either. The publishers may not find a market so easily for so many books that the world cannot wisely spare the money to buy or the time to read. But they will not expect the rest of us to shed many tears over that. They will find, in the long run, that the larger the sale of good books in paper covers is, the larger will be the call for good books in durable binding. Chromos can never drive choice paintings from the market case. Any family which is not too poor to keep a dog or wear shoes may have a library of its own which shall contain most of the books in the world that are best worth reading. Many of the books which one wishes to read once and only once can be bought at less expense, where time is as good as money, than they can be drawn from a public library or borrowed of a neighbor. The sulphurous dime novel is beaten on its own ground by the classics. It is good to see how it is retreat--the better and cheaper they are the more of a ing, even on the news stands, before Walter Scott and Thomas Hughes! Naturally enough the great publishing houses are disturbed by the turn things have taken. They complain that these cheap publishers are 'pirates," who pay no royalty to the authors whose wares they sell. And the same men who, for reasons of their own, have heretofore resisted the movement for an international copyright are now supporting it, in the hope that it will stand as a dam against this freshet of cheap books. To other people, however, one or two things seem quite obvious in this connection. The first is that the cry of pirates does not come in the best taste from that quarter. The old houses make a great show of courtesies to foreign authors. It is no secret that the publishers have frequently been better satisfied than the authors with the nature of these courtesies. The difference between the "pirates" and the business rivals that call them so, seems to be that the former take the works of foreign authors and-in most cases, probably-pay nothing in return; while the latter take them and pay-whatever they choose to! though this in not a few cases must be conceded to be an equitable per cent. The " courtesies" of publishers on either side of the sea to authors on the other side will not, in many instances, bear the most rigid scrutiny. Furthermore, it is evident that the cheap publishers might pay a reasonable copyright-and four or five cents a copy, for such large editions, would be reasonable-without seriously increasing the cost of their publications or restricting their sale. And their occupation would not be gone if they should be shut out from the use of works by living or recent authors. Most of the best reading in the world-poetry, story, tragedy -is beyond the reach of copyright protection. Nine out of ten of the great books, the books all the world ought to have in reach, could still be supplied in this cheap form. And the probabilities are that the field which these cheap publishers have already occupied in such heavy force will steadily enlarge its boundaries. Home authors whose works command a sale, without advertising of Corliss engine power to push them, will learn the advantage of a small copyright with large sales over a large copyright on small editions. This movement need not alarm "the trade," demand they make for finer pictures. The reading world will not renounce any luxuries of fine paper, nice illustrations and good binding in its books that it really can afford to pay for. Those books which are its intellectual tools and as such often taken from the shel', must be well made. Paper covers will never answer, either, for the Sunday-school library! That rich vein can still be worked! DR. GUTHRIE'S WAY. Were Dr. Guthrie living now the theological seminaries would surely levy on him for a course of lectures on preaching. The man who knew how to reach the heathen of the Cowgate with the same gospel discourses that delighted the most learned church-goers of the Scotch Athens could have given priceless counsel to young ministers. Any one searching his memoirs for the explanation of his great pulpit success is arrested at once by two facts which stand out with most luminous distinctness. Good Company does not expect the old dogs to learn new tricks, but it begs leave to call the attention of the young men who are just entering the ministry to these two significant characteristics in Dr. Guthrie's pulpit work. The first is the thoroughness in the preparation of his discourses. He was not only pains-taking and diligent in gathering fresh and rich material for them, but he wrote out every sermon at length and then committed it to memory! He wrote it out because he believed that the preacher's message is of such supreme importance that it should have the most perfect form he can give it. Fluent beyond most men in extempore discourse he would not trust the uncertain inspiration of the moment to clothe or shape his thoughts. He committed the whole sermon to memory because he would on no conditions have the electric communication between his eyes and his hearers' broken by a manuscript. He deemed it absolutely impossible to move an audience as powerfully by reading a sermon as by speaking it. The reading, the meditation, the social intercourse, by means of which he supplied the reservoir from which he drew his rich material, had their own hours and a full allowance of them, every day. But he gave the three or four best morning hours, six days in a week, wholly to the work of putting his sermon on paper and committing it to