Through the Magic Door

Through the Magic Door

The Project Gutenberg EBook of Through the Magic Door, by Arthur
Conan Doyle #32 in our series by Arthur Conan Doyle
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Title: Through the Magic Door
Author: Arthur Conan Doyle
Release Date: March, 2004 [EBook #5317] [Yes, we are more than one
year ahead of schedule] [This file was first posted on June 30, 2002]

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Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THROUGH
THE MAGIC DOOR ***

Transcribed by Anders Thulin. Adapted for Project Gutenberg by
Andrew Sly.

THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR
BY ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE

I.
I care not how humble your bookshelf may be, nor how lowly the room
which it adorns. Close the door of that room behind you, shut off with
it all the cares of the outer world, plunge back into the soothing
company of the great dead, and then you are through the magic portal
into that fair land whither worry and vexation can follow you no more.
You have left all that is vulgar and all that is sordid behind you. There
stand your noble, silent comrades, waiting in their ranks. Pass your eye
down their files. Choose your man. And then you have but to hold up
your hand to him and away you go together into dreamland. Surely
there would be something eerie about a line of books were it not that
familiarity has deadened our sense of it. Each is a mummified soul
embalmed in cere-cloth and natron of leather and printer's ink. Each
cover of a true book enfolds the concentrated essence of a man. The
personalities of the writers have faded into the thinnest shadows, as
their bodies into impalpable dust, yet here are their very spirits at your
command.
It is our familiarity also which has lessened our perception of the
miraculous good fortune which we enjoy. Let us suppose that we were
suddenly to learn that Shakespeare had returned to earth, and that he
would favour any of us with an hour of his wit and his fancy. How

eagerly we would seek him out! And yet we have him--the very best of
him--at our elbows from week to week, and hardly trouble ourselves to
put out our hands to beckon him down. No matter what mood a man
may be in, when once he has passed through the magic door he can
summon the world's greatest to sympathize with him in it. If he be
thoughtful, here are the kings of thought. If he be dreamy, here are the
masters of fancy. Or is it amusement that he lacks? He can signal to any
one of the world's great story-tellers, and out comes the dead man and
holds him enthralled by the hour. The dead are such good company that
one may come to think too little of the living. It is a real and a pressing
danger with many of us, that we should never find our own thoughts
and our own souls, but be ever obsessed by the dead. Yet second-hand
romance and second-hand emotion are surely better than the dull,
soul-killing monotony which life brings to most of the human race. But
best of all when the dead man's wisdom and strength in the living of
our own strenuous days.
Come through the magic door with me, and sit here on the green settee,
where you can see the old oak case with its untidy lines of volumes.
Smoking is not forbidden. Would you care to hear me talk of them?
Well, I ask nothing better, for there is no volume there which is not a
dear, personal friend, and what can a man talk of more pleasantly than
that? The other books are over yonder, but these are my own
favourites--the ones I care to re-read and to have near my elbow. There
is not a tattered cover which does not bring its mellow