Embalmed minds

Media

Part of Green and White

Title: Embalmed minds
Language: English
Year: 1930
Rights
Fulltext: GREEN AND WHITE 149 strangled her with his right hand, she tried to free herself by trying to take his hand off. In so doing her nails pulled off some of the black fibers, from his coat, which was made of black serge." "But another man might have worn black serge too." "Sure enough. But where was he going to get out? After committing the crime, he had to escape thru some opening. But all of th2m were locked. I am positive that ht could not have passed by the main door as the chauffeur was ther.2 with those ladies." "But he might have been in league with some of the domestics." "YOU mean that he unlocked one of those windows or doors, slipped out and had the domestic lock it afterwards?'' "Exact! y." "There could have only been one-that was Abner Philipps. The girl was too good to hefp the murderer. The cook has a nervous constitution. That eliminates him. So Philipps could have been the only one in league with the real murderer. And that was Philipps in league with himself. It could not be otherwise. You will doubtless notice there was a faint white scratch in his pants." "I did not notice it." "Then you have much yet to learn. I examined him very ca~efully. He had it all right. I am sure that was caused by the demised. She struggled and kicked uselessly. Nevertheless she marked Philipps." "That is not enough to warrant his arrest." "True. Did you see that the rouge was scattered below the lower lip?" "What of it?" "Philipps placed his left hand over her mouth to keep her quiet. In so doing, he unknowingly rubbed th2 lips and spread the rouge. I did not know he did it. But I guessed. If the rouge spread, surely it would mark on the glove. And it did. I followed up my guess and it succeed.2d. You remember, I sent Brant to the pantry? That was to have him search Philipps' room. Philipps thought that by hiding the gloves in the pocket of his newly ironed pants, they would not be found. He was mistaken. And that evidence convicted him." "Gee, but you are great," declared Craig with enthusiasm. "I know I am," said Cortland slowly, and emitted a cloud of smoke. - - - «lo---''Embalmed Minds'' [s OME short while since, the Editor of this Journal approached me with his best smile, and after a few preliminary, unctuous remarks, shot me a bolt from the effects of which I am still troubled: Would I write a list of one-hundred good books I had r.2ad, for publication in the GREEN AND WHITE. This was the burden of my seducer's song. A tall request, methought. A veritable dilemma for unwary me; Was I to say "No" to a good friend who had never refused me a favor? Or was I to put into the hands of the public, vulgar and elite alike, what must seem a sort of confession of my private life, a betrayal of my nature, if not of my name. I remonstrat·ed that I was not a wide reader, not even along one line. That sometimes I aim humbled and humiliated, when queri.2d by my friends as to whether I have read G. K.'s latest, or what I think of G.B.S. as a rival of Shakespeare for the dramatic laurel. But the Editor was adamant, and would not brook refusal. Again he smiled, chiefly with his eyes this time; and after some more hopeless dillydallying on my part, I yielded the fatal "Yes". No sooner had he mace his triumphant retreat, than I was stricken with remorse for my softness. I had been inveigled into his coils;, and 150 GREEN AND WHITE now, the price has to be paid for my temerity and folly. A hundred books! Surely, many even of our High School students, must have read that meagre number. And no doubt the ever-increasing ar;my of those who constitute the present epidemic of gowned graduates, not to mention, except in terms of hushed awe, the mushroom crop of absolut~, dictatorial purveyors of information, yclept professors,-no doubt most of these would be positively insulted were they asked to write the names of a paltry hundred books they had read and studied. And our innocent Editor would be upbraidingly asked to make it at least a thousand. "A book's a book al:hough there's nothing in it," satirises Byron in his English Bards and Scotch Reviewers. Books with nothing in them an~ only r,oo common, and their readers are legion. Any of our literary hobbledehoys could easily write them while you wait. Such literary and literal mockeries are not only voraciously dizvoured, but even requisitioned to decorate, by profuse quotation, the many "articles", which their wretched readers use to profane the Press,-if that were possible. And of course, they supply our "column writers" with an inexhaustible emporium of padding, when their own reserv.