memory. That he might cultivate a speaking style in composition he wrote aloud, with an imaginary audience before him. That the words might have the more freshness for himself in the final utterance, and so be more likely to rouse his hearers, he committed in silence. This practice of committing was also of double service in testing his work. He found that the passage which did not stick to his memory easily did not, commonly, make much of an impression on his listeners. Therefore, in writing his sermons, he left every other page blank, that he might have ample space, in this further revision, for any changes that would make his statements more lucid, his descriptions more graphic, his appeals more pathetic-for filling it up, as he was wont to say, "with what would both strike and stick." The other characteristic was his exceedingly effective use of illustrations. At the outset he seemed to have no greater gifts in this direction than most ministers. But he was quick to recognize what frequent and potent use the Old Testament prophets made of metaphors and stories in delivering their message, and to mark how freely He who spake as never man spake used parables, and analogies, and the incidents of daily life to illustrate his discourses. He concluded that most other men and women were much of the same mind as the old lady who declared that the best parts of the Bible for her were "the likes." And he set himself with all determination to learn how to illustrate the truth-how to make his message clear, vivid, rememberable. His success was most complete. Illustrations of singular force and freshness came to him, as soon as he had trained himself to see them, from earth and air and sea, from the commonest experiences of daily life, from the most familiar pages of history. Kindled by them how the truth flamed as he held it before his hearers! The scenes which he depicted were so life-like that they sometimes seemed to stand in reality before all eyes. Speaking at one time of the perils of the impenitent life he described a shipwreck and the launching of a life-boat to save the imperiled crew. He made the tragic scene so real that a young naval officer, sitting in the congregation, jumped to his feet and began pull ing off his coat to help man the life-boat, utterly forgetting where he was. Pres. McCosh tells of a public meeting at which he himself was present in which Guthrie's stories and illustrations had alternately and repeatedly moved the people to laughter and to tears. At last a man rose from his seat, holding his aching sides while the tears were still undried on his cheeks, and said, "Please Maister Guthrie, stop! We can stand this nae langer.' But he was not by any means a mere story-teller. Sir William Hamilton pronounced him the best preacher he ever heard, and when some one in reply to this remark criticised him as not logical, the great logician answered, "He has the best kind of logic; there is but one step between his premise and conclusion." Good Company does not say that all young ministers should take Dr. Guthrie as their model. But it begs to call their attention specially to the pains-taking labor which was the price that great preacher gladly paid for the power of reaching men, and incidentally to the simple but vivid form in which he brought the truth home to them. In these days the best religious literature of the ages is, as never before, in reach of the people who sit in the pews. No minister can hope to hold his own who does slouchy work in his sermons. He cannot expect his hearers to care much for his message if he does not care enough for it himself to put it in the best form he possibly can. No more, on the other hand, can people who give their minister too much work to do expect him to do good work. While the changing times seem to demand more and more from the preacher every year in the way of pulpit preparation, they seem also to multiply the duties that rob him of the time and strength that he needs for such preparation. Dr. Guthrie bimself during the earlier years of his ministry wrote and preached but one sermon a week. To write two sermons a week he pronounced, even in his old age, a serious task for any man and an almost impossible task for a raw young man to do well." He quoted his friend and parishioner Hugh Miller, no mean judge in such matters, as expressing wonder how a minister could come forth Sunday after Sunday with even one good and finished discourse, and was much of the same opinion as Robert Hall in his answer to the question of some one who asked him how many sermons he thought a minister might get up each week. "If he is a deep thinker and great condenser," was Hall's reply, "he may get up one; if he is an ordinary man, two; but if he is an ass, sir, he will produce half a dozen!" Happy is the minister who has Dr. Guthrie's knack for hard work and who does not find more hard work laid on him than he can possibly do. GOOD COMPANY. VOL. V.-1880.