New Conditions in Reading

THE CONTRIBUTORS’ CLUB.

FIFTY years ago writers were literary men and women, those especially interested in ideas and their fitting garb of expression, and readers were people of their own kind, in whom the literary impulse reached to the leaf of appreciation, though unable to flower in creation; they, too, cared for ideas, and found a joy in the suitable garment of word and phrase. To-day, the readers are the people, the masses, and writers are in the main those who supply them with what they want. Stupendous change! What does it mean ? Whither are we tending ?

As a result of the rapid development of wealth and general but scanty education, an immense reading public has sprung into being. They are not the least bit literary ; they want to read because they know how, have found it a way of escape from being alone and dull; because they have the time to read and the money to buy reading matter. As to the kind of reading, they don’t anxiously consult the experts on that point. They read what appeals to them, — what they can grasp without laborious effort, what amuses, takes them out of the ruts of daily life, or makes that life more interesting. Men like to learn useful facts, to hear what is going on in the world, what has to do with their own and their neighbors’ business, to get in a nutshell, in easy readable form, the results of scientific research, travel, and exploration, and to know something of popular interest about famous people in various lines. Some women like these things, too, but more prefer to be ushered into a world where faculties in themselves, to which their prosy lives give little play, may get a sort of exercise ; their hunger for the romantic, the sentimental, and thrilling feeds upon novels and romances beyond number. And all the tribe of young folks from school like much the same sort of thing, only writ larger, — both parents and children manifesting the natural, untutored taste, untroubled by literary verdicts or standards. O hard fate of a classic, to fall into such hands as these ! No halo around the head, no laurel wreath crowning the brow, no medals of honor on the breast, no silver locks of age, make the slightest difference to its judges, and it must stand with the rabble and be put to the test. Is the author’s style difficult ? Then he is dismissed without a hearing. Has it delicate beauties ? They go for nothing; they are not perceived. Has he treasures of deep thought? These things are too remote ; life is too hurried. Can he tell a good story ? Then he will pass ; but he must expect to find himself with strange bedfellows in his reader’s approval, and often be forced to take a seat below some scribbler at whose name his gorge has ever risen. Can he say shrewd, sensible things about life, real life, and put them in terse, telling shape ? Then he will pass ; but here again he will find himself in company with solemn - faced venders of musty platitudes, soul-wearying commonplaces, without one redeeming touch of grace in the utterance. For a discriminating taste is the product of slow growth, of hereditary influences, home environment through many a year, reading and wise teaching, and study long continued, — except in the few cases of people born, it would seem, with a natural literary bent. Would that we could believe that an essential soundness of taste dwells among the masses, and that in due time, having educated themselves out of their crude preference for poor stuff, they will emerge from their chrysalis a glorious literary constituency! But while the light of civilization is destined to shine farther and farther down the sides of the pyramid of humanity, the base is ever enlarging. While a few chosen ones are emerging from the mass with tastes purged, innumerable recruits are swelling the density below, necessarily children in taste and judgment. No, we must face the fact that hereafter the literary class will form only a small part of the great reading public, the people who demand the “popular.” We are not at the end, but at the beginning of the era. The people have arrived, and they have come to stay.

And now, turning from the realm of demand to the realm of supply, another set of facts is patent. Writers have arisen to match the readers, — writers who knew not Joseph. Their aim is simple, — to make books to supply the market demand. Their ears have been trained to keenness to detect what there is a call for, since great are the prizes to him who best succeeds in pleasing. And what they produce their publishers have learned how to sell to the best advantage of writer and seller. The advertisement of books has become a business for the expert. Book reviews seem to exist mainly, not to guard the reader from what is not good literature, but to help the writer sell his book. The foremost of principles is to convince that " everybody is reading ” a certain book. Our non-literary reading class are eager to read what the many like; for the one word that describes their taste is popular.