~ of piffle fails-if even that, a fortiori, were also possible. But my cruel friend, the Editor, is fastidious. All men with a true literary taste are like that. They will not be fed on garbage. They insist on rejecting the husks of swine. They will not drink at the fountain of folly. Their aliment must be gathered from the fields of Etern;;il Truth. More. They are particular, to a nicety, that it be served with the ddicate condiment of literary art. Unlike the scavenging millions, they insist on regarding a book with nothing in it, as no book at all. Much more, if. it contains untruths, half truths, or travestied truths; and this no matter how delectably soever th-?se may be camouflaged. Ruskin's remarks, as to what a real book is, may hen~ be quoted: "A book is written, not to multiply the vo~ce merely, nor to carry it merely, but to perpetuate it. The author has something to say which he perceives to be true and nseful, or helpfully beautiful. So far as he knows, no one has yet said it; so far as he knows, no one else can say it. He is bound to say it clearly and mdodiously if he may; clearly at all events. In the sum of his life he finds this to be the thing or group of things manifest to him, -this the piece of true know!. edg.2 or sight which his share of sunshine and earth has permitted him to seize. He would fain set it down forever, engrave it on a r,ock, if he could, saying, 'This is the best of me; for the rest I ate and drank and slept, loved and hated like another. My life was as a vapor, and is not; but this I saw and knew, this, if anything of mine, is worth your memory. This is his writing: it is in his small human way, and with whatever of degree of true inspiration is in him, his inscription or scripture. That is a book." Elsewhere Ruskin calls all such books enduring writings, books of all time, books properly so called, in contradistinction with what he terms books of the hour, ephemeral writings. Of these he says. "The good book of the hour-I do not speak of bad ones-is simply the useful or pleasant talk of some person whom you cannot otherwise converse with, printed for you. These bright accounts of travd; goodhumored with witty discussion of question; lively or pathetic story-telling in the form of novel; firm fact-telling, by the real agents concerned in the events of passing history,-all these books of the hour, multiplying among us as education becomes general, are a peculiar possession of the present ag.2. We ought to be entirdy thankful for them, and ePtirely ashamed of ourselves if we make no good use of them. Bu: we make the worst possible use of them if we allow them tc usurp the place of tri;~ books." The appended list includes books of both species, but no bad ones of either. Bad books! And permanent bad books! They exist; aplenty. Genius is not infrequently pressed into the service of evil,-·· into the service of infidelity. irrdigion, immorality: Into the service of the devil rather than into that of God: Jn to treason against truth rather ~ban into loyalty tht>reto: Into the degradation of the nation rather than into its uplift. Such a book comes off the Press. It is grabbed up like the proverbial hot cakes. The unsteady of p·irpose read it, and, become 'more unsteady. The authGr acquires fame, and mayb.2, wealth. When he is festering in his grave, the stream he has polluted, flows on. Generation after generation, the accursed things move on to poison millions of minds, to damn millions of souls. I must avail myself of the reader's long-suffering to once again appositely invoke John Ruskin: "Sir, you have this gift (genius), and a mighty one: see that you serve your nation faithfully with it. It is a greater trust rhan ships or armies: you might cast them away, if yol}- were captain, with less treason to your people than in casting your own glorious power, and serving the devil with it instead of men. Ships and armies you may replace, -if they are lost, but a great intellect once abused, is a curse to the earth forever." It would seem as if our English classics.the good ones,-are not so widely read nowadays as formerly. This is a pity. New books come and go. "They have their littl1.! day, and die." The rust of tim.2 they cannot resist. But the cl;issics remain forever. Royal metal. they defy all. corroding influence. They are like our artesian fountains gushing forth the health-giving stream of clear sparkling water, of clear sparkling Truth. As has been said, higher up, the reading of such treasures does not at all preclude the harnessing, into our service, of the numerous splendid books which are the product of our own age. Th.