-NO. XI. SOME NOTES OF TRAVEL. ROBABLY it was the stopping of the train that awakened me, not suddenly but gradually, and not fully. The slight jar and swing of the sleeping coach on a well-built road seems to joggle the brain to sleep, the loud roar of the whizzing wheels on the steel track excludes all minor noises-it is the fitful and little noises that disturb the nerves-and the recumbent passenger is jostled forward feet foremost into the land of forgetfulness. When the swing and the jerking cease, he is apt to recover somewhat of his consciousness, and to awake enough to realize the pleasure of his irresponsible position. His feebly-acting mind rests with satisfaction upon his possession of a through ticket, which is paid for, his night's lodging is paid for, he has committed his destiny into the keeping of a Corporation, which is about as near the soulless Providence of the scientists as definition can get, and he cannot by taking thought retard or increase his progress, or hasten the hour when the dark porter shall draw the curtain and announce breakfast in half an hour. When the train paused, I lifted the curtain in a lower berth of the sleeping-car Sunnyside and looked out, without raising my head from the pillow. We were in the country, somewhere in the Mohawk Valley. I knew, even in my confused state, that it was early morning instead of early evening, not so much by the light-though a moment suffices to detect the difference be tween a fading and an increasing light—as by the kind of stir in the sky which precedes the dawn and is the exact opposite of the settling to repose which precedes the night. I refer of course to the haste in the clouds to go somewhere as if they had suddenly been summoned, the air of breaking up, discord and parting, the lifting of mists, the scurry of the light vapors, the important rolling away of masses of cloud, the coming and going in the upper air as of messengers rousing the world to business. That anything unusual was taking place had not yet been communicated to the farm premises where our coach stopped. The occupants of house and stables gave no sign of awakening. Perhaps they heard in their morning doze the accustomed whirr and halt of the Pacific Express at that hour, but did n't give a thought to the freight of immortal souls at their door, that car-load of beauty and wealth and perhaps genius, certainly of ambition, which would never pass that way again. Notwithstanding their indifference, I could not but feel regret that we must leave them in absolute and eternal ignorance of who they were and to what fortune and in what temper they would awake and begin life a couple of hours later. Would the "hired man be astir first, arousing the maids by the clatter of his big boots on the stairs; would the kitchen-maid be the first to steal down and fling open the back-door opening upon the orchard and sniff the blooming clover; or would the old Copyright, 1880, by Edward F. Merriam. All rights reserved. farmer come grunting out of his chamber on the lower floor, throw a weather eye to the east from the front porch, and then stump about to rouse the sluggish household? The day depends upon the beginning, and how would the family life begin this morning? Perhaps the young lady, home on her vacation from Vassar, was at this moment peeping through the blinds of the second-story corner window, taking the scent of the honeysuckle, the blossoms of which she could reach by leaning a little over the sill. It is out of just such retreats that the raving beauties come. Perhaps her brother-who is not to be called if he sleeps till noon-has brought a comrade home with him from Union, and the coeducation of the sexes will go on after all in the Mohawk farm-house. Perhaps the young lady was listeningin semi-consciousness on her snowy pillow -to the bewildering and inspiring overture of a hundred birds in the clump of maples on the slope below her window. The air was full of this concert in the silence that ensued on the pause of the train, and it was this jubilant bird-singing that caused me to raise the curtain. Of course I had no premonition of this charming family, whose acquaintance I should never make. A low stone wall ran along the road side, supporting the terrace, and draped in vines fresh with dew. It was an emblem to me of the solidity and grace of this retiring family. I was beginning to build upon this idea, and regretting that some of the most attractive places in this world are to us only water-stations, places of departure, when the creak of the couplings and the jerk of the car announced the jar and the swing of our continued travel, and the young woman from Vassar became like any other sweet girl graduate, whose aggregate existence in the world fills us with a gentle pain at the brevity of time and the want of opportunity. I know of no other place like the lower berth of a sleeping-car for meditation, dozing and happiness in the early morning. To look at the flying landscape from your pillow is not the same thing as looking at it when you sit upright. You do not seem to be hastening forward yourself, but the world is coming to meet you, and coming in a hurry. You feel that you are being jerked onward, but you see the clouds, the masses of trees, the farm-houses and the fences rushing the other way in a kind of commotion that is urgent. The liveliness and the stir of preparation that I had noticed in the upper sky while we tarried with the birds and the Vassar girl, now all took one direction. The trees were as mobile as the clouds. The strip of sky and earth visible was extended in depth to me but narrowed, flattened if I may say so, and become panoramic in character like a strip of canvas rapidly drawn along. And every moment as it fled by the shadows were growing fainter and the light in the east was vulgarizing the scene, till the illusion of a newly created earth was quite gone and I recog nized the world as I knew it, possessed and utilized, actually named, every foot of it, as such a country or such a town, or such a street and road. The world was astir. Man had