CONTENTS
I. A RHAPSODY ON THE NOBLE PROFESSION OF NOVEL READING
V. THE OPEN POLAR SEA OF NOVELS
It must have been at about the good-bye age of forty that Thomas Moore, that choleric and pompous yet genial little Irish gentleman, turned a sigh into good marketable “copy” for Grub Street and with shrewd economy got two full pecuniary bites out of one melancholy apple of reflection:
“Kind friends around me fall Like leaves in wintry weather,” —he sang of his own dead heart in the stilly night. “Thus kindly I scatter thy leaves on the bed Where thy mates of the garden lie scentless and dead.” —he sang to the dying rose. In the red month of October the rose isforty years old, as roses go. How small the world has grown to a man offorty, if he has put his eyes, his ears and his brain to the uses forwhich they are adapted. And as for time—why, it is no longer than akite string. At about the age of forty everything that can happen to aman, death excepted, has happened; happiness has gone to the devil oris a mere habit; the blessing of poverty has been permanently securedor you are exhausted with the cares of wealth; you can see aroundthe corner or you do not care to see around it; in a word—that is,considering mental existence—the bell has rung on you and you are upagainst a steady grind for the remainder of your life. It is then therecomes to the habitual novel reader the inevitable day when, in anguishof heart, looking back over his life, he—wishes he hadn't; then he askshimself the bitter question if there are not things he has done that hewishes he hadn't. Melancholy marks him for its own. He sits in his roomsome winter evening, the lamp swarming shadowy seductions, the grateglowing with siren invitation, the cigar box within easy reach for thatmoment when the pending sacrifice between his teeth shall be burned out;his feet upon the familiar corner of the mantel at that automaticallycalculated altitude which permits the weight of the upper part of thebody to fall exactly upon the second joint from the lower end of thevertebral column as it rests in the comfortable depression created bycontinuous wear in the cushion of that particular chair to which everyhonest man who has acqu...BU KİTABI OKUMAK İÇİN ÜYE OLUN VEYA GİRİŞ YAPIN!
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