BOOKWORMS


Great is bookishness and the charm of books. No doubt there are times
and seasons in the lives of most reading men when they rebel against
the dust of libraries and kick against the pricks of these monstrously
accumulated heaps of words. We all know 'the dark hour' when the
vanity of learning and the childishness of merely literary things are
brought home to us in such a way as almost to avail to put the pale
student out of conceit with his books, and to make him turn from his
best-loved authors as from a friend who has outstayed his welcome,
whose carriage we wish were at the door. In these unhappy moments we
are apt to call to mind the shrewd men we have known, who have been
our blithe companions on breezy fells, heathery moor, and by the
stream side, who could neither read nor write, or who, at all events,
but rarely practised those Cadmean arts. Yet they could tell the time
of day by the sun, and steer through the silent night by the stars;
and each of them had--as Emerson, a very bookish person, has said--a
dial in his mind for the whole bright calendar of the year. How racy
was their talk; how wise their judgments on men and things; how well
they did all that at the moment seemed worth doing; how universally
useful was their garnered experience--their acquired learning! How
wily were these illiterates in the pursuit of game--how ready in an
emergency! What a charm there is about out-of-door company! Who would
not sooner have spent a summer's day with Sir Walter's humble friend,
Tom Purday, than with Mr. William Wordsworth of Rydal Mount! It is, we
can only suppose, reflections such as these that make country
gentlemen and farmers the sworn foes they are of education and the
enemies of School Boards.