Journeys to Bagdad | Page 7

and that even that was a failure, for, despite Noah's shrewdness at the gangway, villains still persist on it. How then shall my books profitably endure a deluge both autumn and spring?
Thereafter, when the tempest has spent itself and the waters have returned from off my shelves, I'll venture in the room. There will be something different in the sniff of the place, and it will be marvelously picked up. Yet I can mend these faults. But it does fret me how books will be standing on their heads. Were certain volumes only singled out to stand upon their heads, Shaw for one, and others of our moderns, I would suspect the housemaid of expressing in this fashion a sly and just criticism of their inverted beliefs. I accused her on one occasion of this subtlety, but was met by such a vacant stare that I acquitted her at once. However, as she leaves my solidest authors also on their heads, men beyond the peradventure of such antics, I must consider it but a part of her carelessness, for which I have warned her twice. Were it not for her cunning with griddlecakes, to which I am much affected, I would have dismissed her before this.
And now this Bell, which has ridden out so many of my floods, is proclaimed to me a villain. We had got beyond the April freshets and there was in consequence a soapy smell about. It is clear in my mind that a street organ had started up a gay tune and that there were sounds of gathering feet. I was reading at the time, in the green rocker by the lamp, a life of John Murray, by one whose name I have forgotten, when my eyes came on the sentence that has shaken me. Bell, it said, Bell of my own bookshelf, of all the editors of Shakespeare was the worst.
In my agitation I removed my glasses, breathed upon the lenses, and polished them. Here was one of my familiars accused of something that was doubtless heinous, although in what particulars I was at a loss to know. It came on me suddenly. It was like a whispered scandal, sinister in its lack of detail. All that I had known of Bell was that its publication had dated from the eighteenth century. Yet its very age had seemed a patent of respectability. If a thing does not rot and smell in a hundred and forty years, it would seem to be safe from corruption: it were true peacock. But here at last from Bell was an unsavory whiff. My flood had abated only a fortnight since, and here was a stowaway escaped. Bell was proclaimed a villain. Again had a flood proved itself a failure.
[Illustration]
Now, I feel no shame in having an outsider like Murray display to me these hidden evils; for I owe no inquisitorial duty to my books. There are people who will not admit a volume to their shelves until they have thrown it open and laid its contents bare. This is the unmannerly conduct of the customs wharf. Indeed, it is such scrutiny, doubtless, that induces some authors to pack their ideas obscurely, thereby to smuggle them. However, there being now a scandal on my shelves, I must spy into it.
John Murray, wherein I had read the charge, had been such a friendly, tea-and-gossip book, not the kind to hiss a scandal at you. It was bound in blue cloth and was a heavy book, so that I held it on a cushion. (And this device I recommend to others.) It was the kind of book that stays open at your place, if you leave it for a moment to poke the fire. Some books will flop a hundred pages, to make you thumb them back and forth, though whether this be the binder's fault or a deviltry set therein by their authors I am at a loss to say. But Shaw would be of this kind, flopping and spry to mix you up. And in general, Shaw's humor is like that of a shell-man at a country fair--a thimble-rigger. No matter where you guess that he has placed the bean, you will be always wrong. Even though you swear that you have seen him slip it under, it's but his cunning to lead you off. But Murray was not that kind. It would stand at its post, unhitched, like a family horse.
Here was quandary. I looked at Bell, but God forgive me, it was not with the old trustfulness. He was on the top shelf but one, just in line with the eyes, with gilt front winking in the firelight. I had set him thus conspicuous with intention, because of his calfskin binding, quite old and worn. A decayed