THE LIBRARIAN'S STORY
Librarians are a singular class of men,—or rather, a class of singular men. I choose the latter phrase, because I think that the singularities do not arise from the employment, but characterize the men who are most likely to gravitate toward it. A great philosopher, whom nobody knows, once stated the Problem of Humanity thus: “There are two kinds of people,—round people, and threecornered people; and two kinds of holes, —round holes, and three-cornered holes. All mysterious providences, misfortunes, dispensations, evils, and wrong things generally, are attributable to this cause, namely, that round people get into threecornered holes, and three-cornered people get into round holes.” The librarian is not only a three-cornered person, but a many-cornered one,—a human polyhedron. And he is in his right place,—a many-cornered man in a many-cornered hole; especially if the hole be like that which I am thinking of,—an Historical Library.
The only bibliothecarian peculiarity in point at present is, a gift to root up, (country boys, speaking of pigs, say rootle; it is more onomatopoeian,) to rootle up the most obscure and useless pieces of information; not, like Mr. Radgett, to work them into a chain of connected evidence for some actual purpose, but merely to know them, to possess a record of them, either as found in some printed or manuscript document, or as recorded by the librarian himself; and to keep the record pickled away in some place where it will be as little likely as possible to be found or read by anybody else.
So much concerning Librarians; a word now about Character. Bad blood is hereditary. I don’t mean scrofulous, but wicked blood. Vicious tendencies pass down in a family, appearing in the most various manifestations, until at last the evil of the race works its only possible remedy, by resulting in its extinction. There is, in some sense, an absolute unity amongst the successive generations of those of one blood; at least, so much so that our feeling of poctical justice is rather gratified than otherwise when the crimes of one are avenged, it may be a century after, upon the person of another of the name. This was the truth which underlay the vast gloomy fables of the ancient Fates, and the stories of the inevitable destruction of the great ancient houses of Greece. It is the same which the Indian feels when he revenges upon one of the white race the wrongs inflicted by another. Succession in time does not interfere with the stern promise of Jehovah to visit the sins of the fathers upon the children.—The reader will see presently how I have been led into this train of reflection.
My predecessor in office had a strong fancy for Numismatology. I have, too ; nobody would more enjoy a vast collection of coins; but, oddly enough, I should prefer contemporary ones. He was simple and almost penurious in personal expenditure; yet, besides a great collection of books, he had, from his scanty income, got together, in the course of a long life, a large and very valuable collection of coins and medals, especially rich in gold. These coins lay—they do not now, for I assure you I keep them pretty carefully out of sight latterly— luxuriously imbedded in a neat case, among the great collection of antique objects, weapons, ornaments, furniture, clothing, etc., which usually accumulate within the precincts of an Historical Society’s Library.
In the one under my charge there is an astonishing number of them; and naturally, where the long series of the ancient Indian wars, and later ones with civilized foes, form together so strong a
