the other.
The impression I made upon Uncle Cephas must have been favorable,
for when my next birthday rolled around there came with it a book
from Uncle Cephas--my third love, Grimm's ``Household Stories.''
With the perusal of this monumental work was born that passion for
fairy tales and folklore which increased rather than diminished with my
maturer years. Even at the present time I delight in a good fairy story,
and I am grateful to Lang and to Jacobs for the benefit they have
conferred upon me and the rest of English-reading humanity through
the medium of the fairy books and the folk tales they have translated
and compiled. Baring-Gould and Lady Wilde have done noble work in
the same realm; the writings of the former have interested me
particularly, for together with profound learning in directions which are
specially pleasing to me, Baring-Gould has a distinct literary touch
which invests his work with a grace indefinable but delicious and
persuasive.
I am so great a lover of and believer in fairy tales that I once organized
a society for the dissemination of fairy literature, and at the first
meeting of this society we resolved to demand of the board of
education to drop mathematics from the curriculum in the public
schools and to substitute therefor a four years' course in fairy literature,
to be followed, if the pupil desired, by a post-graduate course in
demonology and folk-lore. We hired and fitted up large rooms, and the
cause seemed to be flourishing until the second month's rent fell due. It
was then discovered that the treasury was empty; and with this
discovery the society ended its existence, without having accomplished
any tangible result other than the purchase of a number of sofas and
chairs, for which Judge Methuen and I had to pay.
Still, I am of the opinion (and Judge Methuen indorses it) that we need
in this country of ours just that influence which the fairy tale exerts. We
are becoming too practical; the lust for material gain is throttling every
other consideration. Our babes and