Books and Ideas (27)

I read for ideas. Here are some of the ideas I have found in books.

Tales and Sketches. Parts One, Two, Three and Four. Nathaniel Hawthorne. (Continued)

“The Procession of Life.” Which type of person are you? “A man finds his rank according to the spirit of his crime. The manufactory where the demon of machinery annihilates the human soul, and the cotton-field where God’s image becomes a beast of burden. Those who exude the heavenliness of spirit, even though they have produced no deeds, but have encouraged others to produce them, are benefactors of mankind. Those who have never found their proper place in the world. Those who have committed some great mistake in life. The dreamer, who all his life long, has cherished the idea that he was peculiarly apt for something, but never could determine what it was.”

“The Celestial Railroad.” Idea is based on Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress. Names of characters match their chief characteristics, “Mr. Take-It-Easy,” etc. “I heard such bad accounts [of the Celestial City]…no business doing—no fun going on—nothing to drink, and no smoking allowed—and a thrumming of church-music from morning till night. At the end of the valley, as John Bunyan mentions, is a cavern, where, in his days, dwelt two cruel giants, Pope and Pagan, who had strewn the ground about their residence with the bones of slaughtered pilgrims. Vanity Fair: If a customer wished to renew his stock of youth, the dealers offered him a set of false teeth and an auburn wig; if he demanded peace of mind, they recommended opium or a brandy bottle.”

“Buds and Bird-Voices.” “All through the winter, too, the willow’s yellow twigs give it a sunny aspect, which is not without a cheering influence, even in the grayest and gloomiest day; beneath a clouded sky, it faithfully remembers the sunshine.” “The black birds are the noisiest of all our feathered citizens…congregate in contiguous tree-tops and vociferate with all the clamor and confusion of a turbulent political meeting.” “Will the world ever be so decayed that spring may not renew its greenness? Summer works in the present, and thinks not of the future; autumn is a rich conservative; winter has utterly lost its faith, and clings tremulously to the remembrance of what has been; but spring with its outgushing life….”

“Little Daffydowndilly.” “Daffydowndilly was so called because in his nature he resembled a flower…and loved to do only what was beautiful and agreeable, and took no delight in labor of any kind. …put under the care of this ugly-visaged schoolmaster, who never gave him any apples or cakes, and seemed to think that little boys were created only to get lessons.”

“Fire Worship.” “It is a great revolution in social and domestic life…this almost universal exchange of the open fireplace for the cheerless and ungenial stove. In one way or another, here and there, and all around us, the inventions of mankind are fast blotting the picturesque, the poetic and the beautiful out of human life. Afar, the wayfarer discerns the flickering flame, as it dances upon the windows, and hails it as a beacon-light of humanity, reminding him, in his cold and lonely path, that the world is not all snow, and solitude, and desolation. It is my belief that social intercourse cannot long continue what it has been, now that we have subtracted from it so important and vivifying an element as firelight. Fight for your hearths? There will be none throughout the land; fight for your stoves? not I, in faith.”

“A Good Man’s Miracle.” “In every good action there is a divine quality, which does not end with the completion of that particular deed, but goes on to bring forth good works in an infinite series.”

“The Intelligence Office.” “Old people wished for the delights of youth; a fop, for a fashionable coat; an idle reader, for a new novel; a versifier, for a rhyme to some stubborn word; a painter, for Titians’s secret of coloring; a prince for a cottage; a republican, for a kingdom and a palace; a libertine, for his neighbor’s wife…a poor man, for a crust of bread.”