Through the Magic Door | Page 2

memories to me.
Some of them represent those little sacrifices which make a possession
dearer. You see the line of old, brown volumes at the bottom? Every
one of those represents a lunch. They were bought in my student days,
when times were not too affluent. Threepence was my modest
allowance for my midday sandwich and glass of beer; but, as luck
would have it, my way to the classes led past the most fascinating
bookshop in the world. Outside the door of it stood a large tub filled
with an ever-changing litter of tattered books, with a card above which
announced that any volume therein could be purchased for the identical
sum which I carried in my pocket. As I approached it a combat ever
raged betwixt the hunger of a youthful body and that of an inquiring
and omnivorous mind. Five times out of six the animal won. But when
the mental prevailed, then there was an entrancing five minutes'

digging among out-of-date almanacs, volumes of Scotch theology, and
tables of logarithms, until one found something which made it all worth
while. If you will look over these titles, you will see that I did not do so
very badly. Four volumes of Gordon's "Tacitus" (life is too short to
read originals, so long as there are good translations), Sir William
Temple's Essays, Addison's works, Swift's "Tale of a Tub," Clarendon's
"History," "Gil Blas," Buckingham's Poems, Churchill's Poems, "Life
of Bacon"--not so bad for the old threepenny tub.
They were not always in such plebeian company. Look at the thickness
of the rich leather, and the richness of the dim gold lettering. Once they
adorned the shelves of some noble library, and even among the odd
almanacs and the sermons they bore the traces of their former greatness,
like the faded silk dress of the reduced gentlewoman, a present pathos
but a glory of the past.
Reading is made too easy nowadays, with cheap paper editions and free
libraries. A man does not appreciate at its full worth the thing that
comes to him without effort. Who now ever gets the thrill which
Carlyle felt when he hurried home with the six volumes of Gibbon's
"History" under his arm, his mind just starving for want of food, to
devour them at the rate of one a day? A book should be your very own
before you can really get the taste of it, and unless you have worked for
it, you will never have the true inward pride of possession.
If I had to choose the one book out of all that line from which I have
had most pleasure and most profit, I should point to yonder stained
copy of Macaulay's "Essays." It seems entwined into my whole life as I
look backwards. It was my comrade in my student days, it has been
with me on the sweltering Gold Coast, and it formed part of my humble
kit when I went a-whaling in the Arctic. Honest Scotch harpooners
have addled their brains over it, and you may still see the grease stains
where the second engineer grappled with Frederick the Great. Tattered
and dirty and worn, no gilt-edged morocco-bound volume could ever
take its place for me.
What a noble gateway this book forms through which one may
approach the study either of letters or of history! Milton, Machiavelli,
Hallam, Southey, Bunyan, Byron, Johnson, Pitt, Hampden, Clive,
Hastings, Chatham--what nuclei for thought! With a good grip of each
how pleasant and easy to fill in all that lies between! The short, vivid

sentences, the broad sweep of allusion, the exact detail, they all throw a
glamour round the subject and should make the least studious of
readers desire to go further. If Macaulay's hand cannot lead a man upon
those pleasant paths, then, indeed, he may give up all hope of ever
finding them.
When I was a senior schoolboy this book--not this very volume, for it
had an even more tattered predecessor--opened up a new world to me.
History had been a lesson and abhorrent. Suddenly the task and the
drudgery became an incursion into an enchanted land, a land of colour
and beauty, with a kind, wise guide to point the path. In that great style
of his I loved even the faults--indeed, now that I come to think of it, it
was the faults which I loved best. No sentence could be too stiff with
rich embroidery, and no antithesis too flowery. It pleased me to read
that "a universal shout of laughter from the Tagus to the Vistula
informed the Pope that the days of the crusades were past," and I was
delighted to learn that "Lady Jerningham kept a vase in which people
placed foolish verses, and Mr. Dash wrote verses which were