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