OLD WHISPERINGS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LVII, Issue 17471, 15 May 1920, Page 1 (Supplement)

OLD WHISPERINGS.

TRAVEL BY BOOK. BY FRANK MORION. A friend of mine who believes infinitely in ghost*, says that spiritual influences or emanations hang about all material things, so that a penholder may be haunted as easily as a house. He will discourse erf spectres and phantasms and vice clemen-. tals. He will tell of disembodied spirit* that are visible as partly materialised forms, oT unhappy spirits that have never known material existence but may be seen by clear eyes as shadows slipping along furtively in the daylight. It is all very interesting, and there may even be something in it. Perhaps some men have eyes for spirits just as some men have ears for music. I read a book once, written by a man who lived on most intimate terms with spooks of all sorts. He would see ghostly cats and dogs and pigs leering over the shoulders of bad people. Or,he would be sitting in his study at dusk when a whiff of icy air across the back of his neck would warn him of the approach of some supernatural or superphysical presence. Then things would happen. The room might suddenly bo filled with thumps and whinings. Once he heard a sound as of something falling down an enormous' chasm, striking the sides as it went, and finally hitting water at the bottom. And then he saw a gaunt opening for a moment in the floor, and from it came an agonised, horrible, yellow hand clawing for him. It can't be at all comfortable to see things like that.

Ghosts in Old Books, But what I am chiefly thinking at the time is the fact that there may be gentle ghost* in old books. I have even a comparatively modern book among my IoU-"Loimologie, or An Historical Account of the Plague in London in 1665. With precautionary Directions against the like Contagion." By Nath. Hodges, M.D. and Fellow of the College of Physicians, who resided in the city all that time. London: Printed for B. Bell, at the Cross Keys and Bible in Cornhill j' and J. Oiborn, at the Oxford Arras, in Lombard Street, 1720. There is a curious thing about the book.

Sometime* it is completely odourless or

only has the slightest smell of old paper. But at other times it smells clearly and strongly of violets. There is no mistake about that. And how violet* an happen to be associated with an old book on the Plague I can't guess; nor am I able to explain why such a fragrance comes and goes. How could one associate sweet flowers with this?— In Order whereunto, it is to be observed, that a Law was oftde for ranking the Houses'of Infected Parsons with a Bed Crest, having with it this subscription. "LORD HAVE MERCY UPON US. Ape! that a Guard should there continually attend, both to .hand to the Sick the b«oms»ti«« of , Food and Medicine, and to restrain thra from coming Abroad until Forty Days -after their Recovery. It is shown in a table that in London alone there died of the Plague in that year of 1665, 68,596' persons. I am more puwled; than ever about the odour- of violate, and I think that the son!' of some ministering woman angel, mutt sometimes breathe upon a book that in life she consulted for charity's sake. A Glance of an Older Europe. I have another book that somehow upon occasion will give one a glance of an older Europe so vivid that it might be a picture flung from a lantern. Ordinarily it is just a rather dull and ponderous book of that ancient knowledge that was so often wrong; but sometimes late at night that book has taken me to old Amsterdam, and made me see the very streets, though there is nothing about the streets of old Amsterdam in the book. It is one of the few Elzevirs that I have carried over the wreck of years— J. A. Comenii lanva Lingvarvm Reserata. Cum Graeca Versione Theodori Simonii Holsati, Innumeris in locis emenriata a Stephano Curcellaeo: Qui etiam Gallicam novam adjunxit. _ Amsterodsroi, Apud Ludovicum Elzevinum, 1619. Cum Privilcgio. This John Amos Comeniua, grammarian mid divine, was born in Moravia in 1592, and ordained pastor in 1616. That was at Fulnec, where he superintended the school. When the persecution against the Protestants broke out, he fled to Lesna, in Poland, where he wrote the book, we are glancing at. After visiting England and Sweden, he returned to Lesna, which he left again when the Poles set fire to it. Then, after some further rambling from place to place, he settled in Amsterdam, and there printed his New Method of Teaching. He died in 1671. Tho book, as I said just now, is for the most part very dull. He tells us right at the beginning that to be learned is "to know the differences of things, and to call each thing by its name." That is a pretty good definition. Ho runs rapidly over all torts of subjects. Hear him on the Origin of the World, and the First Creation.

God. by His ineffable omnipotence, created all things out of nothing. For at the beginning there stretched a vast abysm, that which was called Space, where the heavens and the earth are at pretent. And he filled Space > with a certain formlesa and dark obscurity. From which as from * matter ho formed all corporeal creatures. . . . In the fixed stars Comenius saw nothing but "hanging lamps in the air, which turn incessantly and pierce the darkness with their light." So lie goes on from one thing to another. In everything as to which simple philosophy tells he is very wise. And he has a comfortable tone, if I may put it that way. Nothing of the harsh or puritanical about him. He is not in the (east busy at damning tho iwuls of his opponents. A persecuted Protestant, he does not rave against the Pope. Rather a fine old chap, I think, that banished parson who writes of all things in his exile. Rut why the book should bo able to take me so clearly back to Amsterdam 1 don't know, because I have other and rarer Elzevirs that take me nowhere in 1 articular.

Seeing the World.

All of which reminds me that what I may call travel by book is a delightful way of passing the time. It has, of course, no connection with books of travel, which are generally very dull and irksome. To travel by hook you take un some good book and open it at haphazard. You light upon a phrase that starts a train of thought, and getting aboard the train you follow wherever it may take you. I know no way of travelling to better advantage and seeing more of the world. I pause here a moment to give you an example of what I mean. I shall be away an hour at most. Bark again, and feeling very fit. The reference I came upon was to Alexandre Dumas. Note the stations or gettingoff places I have touched. Harry Quilter's "Opinions." papers on Adah Menken, Aiutole France "On Life and Letters," Birkbeck Hill's Letters, Miall's "Biology," "An Englishman in Paris," "L'Honneur est Satisfait," "A Paris Notebook," Lyt ton's Letters, Rirkett's Morris, Hueffer's "Ancient Lights," the amazing chapters on the crimes of the Borgias. Flow's that for an hour's travel? Here is the richest and easiest of cheap excursions, You may not be able' to explain that odour of violets th&t comes and goes, or to tell me why a mere book by Comenius opens a window on Amsterdam. But you can all go travelling by book, whenever you have a mind to. And to we may happen to meet in all sorts of out-of-the-way places.