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Coming On Books Unexpectedly 
(Continued from page 74) 
reader’s finger print would tell me what 
joy my library, outside its routine regu¬ 
larity, was giving to the household. 
The moist touch of excitement, the 
trembling touch of sentiment, the firm 
touch of interest—these are more to me 
than the bindings that look well, and 
can be bought by the yard or the five- 
foot, without meaning a thing. An im¬ 
personal library, rich in its editions, 
photographs well. But it is merely a 
stage set. You are the flame or flicker 
of it—you are the warmth or the dead 
ash. Go into a hotel room and you are 
greeted with a Bible and a telephone 
directory. They are both sharp looking 
in their official purpose and officious evi¬ 
dence. One says, Be good; the other, 
Be patient. Open your grip and take 
out the book you have been reading on 
the train. The personal flavor creeps in ; 
it is like a Greek lamp in a temple. 
That’s what I mean. 
It makes no difference how you plan 
your flowers in a garden; you are not 
going to regulate the flight of birds. 
The hummingbird dips into any avail¬ 
able chalice of honey for sustenance. 
The library is all right, but it is very 
far away when you are somewhere else, 
in comfortable mood for reading. Books 
in unexpected places invite the dipping 
quality of the soul. 
So, in my house I will ask the archi¬ 
tect to consider carefully the placing of 
book sanctuaries. I recall a long box- 
seat in a studio. It was very near the 
massive fireplace. Above it were three 
slim shelves, for a host of slim volumes 
that perched there like swallows on a 
telegraph wire—poetry and drama, let¬ 
ters and essays. Their very smallness 
gave pleasure against the wall that 
towered above them. You could lay 
among pillows and play upon them by 
the stretch of an arm—light volumes 
that did not make a noise when they 
slipped from your fingers as you slept. 
I treasure the usefulness of some other 
shelves that caught the morning warmth 
of the sun by a rose-bush near a win¬ 
dow, and here on a tempting seat one 
browsed in bygone “Garlands” and early 
editions of Emerson and Thoreau. They 
had a musty odor that comes with book 
age, but somehow the scent of roses 
crept in and memory became alive. 
Time vanished. 
When you begin to calculate on the 
overflow of your library, the rescuing 
spirit comes upon you, and you go to 
the shelves to see how many of the vol¬ 
umes are wrongly placed: how they can 
escape your formal institution, and 
come into the reach of your personal 
desire. You know what a motley as¬ 
sortment usually sinks to the bottom 
shelf, the large shelf built for the dic¬ 
tionaries and books that are not books, 
but merely statistical reports in covers. 
I shall never see a copy of the Life and 
Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning 
without recalling the loving eyes that 
rescued it from between some metallur¬ 
gical reports and a gazetteer of names. 
Where did it fly to? To a desk within 
reach of a bed, where it could be picked 
up at will. It never got back to the 
library, but homed unexpectedly in the 
hall on a shelf by a west window. 
I recall some frail bookshelves beneath 
the portrait of a lady—just such a shelf 
series as goes with delicate draperies, and 
a sensitive face, and pastel colors. On 
top were filigreed bowls of porcelain 
holding spring flowers, and vases that 
threw their handles in perfect curves 
above the opening like dancing girls, 
lithe and beautiful. Reminiscences of 
court ladies, some Kate Greenaway re¬ 
prints, books with pressed leaves be¬ 
tween the pages—delicacy of mind and 
matter. 
At such places bindings do not count, 
though fine chisellings of gold lines, and 
delicate traceries of letters, gilt edges 
and bright leathers and brocade are very 
agreeable to look upon. But books with 
distinctive backs are so often like ladies 
at the opera—disappointing to talk to. 
What selections are best suited to a pic¬ 
ture such as I speak of? Here comes 
your discrimination and your taste. Ap¬ 
propriateness is everything. You burn 
candles to the saints. Can you not place 
books before the one you love? 
Do I mean to suggest that you must 
select your place to read in accord with 
what you read? Shall we travel to the 
living-room and put our foot on the 
tiger’s head while we peruse a chapter 
of Roosevelt’s African travels? Should 
we not own these Travels unless we 
also own a tiger-skin rug? Of course, 
here is food for thought as to whether 
books regulate the furnishings of a 
room. A sportsman’s walls, can you not 
count on the character of the pictures? 
A golf champion’s bouffet—can you not 
imagine the silver trophies? A hunter’s 
hall—are there not mounted heads ga¬ 
lore? You come upon them in formal 
and unexpected places. I think there 
are books that would look well near 
marble benches, others that are inviting 
on the grand piano, with its gold drapery 
and silver vase. Such books have the 
air of “I’ve just been bought but haven’t 
been cut or read yet. I’m much talked 
about. I’m the right thing at the mo¬ 
ment to have. I'm the correct thing to 
look at. Tomorrow you’ll come upon 
me unexpectedly beneath a pile of jazz 
music.” It can't always be Shelley—- 
there must be a little of Irving Berlin, 
even in the most marble palace. 
Why has not someone thought of a 
book lectern for the bedroom? I would 
place it near the window with the best 
view, overlooking the farthest reaches, 
where the sun is either richest in the 
morning, or the sky most tinted in the 
evening. There are sundials for the 
garden. Why not book dials for each 
hour of the day? I could much more 
countenance—in this democrats age!— 
a flunky carrying a book on a plush 
cushion to such a lectern, than one 
carrying my lady’s dog and lap-robe to 
the limousine. It would be much more 
a ceremonial worthy of human partici¬ 
pation. 
Hurry, you flunky, there is a west 
wind blowing from the meadow—where 
is my Masefield? Lay it open, with a 
book-mark woven of golden daffodils. 
Let us be joyfully sentimental about the 
things we love to read. “What time of 
day is it?” you ask. And someone says, 
“It’s the hour of Wordsworth”—just as 
on shipboard they call out, “Three 
bells.” “Dinner,” announces the maid. 
“I knew it,” you reply, “for the cook¬ 
book was on the lectern in the hall.” 
Gourmand of beauty or of food, your 
hour will come. 
Think also of the healthy shock this 
meeting with books unexpectedly gives 
to the advanced, the jaded, the stoic. 
The modern bobbed hair is bent over a 
copy of “Lucille,” and rather enjoys it; 
she slips it to her bedroom, and puts it 
under her pillow. It is found there by 
the second girl on the morrow, and it 
appeals to her, too. It finds its way 
eventually to a shelf over the desk. 
That’s how it got there. 
Think of the roue’s holding Blake’s 
“Songs of Innocence” after a night of 
supper dancing. The stock broker picks 
up, in his slippered comfort, a stray 
translation of Horace, and peeps into it 
with a surprised realization that for the 
middle-aged the gentleman farmer is 
rather an enviable role. For the mod¬ 
ern man, thanks to suburban ambitions, 
has a sneaking desire to believe himself 
both a gentleman and a farmer. The 
stoic picks up Tagore’s “The Crescent 
Moon” which is accidentally on the 
bookshelf in his room, and discovers 
that his tear duct actually holds a tear. 
These unexpected dippings are what 
(Continued on page 78) 