come upon the scene. How much manhood and independence was there in these farm-houses and villages we were encountering with every revolution of the wheel? Were we now passing through a Tilden streak or a Conkling streak? Was this man, coming out to yoke his steers for the day's labor, proud to call himself a Grant man or a Blaine man, or was he distrusted as a "scratcher" who did not wear any label? What politician owns this region, and what statesman has the opinions and votes of this agricultural district in his pocket? For ten miles on either side of this quadruple highway with its eight lines of steel, is there any greater man, I wonder, than Mr. Vanderbilt, and is there any more fascinating topic of conversation than the luxury and speed of his special train that flashes along here occasionally sixty miles an hour? All night long I had been dimly conscious of the thundering pounding of freight trains; and as I lay here in the gray of the morning my window was darkened every now and then by the lumbering bulk of this moving traffic, flashes of red, and green, and blue, and white, with big lettering, latticed cattle cars, lumber platforms, coal bunks, and oil tanks. As we went west the signs of gross traffic increased. Long trains were always coming and going on these quadruple tracks. At the large stations on paraller sidings stood rows and rows of loaded and empty cars waiting their opportunity. At Rochester, where lines diverge, the passenger coaches were massed, long lines of the royal yellow of the "Central," and ranks on ranks of the gayly painted night coaches and drawing-room cars, a village of them, suggesting the vast rivers of travel that stream away over the west, the unceasing tide of passengers that night and day all the year round penetrate the empire by a hundred routes on errands of business and pleasure. These coaches are for Detroit, these for Chicago, these for St. Louis and the south-west, these for San Francisco. Such an opportunity of going everywhere in a luxury of accommodation unknown elsewhere in the world, is bewildering to an Eastern man accustomed to small trains and scant provision of palace cars. The traveler also begins to study the uniformed army of railway employés, station agents, conductors and train men. The noisy brakeman in his shirt sleeves has disappeared. The solitary conductor," the former curt autocrat of the train, is no longer so conspicuous. There are swarms of "conductors," every palace and sleeping coach has one, and there are porters and servants for the traveler's every need. Is it a mistaken observation that all these "conductors" and train men look alike, that they are nearly all large and sleek, well fed and good natured, with no intention of bullying the unfortunate traveler who is permitted to pass their way? At the Suspension Bridge there are more cars assembled, a sort of confluence of cars crowded together like the meeting of the waters in the deep chasm of the raging river. And no sooner have we come into Canada than the long trains of another traffic claim attention. As we slowly traverse the swinging bridge, there is a moment of hushed interest; the young lady who has never been west before is in a fever of anxiety lest she miss the gorge below while looking at the falls above; but with the majority of the passengers it is merely a moment of consciousness of possible peril, some of them do not even look out or raise the blinds-though this is the only position from which the falls can be viewed without a drain on the pocket. It is a great injustice to the hackmen and the other people who own this curiosity that this bridge is not boarded up. As soon as we have passed into her Majesty's dominion, the gratification of the sense of beauty is succeeded by the satisfaction of the sense of smell. There is a platform car which appears to carry the long boiler of a steamship. There is another and another; there are in fact trains of them. We have found out before however that they are not boilers, but oil tanks, and now we realize the fact in a new way. The whole land smells of petroleum. It is said to be a healthful odor. Canada must be a paradise for invalids, for the country reeks with this smell. Even in the diningroom car where white-capped and aproned black men serve us wines of France and fruits of the South, and we read a bill of fare of the most fascinating promise, we ask if the viands are cooked in or by petroleum. Neither, it happens; but the frugal Canadians grease the car-wheels with crude oil, and thus advertise the riches of their favored land. This oil traffic is only one of the smaller of the illustrations of what most impresses the Eastern traveler in the west, namely, the moving of things in bulk, in masses of raw material-the lumber trains, the cattle trains, the grain trains are better illustrations of it, and perhaps the passenger trains. It is this handling of materials in vast masses, the great volume of traffic, collection and distribution in smaller channels. In New England these streams are divided into rills, these great trains are broken up, a car goes here and a car there with the little freight needed by a small community, beef or grain or oil. Values increase as the rills diminish. The grossness of the car-load of iron is refined down into the bar of steel, into the package of knives, into the paper of needles. The bale of cotton has become innumerable spools of thread. The long train of cattle is reduced to a cow, to an ox, to a steak. The bulks are small, |
