Roundabout Papers | Page 5

see the

apple-woman with her fruit, or (more tempting still to sons of Eve) the
pretty girls with their apple cheeks, who laughed and prattled round the
fountain! What was the book? Do you suppose it was Livy, or the
Greek grammar? No; it was a NOVEL that you were reading, you lazy,
not very clean, good-for-nothing, sensible boy! It was D'Artagnan
locking up General Monk in a box, or almost succeeding in keeping
Charles the First's head on. It was the prisoner of the Chateau d'If
cutting himself out of the sack fifty feet under water (I mention the
novels I like best myself-- novels without love or talking, or any of that
sort of nonsense, but containing plenty of fighting, escaping, robbery,
and rescuing)-- cutting himself out of the sack, and swimming to the
island of Monte Cristo. O Dumas! O thou brave, kind, gallant old
Alexandre! I hereby offer thee homage, and give thee thanks for many
pleasant hours. I have read thee (being sick in bed) for thirteen hours of
a happy day, and had the ladies of the house fighting for the volumes.
Be assured that lazy boy was reading Dumas (or I will go so far as to
let the reader here pronounce the eulogium, or insert the name of his
favorite author); and as for the anger, or it may be, the reverberations of
his schoolmaster, or the remonstrances of his father, or the tender
pleadings of his mother that he should not let the supper grow cold--I
don't believe the scapegrace cared one fig. No! Figs are sweet, but
fictions are sweeter.
Have you ever seen a score of white-bearded, white-robed warriors, or
grave seniors of the city, seated at the gate of Jaffa or Beyrout, and
listening to the story-teller reciting his marvels out of "Antar" or the
"Arabian Nights?" I was once present when a young gentleman at table
put a tart away from him, and said to his neighbor, the Younger Son
(with rather a fatuous air), "I never eat sweets."
"Not eat sweets! and do you know why?" says T.
"Because I am past that kind of thing," says the young gentleman.
"Because you are a glutton and a sot!" cries the Elder (and Juvenis
winces a little). "All people who have natural, healthy appetites, love
sweets; all children, all women, all Eastern people, whose tastes are not
corrupted by gluttony and strong drink." And a plateful of raspberries
and cream disappeared before the philosopher.
You take the allegory? Novels are sweets. All people with healthy
literary appetites love them--almost all women;--a vast number of

clever, hard-headed men. Why, one of the most learned physicians in
England said to me only yesterday, "I have just read So-and-So for the
second time" (naming one of Jones's exquisite fictions). Judges,
bishops, chancellors, mathematicians, are notorious novel- readers; as
well as young boys and sweet girls, and their kind, tender mothers.
Who has not read about Eldon, and how he cried over novels every
night when he was not at whist?
As for that lazy naughty boy at Chur, I doubt whether HE will like
novels when he is thirty years of age. He is taking too great a glut of
them now. He is eating jelly until he will be sick. He will know most
plots by the time he is twenty, so that HE will never be surprised when
the Stranger turns out to be the rightful earl,-- when the old waterman,
throwing off his beggarly gabardine, shows his stars and the collars of
his various orders, and clasping Antonia to his bosom, proves himself
to be the prince, her long-lost father. He will recognize the novelist's
same characters, though they appear in red-heeled pumps and
ailes-de-pigeon, or the garb of the nineteenth century. He will get
weary of sweets, as boys of private schools grow (or used to grow, for I
have done growing some little time myself, and the practice may have
ended too)--as private school-boys used to grow tired of the pudding
before their mutton at dinner.
And pray what is the moral of this apologue? The moral I take to be
this: the appetite for novels extending to the end of the world; far away
in the frozen deep, the sailors reading them to one another during the
endless night;--far away under the Syrian stars, the solemn sheikhs and
elders hearkening to the poet as he recites his tales; far away in the
Indian camps, where the soldiers listen to ----'s tales, or ----'s, after the
hot day's march; far away in little Chur yonder, where the lazy boy
pores over the fond volume, and drinks it in with all his eyes;--the
demand being what we know it is, the merchant must supply it, as he
will