THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR

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.