Forbidden Book: Notes and Gossip of Tabooed Literature by an Old Bibliophile

STENDAHL.COMMERCIAL life had never left me much time for making a business of pleasure and relaxa- tion, such as I see now around me as I have passed that uncertain meridian politely termed middle- age. Having fallen into what is called the sere and yellow category, I think I am entitled in my dotage to play at being a philosopher and find fault with my fel- low men, in revenge for that they did often scoff and laugh at me when I was younger. Such are the benefits of old age and experience. I was a long way over thirty and had never troubled to read a really obscene book, although I knew that such volumes existed. I had always been a lover of fiction, and having been brought up before the age of bicycles and lawn-tennis, I think I must have given a little more time to literature than our boys of to-day. Just about that time I stumbled across a catalogue of condemned works, and in hunting through it, I was struck by the wonderful titles of the books that had been persecuted, and was also stupefied to find how under different political regimes, so many great men had suffered for their opinions expressed in pamphlets or in gazettes, and how absurd it all seemed after a few years had passed. From thence to hunting up the books I saw in the catalogue was but a step, and so I blossomed into a bibliophile, if you can so call a. collector of forbidden books. For I never troubled much about any Others. This mania kept me amused and interested for some thirty years or more, and now I have set my house in order in view of the certain fact that I cannot live forever, and as I know not what will become of my library after my death, I preferred to get rid of it while I lived and so I gradually sold off my collection or exchanged for standard works. All that remains to remind me of many happy hours of relaxation and amused wonderment are the notes I used to make and the gossiping memories they evoke. These rambling reminiscences—or rather, a small part of them—I now jot down, and give them out for the pleasure and guidance of Other collectors of the same style—if such exist. I may be blamed for having had such vitiated taste as to gather a mass of literature capable of corrupting morals and sowing the seed of lust and licentiousness. To which I reply that I really and honesty believe that too great a fuss is made over obscene books, and nine times out of ten the harm they do is hardly worth talking about. When I was quite a child I was much struck with the performance of a somewhat wild pantomimic sketch, entitled, "Valentine and Orson," and thoroughly enjoyed the scene where the monster or wild man beholds his own ugliness, as for the first time in his existence he catches sight of his shaggy lineaments in the polished shield by Valentine. May not the smug-faced hypocrite railing against realism be of times nothing more than an Orson in disguise