Bound Volumes

They Furnish Fun

A pleasant combination sandwich is to be found in: a shady spot, a long-chair, a lazy feeling, tobacco and a bound volume of some magazine.

The particular magazine in question does not matter so much. But the volume should be ten years old or overtime enough for the women’s clothes in the illustrations to look absurd. Otherwise you might remember some of the stories.

A bound volume of Punch or Life —and you can study dispassionately the periodicity of recurrence of all our jokes. Some jokes repeat every two or three years, others (like Halley’s Comet) take longer. A little luck—and you can predict unerringly just what grey-bearded quips will march from the storehouse to reappear, all reglanded and mineralaved, in The Naughtinesses of 1924. Then there are the political cartoons—stings drawn by time— bringing only a philosophic wonder to the mind. The editorials in the weeklies—”the country will be ruined should B be elected, should the X law pass.” B was elected—did he die in 1900 or was it 1901? The X law passed—and is as forgotten as the names of Secretaries of Agriculture. “Vanity—all is Vanity,” say the yellow leaves of the bound volumes.

Here, tucked away in a corner, is a poem by a man now famous throughout the English-speaking world — bought as a space-filler then. Here is the one fine short story published by another—now his novels sell by the hundred thousand, but if he is remembered beyond a decade it will be for that short story. A ponderous article shivers at the radicalism of certain daring young artists — now safely tucked away by the new sophisticates on the dusty shelf of reactionary classicism. Another proves a European War impossible with the most convincing sort of statistics. Another wildly prophesies a heavier-than-air machine that will actually fly across the Atlantic.

The bicycle craze. Princess dresses — monkey-dinners at Newport — What’s Wrong With Our Colleges? (that hardy perennial)—McKinley— the Bland-Allison Act—Battles and Leaders of the Civil War—Cartoons of Nicholas II and Wilhelm II— Joseph Chamberlain—Franz Josef— how odd they look!

In fact, a little oasis of peace where the mind can recuperate from all Modern and Vital Questions—where it can even laugh at them without rancor. All out of a country library, in the shade of an. appletree! S. V. B.