Parnassus on Wheels, Christopher Morley [life changing books to read .TXT] 📗

some of its charms. I missed the Professor: missed his abrupt, direct way of saying things, and his whimsical wit. And I was annoyed by his skipping off without a word of goodbye. It didn’t seem natural. I partially appeased my irritation by stopping at a farmhouse on the other side of the river and selling a cookbook. Then I started along the road for Bath⁠—about five miles farther on. Peg’s foot didn’t seem to bother her so I thought it would be safe to travel that far before stopping for the night. Counting up the days (with some difficulty: it seemed as though I had been away from home a month), I remembered that this was Saturday night. I thought I would stay in Bath over Sunday and get a good rest. We jogged sedately along the road, and I got out a copy of Vanity Fair. I was so absorbed in Becky Sharp that I wouldn’t even interrupt myself to sell books at the houses we passed. I think reading a good book makes one modest. When you see the marvellous insight into human nature which a truly great book shows, it is bound to make you feel small⁠—like looking at the Dipper on a clear night, or seeing the winter sunrise when you go out to collect the morning eggs. And anything that makes you feel small is mighty good for you.

“What do you mean by a great book?” said the Professor⁠—I mean, I imagined him saying it. It seemed to me as if I could see him sitting there, with his corncob pipe in his hand and that quizzical little face of his looking sharply at me. Somehow, talking with the Professor had made me think. He was as good as one of those Scranton correspondence courses, I do believe, and no money to pay for postage.

Well, I said to the Professor⁠—to myself I mean⁠—let’s see: what is a good book? I don’t mean books like Henry James’s (he’s Andrew’s great idol. It always seemed to me that he had a kind of rush of words to the head and never stopped to sort them out properly). A good book ought to have something simple about it. And, like Eve, it ought to come from somewhere near the third rib: there ought to be a heart beating in it. A story that’s all forehead doesn’t amount to much. Anyway, it’ll never get over at a Dorcas meeting. That was the trouble with Henry James. Andrew talked so much about him that I took one of his books to read aloud at our sewing circle over at Redfield. Well, after one try we had to fall back on Pollyanna.

I haven’t been doing chores and running a farmhouse for fifteen years without getting some ideas about life⁠—and even about books. I wouldn’t set my lit’ry views up against yours, Professor (I was still talking to Mifflin in my mind), no, nor even against Andrew’s⁠—but as I say, I’ve got some ideas of my own. I’ve learned that honest work counts in writing books just as much as it does in washing dishes. I guess Andrew’s books must be some good after all because he surely does mull over them without end. I can forgive his being a shiftless farmer so long as he really does his literary chores up to the hilt. A man can be slack in everything else, if he does one thing as well as he possibly can. And I guess it won’t matter my being an ignoramus in literature so long as I’m rated A-1 in the kitchen. That’s what I used to think as I polished and scoured and scrubbed and dusted and swept and then set about getting dinner. If I ever sat down to read for ten minutes the cat would get into the custard. No woman in the country sits down for fifteen consecutive minutes between sunrise and sunset, anyway, unless she has half a dozen servants. And nobody knows anything about literature unless he spends most of his life sitting down. So there you are.

The cultivation of philosophic reflection was a new experience for me. Peg ambled along contentedly and the dog trailed under Parnassus where I had tied him. I read Vanity Fair and thought about all sorts of things. Once I got out to pick some scarlet maple leaves that attracted me. The motors passing annoyed me with their dust and noise, but by and by one of them stopped, looked at my outfit curiously, and then asked to see some books. I put up the flaps for them and we pulled off to one side of the road and had a good talk. They bought two or three books, too.

By the time I neared Bath the hands of my watch pointed to supper. I was still a bit shy of Mifflin’s scheme of stopping overnight at farmhouses, so I thought I’d go right into the town and look for a hotel. The next day was Sunday, so it seemed reasonable to give the horse a good rest and stay in Bath two nights. The Hominy House looked clean and old fashioned, and the name amused me, so in I went. It was a kind of high class boarding house, with mostly old women around. It looked to me almost literary and Elbert Hubbardish compared to the Grand Central in Shelby. The folks there stared at me somewhat suspiciously and I half thought they were going to say they didn’t take pedlars; but when I flashed a new five dollar bill at the desk I got good service. A five dollar bill is a patent of nobility in New England.

My! how I enjoyed that creamed chicken on toast, and buckwheat cakes with syrup! After you get used to cooking all your own grub, a meal off someone else’s stove is the finest kind of treat. After supper I was all prepared to sit out