Library / Literature & Fiction
Through the Magic Door
- Pages
- about 170
- Category
- Literature & Fiction
- Language
- English
- Reading time
- 3.1 h at 250 wpm
From the opening
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?
A short sample. Read the whole book
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