Ian Hay

“ So I took this little house, and set up my useless—because mainly ornamental—little library, and endeavoured to win the respect of my new neighbours by dispensing an erudition which was in reality second-hand. Second-hand, sir!" He looked up wistfully. "Am I an impostor?"
"All learning is second-hand," I said. "You are not an impostor." ”

“ Poor soul, she's almost illiterate; and the printed word is a sacred mystery to such!"
"You are an authority on human nature, Mr. Baxter, I perceive."
"You are kind to say so, sir. But I was a mere disciple of the late Archdeacon. It's a strange thing, human nature," he continued pensively. "I have studied it all my life. My recreation is to help it—and it needs all the help it can get. I am at home every evening, and folk look in quite regularly to ask for my guidance on some literary, historical, or scientific point of interest. 'Consulting The Oracle,' they are kind enough to call it. ”

“ Next morning, Ada Weeks and I sat facing one another in my study, across a newly opened packing-case. It contained Mr. Baxter's Library.
"But why must we?" I asked.
"We needn't worry why. He said every blessed book was to be destroyed, and that's all there is about it. Mr. McAndrew is burning rubbish outside: I've told him we've got some more for him. Let's get it over, and go back to Grampa—sir," concluded Ada suddenly, remembering somewhat tardily that she was addressing her employer. ”

“ Ada Weeks produced a key from under her grandfather's pillow and unlocked one of the doors, revealing the books. They were all neatly covered in brown paper. There were no titles on the backs, but each book bore a number, in sprawling, irregular figures.
"There, sir!" announced my patient, with simple pride. "There you behold the accumulated wealth of a man who is just as wealthy as he wishes to be!"
"Rats!" remarked a sharp voice from the recesses of the library; but the old gentleman appeared not to hear.
"It dates from the lamented death of the late Archdeacon. ”

“ Pettigrew, the druggist next door, had emerged from behind the carved wooden screen which masks the mysteries of his dispensing department from the layman's eye, and was now visible through the shop window, busy with white paper and sealing-wax.
"When a seeker after knowledge calls upon me," explained the indefatigable Mr. Baxter, "I select from my library the appropriate volume and read, or recite, to him such passages as appear to me most applicable to his case. ”

“ Pettigrew here," began the undertaker, "knowing Mr. Baxter's fondness for giving information and advice, brought him a little poser last time we came here. We asked him if he could find anything in his library about an ancient Greek party called Cinchona. He said he would look Mr. Cinchona up. This evening he had his little lecture all ready for us. Highly enjoyable, it was. Cinchona, it seems, was one of the less-known figures in Ancient Greek Mythology—wasn't that it, Pettigrew?" ”

“ There were socially ambitious young shop-assistants, anxious to acquire a literary polish likely to impress the opposite sex. There were artisans who wished to advance themselves in the technique of their profession. There were heavy-handed, heavy-shouldered, rather wistful men, with muscles made lusty by hard physical labour, conscious of minds grown puny and attenuated for lack of intellectual nourishment. There were humble folk with genuine literary leanings, who came to consult Mr. Baxter's poems and essays, and sometimes shyly proffered compositions of their own for perusal and comment. ”

“ A man with a library of his own, however small, is at once a capitalist who can never go bankrupt and an aristocrat who moves in circles to which the common herd cannot penetrate. In other words, a man with a library is a man respected!' That was why I founded my own, sir. The Archdeacon himself contributed the first few volumes. ”

“ The peculiar thing about Baxter is that, though he will read or quote from any book in his library for your delectation, he practically never permits any one to take the book out of his hands. No human eye, for instance, has ever fallen upon the printed pages of Baxter's Homer. ”

“ So he spoke quite feelingly of the empty chair—the chair which was to have been occupied by “our eminent fellow citizen, Mr. Buxton. It was a cheering and reassuring sign,” he continued, “of our national and civic solidity of character and sense of proportion that Broxborough, where to the unseeing eye of the outside world nothing seemed to matter save linoleum, should yet be able, amid its manifold industrial activities, to produce a man—a man in quite humble circumstances—to whom linoleum was nothing and letters everything. Napoleon had called us a nation of shopkeepers ”

“ Baxter took no notice, but disappeared into the bookshop.
MR. PETTIGREW handed me my bottle. “One of our characters, that old fellow,” he said. “Quite a poor man, but possesses an extensive library, quite extensive. His learning is at the service of his fellow citizens. He likes to be called the Oracle. Supposing you want to know something about Shakspere, or Julius Cæsar, or Wireless Telegraphy, or Patagonia, you go to Baxter. You press the button and he does the rest. Lives a bit in the clouds, of course: and I wouldn't go so far as to say that his information is always infallible. ”

“ The months passed; such constructive energy as the district could compass was devoted to Government housing schemes, and still the Pantheon lay in ruins.
But one day a man from Pittsburgh, who had been born in Broxborough nearly forty years previously, and had relinquished his domicile and civil status therein by becoming an American citizen at the age of three, returned, rugged, prosperous, and beneficently sentimental, to revisit the haunts of his youth, and refresh his somewhat imperfect memories of his birthplace. ”

“ I said, approaching the bookcase and inspecting the top shelf. "Who is this big fellow—Number Eighty-Seven?"
I half raised my hand; but in a flash Ada Weeks was before me.
"It's Shakespeare," she announced, snatching the volume down and holding it to her flat little bosom. "Presentation!"
"Ada is always a little jealous about letting the presentation volumes out of her hands," explained Mr. Baxter, from the bed. "That book was conferred upon me as a small token of esteem by a certain literary circle in London in which I was interested before I came here, many years ago. ”

