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<h2>SHELF CULTURE</h2> <div class="figlefta" style="width: 20%;"> <ANTIMG src="images/i_021.png" width-obs="100%" alt="A" /></div> A man of education and refinement like you needs books befitting your culture—your place in the world," said my visitor. He spoke as though he were a revered friend of the family. But actually he was not just that. I had never seen him before. He was honoring me with a call at my room on Freshman Row. I had come to college to get in touch with Belles-Lettres, and, lo, Belles-Lettres were seeking me out! Recognition had come far sooner than I had hoped. To appreciate what I felt, you must know[Pg 22] that Belles-Lettres' ambassador was no ordinary person. He had the clothes of a clubman, the benignity of a clergyman, and the dignity of an undertaker. There was scholarliness in the droop of the pinch glasses on his aquiline nose and as he talked he kept lifting his curiously arched eyebrows in a manner that fascinated the beholder. From the subject of my culture in its broader aspects he progressed by easy gradations to my culture in its relation to the works of Hawthorne and Irving, the two authors indispensable to a man of discerning taste, the authors whose writings constituted the logical nucleus of the well-bred student's library. He was happy to be able to tell me of the rare opportunity that now lay in my grasp of acquiring the immortal and exhilarating works of both these masters at one and the same time—in one and the same set. The urgency of my need for Hawthorne and Irving being thus established beyond the shadow of a hesitance, the only thing for me to decide fairly and squarely was whether they should come to me in blue half-morocco or in[Pg 23] red buckram. The splendid showing that either set would make in my bookcase was attested by the accordion-plaited binding sample which at the proper moment he produced and unfolded. Nearly a yard of titled book-backs! I signed on the dotted line and accepted his congratulations, while he accepted my two dollar deposit. About a week later the box arrived. Eagerly I lifted forth the magic volumes which were to put me on a new intellectual plane. Somehow the bindings seemed to need breaking in. They creaked and cracked at the hinges and the pages clung together in little groups clannishly. The gluing of the backs was queer, yet casual. The "hand" that had tinted the "elegant colored frontispieces" was evidently a heavy one. No matter: Hawthorne and Irving were mine. I had been taken into the higher circles of culture. That very evening I plunged into "Mosses from an Old Manse". I stuck at it. Each day I balanced my morning's Shredded Wheat[Pg 24] with Hawthorne Mosses at night, till the entire volume had been systematically consumed. Then, having created my new literary universe, I rested. Today no one can stump me on Mosses. Mention the Old Manse to me and my whole manner changes. My face lights up with intelligence. My eyes sparkle. My nostrils dilate like those of an old fire engine horse at the clang of an alarm gong. Yes, right this minute I can give you moss for moss. If only I had gone on and read all the other volumes of the set.... Who knows? I might now be dean of a college or a second Dr. Frank Crane. Alas, I continued to rest on my Mosses, arguing sophistically with my conscience that these books, the nucleus of my ultimate library, were precious possessions not necessarily for immediate perusal. Time-defying classics like Hawthorne and Irving would keep and be equally enjoyable years hence, if not more so; in fact, it would be almost extravagant to use them all up in the beginning. So it was tacitly decided that we three—Nathaniel, Washington, and I (the first two[Pg 25] in red buckram, the latter in invisible yet palpable Freshman green)—should grow old together. The fourth member of our little group, he who had introduced us, had dropped out. I neither saw nor heard from him again. It would seem that he worked like lightning, striking in the same place only once. Not so his firm, however. They struck me by mail each month with awful iteration. But before a year had passed there descended upon me another emissary of intellectualism. This personage expounded to me the doctrine of the De Luxe. I learned that an edition of any author, no matter how reputable that author may be, was mere dross if published for the public at large. Only as a subscriber, possessing a numbered set of a limited edition, could one obtain the quintessence of literature. Fiat de lux. Let there be e-lite. The fact that this prophet of almost-vellum exclusiveness was physically a fat and florid Irishman whom a wiser man than I might have mistaken for a saloon keeper in his Sunday clothes, did not hamper his spirit. Enthrallingly[Pg 26] yet confidentially he discoursed on Selected Literature for the Serene Few. I could be one of those Serene Few. I could. I did. I signed. In his display room, to which this rotund spider lured me, I examined, enraptured, sets of all the leading de luxe writers. There was Pepys with pasted labels, Smollett and Fielding with special illustrations, twelve volumes of the World's Best Oratory, a bobtailed set of Stevenson, the inevitable Plutarch in fool morocco that was very like shellacked paper, and many more. But the magnum opus of them all was a green buckram affair in thirty tall tomes calling itself "The Bibliophile Library of Literature, Art and Rare Manuscripts". To emphasize the word Art in the title there was, as an adjunct, a three-foot portfolio of reproductions from paintings. Here was something that cast Hawthorne and Irving into the shade. It was world-wide, wonderful. (Later I came to know it as the "Hash"!) As in a trance, I said yes to the "Bibliophile Library," to the Great Orations, to the much-shorter R. L. S. Later I took on a few more. [Pg 27] My finances grew groggy. Indeed, Europe's difficulties over paying her war indebtedness are as naught in comparison. Then at last the miracle happened: the book concern mislaid their record of my indiscretions—and all scowls ceased. For three years. Then rediscovery. Collectors, collectors, collectors—not the sort that A. Edward Newton writes about. They came faster than I could insult them. Litigation. Cash compromise. Formal return of books. Such is the story of "My Life With Great Authors; or, The Horrors of Dunning Street". But I shall not allow it to "take its place among the successful biographies and intimate journals of the season". Distinctly not. It is for the élite alone. It is to be published on sugar-cured oilskin, the edition to be limited to two numbered copies—one for me and one for the ashcan. <hr class="chap" /> [Pg 28] <div class="figcenter"> <ANTIMG src="images/i_028.png" width-obs="400" alt="Man searching his pockets" /></div> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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