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Read Ebook: Three Centuries of a City Library an Historical and Descriptive Account of the Norwich Public Library Established in 1608 and the present Public Library opened in 1857 by Stephen Geo A George Arthur
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Ebook has 337 lines and 40743 words, and 7 pages
PAGE
An Oxford Symbol 1
Scapegoats 7
To a New Yorker a Hundred Years Hence 12
A Call for the Author 16
Mr. Pepys's Christmases 19
Children as Copy 25
Hail, Kinsprit! 30
Round Manhattan Island 33
The Unknown Citizen 37
Sir Kenelm Digby 42
First Impressions of an Amiable Visitor 58
In Honorem: Martha Washington 63
According to Hoyle 67
L. E. W. 71
Our Extension Course 75
Some Recipes 78
Adventures of a Curricular Engineer 82
Santayana in the Subway 87
Madonna of the Taxis 95
Matthew Arnold and Exodontia 99
Dame Quickly and the Boilroaster 109
Vacationing with De Quincey 114
The Spanish Sultry 132
What Kind of a Dog? 137
A Letter from Gissing 140
July 8, 1822 143
Midsummer in Salamis 148
The Story of Ginger Cubes 153
The Editor at the Ball Game 183
The Dame Explores Westchester 191
The Power and the Glory 197
Gissing Joins a Country Club 202
Three Stars on the Back Stoop 208
A Christmas Card 213
Symbols and Paradoxes 218
The Return to Town 223
Maxims and Minims 228
Two Reviews 262
Buddha on the L 271
Intellectuals and Roughnecks 279
The Fun of Writing 288
A Christmas Soliloquy 291
THE POWDER OF SYMPATHY
AN OXFORD SYMBOL
When in October, 1910, we arrived, in a hansom, at the sombre gate of New College, Oxford; trod for the first time through that most impressive of all college doorways, hidden in its walled and winding lane; timidly accosted Old Churchill, the whiskered porter, most dignitarian and genteel of England's Perfect Servants; and had our novice glimpse of that noble Front Quad where the shadow of the battlemented roof lies patterned across the turf--we were as innocently hopeful, modestly anxious for learning and eager to do the right thing in this strange, thrilling environment as ever any young American who went looking for windmills. No human being is more beautifully solemn than the ambitious Young American. And, indeed, no writer has ever attempted to analyze the shimmering tissue of inchoate excitement and foreboding that fills the spirit of the juvenile Rhodes Scholar as he first enters his Oxford college. He arrives with his mind a gentle confusion of hearsay about Walter Pater, Shelley, boat races, Mr. Gladstone, Tom Brown, the Scholar Gypsy, and Little Mr. Bouncer. Kansas City or Sheboygan indeed seem far away as he crosses those quadrangles looking for his rooms.
But even Oxford, one was perhaps relieved to find, is not all silver-gray mediaeval loveliness. The New Buildings, to which Churchill directed us, reached through a tunnel and a bastion in a rampart not much less than a thousand years elderly, were recognizably of the Rutherford B. Hayes type of edification. Except for the look-off upon gray walls, pinnacles, and a green tracery of gardens, and the calculated absence of plumbing , the immense cliff of New Buildings might well have been a lobe of the old Johns Hopkins or a New York theological seminary. At the top of four flights we found our pensive citadel. Papered in blue, upholstered in a gruesome red, with yellow woodwork, and a fireplace which was a potent reeker. It would be cheerful to describe those two rooms in detail, for we lived in them two years. But what first caught our eye was a little green pamphlet lying on the red baize tablecloth. It was lettered
Our name was written upon it in ink, and we immediately sat down to study it. Here, we thought, is our passkey to this new world of loveliness.
First we found the hours of college chapel. Then, "All Undergraduates are required to perform Exercises." In our simplicity we at first supposed this to be something in the way of compulsory athletics, but then discovered it to mean intellectual exercises. Fair enough, we thought. That is what we came for.
"Undergraduates are required, as a general rule, to be in College or their Lodgings by 11 p. m., and to send their Strangers out before that time.... No Undergraduate is allowed to play on any musical instrument in College rooms except between the hours of 1 and 9 p. m., unless special leave has been obtained beforehand from the Dean.... No games are allowed in the College Quadrangles, and no games except bowls in the Garden." Excellent, we meditated; this is going to be a serious career, full attention to the delights of the mind and no interruption by corybantic triflers.
"A Term by residence means pernoctation within the University for six weeks in Michaelmas or in Hilary Term, and for three weeks in Easter or in Trinity Term."... We felt a little uncertain as to just what time of year Hilary and Act happened. But we were not halting, just now, over technicalities. We wanted to imbibe, hastily, the general spirit and flavour of our new home.... "Every member of the College is required to deposit Caution-money. Commoners deposit ?30, unless they signify in writing their intention to pay their current Battels weekly; in this case they deposit ?10. An undergraduate battling terminally cannot withdraw part of his Caution-money and become a weekly battler without the authority of his parent or guardian." We at once decided that it was best to be a weekly battler. Battling, incidentally, is a word that we believe exists only at Eton and Oxford; dictionaries tell us that it comes from "an obsolete verb meaning to fatten." Sometimes, however, in dispute with the Junior Bursar, it comes near its more usual sense. We wondered, in our young American pride, whether we were a Commoner? We were pleased to note, however, that the alternative classification was not a Lord but a Scholar.
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