~ Scotch" man, in the joke column, when asked which would he take, white wine or red, quickly formulated the orthodox reply, "Baith, mon, baith." A wise motto for the shrewd .r.zader. No need to follow what the witty Rogers is alleged to have been wont to say, "When a new book comes out, I read an old one." The classics n;.!ver tire us. We go back to them again and again, and each time we find them as fresh, wholesome and racy as ever. This applies even to classic novels. A s.~cond 151 reading opens up vistas and pandora boxes that we n6ssed on our first exploration. Most of th2 books, in the accompanying list, I have read twice, and I long for th.~ leisure to take them up again. Not a few I have read thrice. And the reader will doubtless be puzzled to diagnose what form of insanity has led me to read Treasure Island from front to ba·ck at least ten times. The very mention of the title, whets my appetit.~ for another feast. But, whither have I been led! Here, then, is a "list of a hundred books which I have read" with pleasure, and I like to think, with pro-fit. It is not claimed that they are the hundred best I have read. In a fe.w cases, ::h2 author's name has slipped my m.2mory, but the Editor has promised not to bring me to book for the dmission. Shakespearean Tragedy The Poetic Mind The Conquest of M.2xico The ·Conquest of Peru Life of Voltaire David Copperfield A. C. Bradley F. Prescott Prescott Prescott John Morley. Dickens Introduction to English Literature Hudson Poets and their Art Old Mortality Christ in the Church Robinson Crusoe Vanity Fair H. Monroe Sir W. Scott R. H. Benson Defoe Thackeray Paradise Lost . Milton Selected Poems (Ed. M. Arnold) Wordsworth Leaves of Grass Whittier Essa_ys .. _ . _ R. L. Stevenson A Midsummer Night's Dream Shakespeare Childe Harold Byron More Joy (Translation) KepplerPoems Lorna Doone . _ . ·_ _ . . _ . - . . . . The Divine Comedy (Cary's Translation) Matt. Arnold Blackwell /Jante 152 GREEN AND WHITE The Mill on the Floss The Dream of Gerontius G. Eliot The Dark Ages Oman F. Cooper J. H. Newman The Last of the Mohicans Martin Chuzzlewit Dickens The Boree Log Harrington The Lady Next Door H. Begbie Lectures (Delivered in U.S.A.) .. Tom Bourke The Psalms King David Hamlet Shakespeare Selections from the Spectator Ad.Jison The Com pleat Angler Wal ton Oxford Lectures on Poetry A. C. Bradley Essays of Elia Lctmb Collected Essays M acaulQy Confessions (Praises) St. Augustine History of Ireland ( 3 vols) Dal I on Poems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Alice M eynell The Voyage of the Beagle C. Daru)in We of the Never-Never ..... ? The Count of Monte Cristo Duma!j My New Curate Sheehan Life of Cardinal Newman Barnaby Rud_ge (2 vols) Ward Past and Present Collected Po2ms The Philosophy of Literature The Art of Thinking The Jungle Book ( 2 vols) The Dangers of Spiritism Dickens Carlyle F. Thompson Bro. Azarias Self Knowl.2dge and &lf Discipline Dimnet Kipling Rau pert Maturin Ave bury The Beaut~es of Life ...... . The French Revolution (2 vols) The Queen's Fillet Carlyle Sheehan Treasure Island . . . . . . . R. L. Stevenson History of England ( 13 vols) Lingard St. Ignatius of Loyola Alice in Wonderland F. Thompson Carroll Boswell Life of Johnson (3 vols) The Imitation of Christ H~roes and Hero Worship Life of General Gordon Thos. A. Kempis Carlyle The Maid of Orleans . . . Leaves from Australian Forest$ Wm. Butler A. Lang Kendal Kr2nilworth Scott Poems Thomas Gray The Glories of Mary St. Alphonsus Liguori History of Europe (1789-1870) Fyffe Historical Essays ( 2 vols) Gulliver's Travels J. H. Newman Swift Henry Esmond Thackeray Golden Treasury of Songs and Lyrics. Palgrave Refl.2ctions on the French Revolution. Ed. Burke Depar::mental Duties and Barrack-Room Ballads Kipling The Last of the Barons Lytton The Life of. Napoleon Lockhart A Tale of Two Cities Dickens The New Testament Church History 15 00-19 00 ( 3 vols) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . M acCaffrey Poems .............. . Tennyson The Arabian Nights Life of Gladstone John Morley Commentary on Tennyson's "In Memoriam" A. C. Bradley St. Francis of Assissi ;> Apologia Pro Vita Sua J. H. Newman By What Authority .. · R. H. Benson The South African War (1900) Conan Doyle Psychology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . M. Maher The Fortunes of Nigel Scott Life of Christ, (2 vols) Translation Fouard Reminiscences (T1wenty-five Years) K. Tynan St. Paul and His Missions Fouard The Old Riddle and the Newest An.swer Moral Philosophy History of Philosophy Dreams and Images ......... . Evolution and Social Progress Henry Edward Manning Gerard Rickaby Turner Joyce Kilmer Husslein Shane Leslie B. E.