The Haunted Bookshop by Christopher Morley (parable of the sower read online TXT) 📕

“Here’s my War alcove,” he went on. “I’ve stacked up here most of the really good books the War has brought out. If humanity has sense enough to take these books to heart, it will never get itself into this mess again. Printer’s ink has been running a race against gunpowder these many, many years. Ink is handicapped, in a way, because you can blow up a man with gunpowder in half a second, while it may take twenty years to blow him up with a book. But the gunpowder destroys itself along with its victim, while a book can keep on exploding for centuries. There’s Hardy’s Dynasts for example. When you read that book you can feel it blowing up your mind. It leaves you gasping, ill, nauseated⁠—oh, it’s not pleasant to feel some really pure intellect filtered into one’s brain! It hurts! There’s enough T.N.T. in that book to blast war from the face of the globe. But there’s a slow fuse attached to it. It hasn’t really exploded yet. Maybe it won’t for another fifty years.

“In regard to the War, think what books have accomplished. What was the first thing all the governments started to do⁠—publish books! Blue Books, Yellow Books, White Books, Red Books⁠—everything but Black Books, which would have been appropriate in Berlin. They knew that guns and troops were helpless unless they could get the books on their side, too. Books did as much as anything else to bring America into the war. Some German books helped to wipe the Kaiser off his throne⁠—I Accuse, and Dr. Muehlon’s magnificent outburst The Vandal of Europe, and Lichnowsky’s private memorandum, that shook Germany to her foundations, simply because he told the truth. Here’s that book Men in War, written I believe by a Hungarian officer, with its noble dedication ‘To Friend and Foe.’ Here are some of the French books⁠—books in which the clear, passionate intellect of that race, with its savage irony, burns like a flame. Romain Rolland’s Au-Dessus de la Mêlée, written in exile in Switzerland; Barbusse’s terrible Le Feu; Duhamel’s bitter Civilization; Bourget’s strangely fascinating novel The Meaning of Death. And the noble books that have come out of England: A Student in Arms; The Tree of Heaven; Why Men Fight, by Bertrand Russell⁠—I’m hoping he’ll write one on ‘Why Men Are Imprisoned’: you know he was locked up for his sentiments! And here’s one of the most moving of all⁠—The Letters of Arthur Heath, a gentle, sensitive young Oxford tutor who was killed on the Western front. You ought to read that book. It shows the entire lack of hatred on the part of the English. Heath and his friends, the night before they enlisted, sat up singing the German music they had loved, as a kind of farewell to the old, friendly joyous life. Yes, that’s the kind of thing War does⁠—wipes out spirits like Arthur Heath. Please read it. Then you’ll have to read Philip Gibbs, and Lowes Dickinson and all the young poets. Of course you’ve read Wells already. Everybody has.”

“How about the Americans?” said Titania. “Haven’t they written anything about the war that’s worth while?”

“Here’s one that I found a lot of meat in, streaked with philosophical gristle,” said Roger, relighting his pipe. He pulled out a copy of Professor Latimer’s Progress. “There was one passage that I remember marking⁠—let’s see now, what was it?⁠—Yes, here!

“It is true that, if you made a poll of newspaper editors, you might find a great many who think that war is evil. But if you were to take a census among pastors of fashionable metropolitan churches⁠—

“That’s a bullseye hit! The church has done for itself with most thinking men⁠ ⁠… There’s another good passage in Professor Latimer, where he points out the philosophical value of dishwashing. Some of Latimer’s talk is so much in common with my ideas that I’ve been rather hoping he’d drop in here some day. I’d like to meet him. As for American poets, get wise to Edwin Robinson⁠—”

There is no knowing how long the bookseller’s monologue might have continued, but at this moment Helen appeared from the kitchen.

“Good gracious, Roger!” she exclaimed, “I’ve heard your voice piping away for I don’t know how long. What are you doing, giving the poor child a chautauqua lecture? You must want to frighten her out of the book business.”

Roger looked a little sheepish. “My dear,” he said, “I was only laying down a few of the principles underlying the art of bookselling⁠—”

“It was very interesting, honestly it was,” said Titania brightly. Mrs. Mifflin, in a blue check apron and with plump arms floury to the elbow, gave her a wink⁠—or as near a wink as a woman ever achieves (ask the man who owns one).

“Whenever Mr. Mifflin feels very low in his mind about the business,” she said, “he falls back on those highly idealized sentiments. He knows that next to being a parson, he’s got into the worst line there is, and he tries bravely to conceal it from himself.”

“I think it’s too bad to give me away before Miss Titania,” said Roger, smiling, so Titania saw this was merely a family joke.

“Really truly,” she protested, “I’m having a lovely time. I’ve been learning all about Professor Latimer who wrote The Handle of Europe, and all sorts of things. I’ve been afraid every minute that some customer would come in and interrupt us.”

“No fear of that,” said Helen. “They’re scarce in the early morning.” She went back to her kitchen.

“Well, Miss Titania,” resumed Roger. “You see what I’m driving at. I want to give people an entirely new idea about bookshops. The grain of glory that I hope will cure both my fever and my lethargicness is my conception of the bookstore as a powerhouse, a radiating place for truth and beauty. I insist