Who knows but this arrival in the field of a great untutored natural hunger, and this eager pressure to supply it, may eventually reinforce our literary life with fresh blood, and usher in an Elizabethan era of rich and vigorous life, a creative period ?

But though literature may be in the end the gainer, time and the worldforces, the great processes of evolution, will settle that. For us as individuals, here and now, hasty selection and cheap admiration are the great overhanging dangers to be faced and fought. We must be on the defensive, in a condition of things fraught with danger to reading and writing habits.

Let the lovers of good reading dare to go counter to the crowd; let them support one another in the resolve to be unfashionable, to plead ignorance of much that is being talked of. In reading, as in material possessions, there is a wholesome poverty that develops character, — the reading of the very best that man has written, with reflection thereupon ; and there is an enervating wealth, — hurried, unthinking, indiscriminate reading, the mere tickling of the intellectual palate, that becomes a matter of habit and a craving.

THERE is a certain clock-tick that is Clock-Ticks. as religious as a church bell, — more religious than some church bells. It goes with a big, sunny room, where it is always afternoon, with a rag carpet on the floor, and chairs set carefully against the wall. The clock stands high on a shelf, — at the end of the long mantel across the chimney, — and there it ticks away the sleepy time. . . . Tock-tock, tock-tock, comfortable and slow. No need for hurry. The family are all away. You are alone in the house, — except for the gray cat, purring by the stove, — alone in the world, — alone in time. . . . Tocktock, tock-tock, slow and sure. The sun pours in at the windows and bars the carpet. It shifts, silently as the stillness. And the slow, swinging tocks lift your soul out of space, out of time, and lay it gently back upon the infinite. Tock-tock. It soothes you like a dream — and a promise. Home-home, rest-rest, home-home. . . . Time was not made to do things in, but for being. Is there anything you could do, by chance, that would amount to as much as this slow, sleepy afternoon, with its touch on the soul and its long, unnumbered tocks ? They hold one deep through the years and come creeping back, at unawares. Above the roar of the street and the toss of the wind — listen, you can hear them now. . . . The house sinks silent about you, and the long afternoon holds you. You did not guess how deep it was, nor how true. The place was not home, — some farmhouse, perhaps, where you passed the days and waited for life. And now you understand that you have never lived, except in a few still hours, — careless, full-fraught moments lifted out of the days and nights and set forever in a sunny place.

It is a very common room where the old clock ticks. Four chairs and a sofa and table. No pillows, no rugs, and no hangings to smother the sound ; and no pictures and bricabrac to shatter it to bits. Have you heard, perhaps, a modern French clock — Clackety-clack, clacketyclick, Push-push-push ? There are always ornaments on the shelf where it stands, and ornaments on the table, and on the floor. It has gilt on its face and jewels on its hands, and it lives very fast, — sixty minutes to the hour and twentyfour hours to the day, — hurried hours, breathless minutes, crammed to the brim with excitement. . . . Clackety-clack, clackety-cliek, Push-push-push, Quickquick-quick ! When I find one in the chamber where I am to sleep, I always look carefully about for some safe hole in which to bestow it. If no other offers, my traveling-bag will at least muffle its strenuous voice till the coming of the morn. But alas, if the clock be small and round and easily hidden from sight in stray corners of the bag ! Twice have I borne away the timepiece offered for my delectation. Twice has it fallen to my lot to explain to an energetic hostess my peculiar conduct. Now I always put it under the mattress. If I go away and forget it, I am only regarded as a little crazy, which is surely better than rolling up a reputation for kleptomania.

Not till all the clocks of modern times are drowned in the depths of the sea shall we recover peace and serenity. Clackety-clack, on a thousand walls they beat, — filled with alarms and strikes and whirs, breaking your sleep snap in twain, with dreams half done. In our ears they click, day and night. On our souls they dance; and their tune is the tune of death.

I swing back into the past. I catch its rhythm, slow and sure. There is no hurry but the hurry of the heart that runs to meet its own, and no power to compel us but the power of love.