“ POSSIBLY it may have occurred to the reader to wonder whether in a community at once so erudite and progressive as Broxborough—we possess both a cathedral close and a linoleum factory, you will remember—there can have been no official alternative to Twenty-one, The Common, no public lecture courses.
In truth, Broxborough once had all these things. Before the war there existed an institution known as Broxborough Pantheon. Here was an excellent library of reference; lectures and classes, too, were constantly in operation throughout the winter months. ”

“ I announced in what I have always hoped is a breezy voice, “you people really must keep your debates academic. Here you are, flying straight up in the air over some twopenny, ha'penny point of scholarship, and exciting one of my most valued patients”—I patted Baxter solemnly on the shoulder—“to an attack of insomnia. You mustn't do it, you know, especially just now.”
“What do you mean—'just now'?” demanded asked Ada quickly. She shot an apprehensive glance at her grandfather's drawn and colorless features.
“I mean this: You know the opening of Crake Hall takes place on Saturday?” ”

“ In fact, he is only mentioned once or twice in the whole of ancient literature. I have been dipping into my Homer"—he indicated the familiar volume in his hand—"and I find—"
"May I look for myself?" asked Pettigrew suddenly; and before even Ada could spring to the old man's side he had snatched the book and opened it. Baxter put out his hand anxiously.
"Let me find the passage for you, Mr. Pettigrew," he said. "I do not know whether you are familiar with ancient Greek—"
"No," said Mr. Pettigrew grimly, looking up from the book, "I am not. But I am familiar with modern German. ”

“ His only companions were an aged cook-housekeeper and Adam Baxter. During Baxter's period of service he contrived to amass an enormous quantity of more or less useless book learning. He is regarded hereabouts as quite a savant. His erudition makes him respected by those who have none, and his library of miscellaneous rubbish gives him the status of a man of property. ”

“ It's queer how fussy people can be about ventilation, and drainage, and things like that, especially when they know they've got to live all their lives in a house where they have no more say in the ventilation and drainage than my aunt's cat. Grampa had to learn nearly the whole of this book, they wanted so many different bits of it. ”

“ I found the front door open. I might have walked in without ceremony; but, inspired by a very proper fear of Miss Ada Weeks, I tapped respectfully and waited. There was no response. Presently I became aware of voices proceeding from the front parlour, the door of which stood wide open just inside the passage. This is what I heard.
"Adenitis, and Adenoid Growths—that's the nearest I can find. Which do you want?"
"I think Adenoid Growths, my dear. Read it through once, as usual; then again line by line." ”

“ Then came a hard winter; work was scarce enough for skilled laborers, let alone unskilled. As for the illiterate, there was no market for them at all. I tramped from London to try my fortune elsewhere; and came to Broxborough. I was destitute; I sang in the streets for bread, songs I had learned by listening in public houses or at popular entertainments in my younger days.
“And there the late archdeacon found me. ”

“ The late archdeacon, sir, used to observe that a man should have no secrets from his banker, his lawyer, or his doctor—he had a great many from all three, but no matter. I have no banker, and no lawyer ”

“ Ada Weeks settled the question by wrenching the volume out of Pettigrew's hand and locking it into the “liberry.”
“You can go,” she announced. “We only entertain gentlemen here.”
Pettigrew took up his hat. Mould rose and did likewise. The rest of the company fidgeted uncomfortably in their seats. It was a particularly unpleasant moment.
“Good night, Mr. Baxter,” said Pettigrew, moving towards the door, which Miss Weeks was obligingly holding wide open for him. ”

“ The Mayor is an imperfect creature, but he possesses one superlative quality: he harbours no illusions about his own ability to grapple with the letter H. He declines to read the Address. Most of the Corporation are in the same boat—though they don't all admit it. ”

“ It is difficult to educate children so reared. They have no permanent place of abode; no particular school district is responsible for such little vagrants. So I grew up illiterate. My uncle died. I earned my living as best I could. ”

“ Thank you: that indeed will be an intellectual treat. I will peruse your manuscript at leisure, and comment upon it at our next meeting.... The Agnostics still bothering you, Mr. Clamworthy? Well, I am no theologian; but for sheer old-fashioned common sense I don't think you can beat Paley's 'Evidences of Christianity.' The late Archdeacon used to say that he always came back to Paley in the end. Ada, my dear, that passage I marked in Volume Forty-Seven! Now friends, 'The Tempest'!"
After that the Presentation Shakespeare would be opened, and Mr. Baxter would declaim selected passages. ”

“ Baxter is a self-made man of letters," I said. "He got most of his learning second-hand from the Archdeacon. Perhaps the Archdeacon was not a student of Burns, either."
The enormity of this suggestion quite paralyzed McAndrew for a while. Presently he recovered sufficiently to resume: "Yon Archdeacon was a doited sort of body. He lived all alone in yon dreich-lookin' house in the Cathedral Close nigh fufty year. He had naething aboot him but books, and naebody aboot him but an auld wife, Mistress Corby, and Baxter. She's deid now, but her dochter married on the ironmonger in High Street. ”

“ If I read it it would be regarded as propaganda of the the Established Church. The forces of town and chapel would combine to fall upon me and crush me. No, we must have a citizen—a citizen of credit and renown, locally known and esteemed.” The rector eyed me furtively. ”

“ Put it back, Ada; and show the doctor an older friend. Something out of the late archdeacon's library, say number sixteen,”
Miss Ada_ pulled down the volume indicated, blew viciously upon the top edges, and handed it to me. It proved to be part of an almost obsolete encyclopedia.
“A useful little compendium of knowledge,” was Mr. Baxter's comment. “Unfortunately, I have not the set complete; only eight volumes. They go as far as 'Pocahontas.' There are four more really.”
“'Prairie Oyster' to 'Zymotic,'” confirmed the ever-ready Weeks. ”