572 APPENDIX F 



"David Harum," "The Crisis," "The Silent Places," "Marse Chan," 

 "Soapy Sponge's Sporting Tour," "All on the Irish Shore," "The Blazed 

 Trail," "Stratagems and Spoils," "Knights in Fustian," "Selma," 

 "The Taskmasters," Edith Wyatt's "Every Man to His Humor," the 

 novels and stories of Octave Thanet I wish I could remember more of 

 them, for personally I have certainly profited as much by reading really 

 good and interesting novels and stories as by reading anything else, 

 and from the contemporary ones I have often reached, as in no other way 

 I could have reached, an understanding of how real people feel in certain 

 country districts, and in certain regions of great cities like Chicago and 

 New York. 



Of course I also generally take out some of the novels of those great 

 writers of the past whom one can read over and over again; and occasion- 

 ally one by some writer who was not great like "The Semi-attached 

 Couple," a charming little early-Victorian or pre-Victorian tale which 

 I suppose other people cannot like as I do, or else it would be reprinted. 



Above all, let me insist that the books which I have taken were and 

 could only be a tiny fraction of those for which I cared and which I con- 

 tinually read, and that I care for them neither more nor less than for those 

 I left at home. I took "The Deluge" and "Pan Michael" and "Flight 

 of a Tartar Tribe," because I had just finished "Fire and Sword"; 

 "Moby Dick," because I had been rereading "Omoo" and "Typee"; 

 Gogol's "Taras Bulba," because I wished to get the Cossack view of what 

 was described by Sienkiewicz from the Polish side; some of Maurice 

 Jokai, and "St. Peter's Umbrella" (I am not at all sure about the titles), 

 because my attention at the moment was on Hungary; and the novels of 

 Topelius when I happened to be thinking of Finland. I took Dumas's 

 cycle of romances dealing with the French Revolution, because I had 

 just finished Carlyle's work thereon and I felt that of the two the nov- 

 elist was decidedly the better historian. I took "Salammbo" and "The 

 Nabob" rather than scores of other French novels simply because at the 

 moment I happened to see them and think that I would like to read 

 them. I doubt if I ever took anything of Hawthorne's, but this was cer- 

 tainly not because I failed to recognize his genius. 



Now, all this means that I take with me on any trip, or on all trips 

 put together, but a very small proportion of the books that I like; and 

 that I like very many and very different kinds of books, and do not for 

 a moment attempt anything so preposterous as a continual comparison 

 between books which may appeal to totally different sets of emotions. 

 For instance, one correspondent pointed out to me that Tennyson was 

 "trivial" compared to Browning, and another complained that I had 

 omitted Walt Whitman; another asked why I put Longfellow "on a 

 level" with Tennyson. I believe I did take Walt Whitman on one hunt, 

 and I like Browning, Tennyson, and Longfellow, all of them, without 

 thinking it necessary to compare them. It is largely a matter of personal 

 taste. In a recent English review I glanced at an article on English verse 

 of to-day in which, after enumerating various writers of the first and 



