Parnassus on Wheels - Christopher Morley (books you need to read TXT) 📗

The morning was so lovely that I did not feel talkative, and as the Professor seemed pensive I said nothing. But as Peg plodded slowly up a gentle slope he suddenly pulled a book out of his pocket and began to read aloud. I was watching the river, and did not turn round, but listened carefully:

“Rolling cloud, volleying wind, and wheeling sun⁠—the blue tabernacle of sky, the circle of the seasons, the sparkling multitude of the stars⁠—all these are surely part of one rhythmic, mystic whole. Everywhere, as we go about our small business, we must discern the fingerprints of the gigantic plan, the orderly and inexorable routine with neither beginning nor end, in which death is but a preface to another birth, and birth the certain forerunner of another death. We human beings are as powerless to conceive the motive or the moral of it all as the dog is powerless to understand the reasoning in his master’s mind. He sees the master’s acts, benevolent or malevolent, and wags his tail. But the master’s acts are always inscrutable to him. And so with us.

“And therefore, brethren, let us take the road with a light heart. Let us praise the bronze of the leaves and the crash of the surf while we have eyes to see and ears to hear. An honest amazement at the unspeakable beauties of the world is a comely posture for the scholar. Let us all be scholars under Mother Nature’s eye.

“How do you like that?” he asked.

“A little heavy, but very good,” I said. “There’s nothing in it about the transcendent mystery of baking bread!”

He looked rather blank.

“Do you know who wrote it?” he asked.

I made a valiant effort to summon some of my governessly recollections of literature.

“I give it up,” I said feebly. “Is it Carlyle?”

“That is by Andrew McGill,” he said. “One of his cosmic passages which are now beginning to be reprinted in schoolbooks. The blighter writes well.”

I began to be uneasy lest I should be put through a literary catechism, so I said nothing, but roused Peg into an amble. To tell the truth I was more curious to hear the Professor talk about his own book than about Andrew’s. I had always carefully refrained from reading Andrew’s stuff, as I thought it rather dull.

“As for me,” said the Professor, “I have no facility at the grand style. I have always suffered from the feeling that it’s better to read a good book than to write a poor one; and I’ve done so much mixed reading in my time that my mind is full of echoes and voices of better men. But this book I’m worrying about now really deserves to be written, I think, for it has a message of its own.”

He gazed almost wistfully across the sunny valley. In the distance I caught a glint of the Sound. The Professor’s faded tweed cap was slanted over one ear, and his stubby little beard shone bright red in the sun. I kept a sympathetic silence. He seemed pleased to have someone to talk to about his precious book.

“The world is full of great writers about literature,” he said, “but they’re all selfish and aristocratic. Addison, Lamb, Hazlitt, Emerson, Lowell⁠—take anyone you choose⁠—they all conceive the love of books as a rare and perfect mystery for the few⁠—a thing of the secluded study where they can sit alone at night with a candle, and a cigar, and a glass of port on the table and a spaniel on the hearthrug. What I say is, who has ever gone out into high roads and hedges to bring literature home to the plain man? To bring it home to his business and bosom, as somebody says? The farther into the country you go, the fewer and worse books you find. I’ve spent several years joggling around with this citadel of crime, and by the bones of Ben Ezra I don’t think I ever found a really good book (except the Bible) at a farmhouse yet, unless I put it there myself. The mandarins of culture⁠—what do they do to teach the common folk to read? It’s no good writing down lists of books for farmers and compiling five-foot shelves; you’ve got to go out and visit the people yourself⁠—take the books to them, talk to the teachers and bully the editors of country newspapers and farm magazines and tell the children stories⁠—and then little by little you begin to get good books circulating in the veins of the nation. It’s a great work, mind you! It’s like carrying the Holy Grail to some of these way-back farmhouses. And I wish there were a thousand Parnassuses instead of this one. I’d never give it up if it weren’t for my book: but I want to write about my ideas in the hope of stirring other folk up, too. I don’t suppose there’s a publisher in the country will take it!”

“Try Mr. Decameron,” I said. “He’s always been very nice to Andrew.”

“Think what it would mean,” he cried, waving an eloquent hand, “if some rich man would start a fund to equip a hundred or so wagons like this to go huckstering literature around through the rural districts. It would pay, too, once you got started. Yes, by the bones of Webster! I went to a meeting of booksellers once, at some hotel in New York, and told ’em about my scheme. They laughed at me. But I’ve had more fun toting books around in this Parnassus than I could have had in fifty years sitting in a bookstore, or teaching school, or preaching. Life’s full of savour when you go creaking along the road like this. Look at today, with the sun and the air and the silver clouds. Best of all, though, I love the rainy days. I used to pull up alongside the road, throw a rubber blanket over Peg, and Bock and I would curl up in the bunk and smoke