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Book and Publishing News from Publishers Newswire(tm)

Looking for Child to be on Cover of a New Book, 'The Model Child'
PHILADELPHIA, Pa. -- The Philadelphia literary world will celebrate the launch of two new players today, April 10th: Kay Square Press, a new publishing company focused on Philadelphia-area artists, their stories, and their art; and Kay Square's first release, 'With the Rich and Mighty: Emlen Etting of Philadelphia' (ISBN: 978-0-9815129-0-7), a critical biography by Kenneth C. Kaleta.

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NEW YORK, N.Y. -- Nathan Yungerberg, an accomplished model scout and professional child photographer is launching a nation-wide casting call to find the cover model for his highly anticipated book release, 'The Model Child: A Parents Guide to the Child Modeling Industry' (ISBN: 978-0-9817018-0-6).

Books: Hypatia

C >> Charles Kingsley >> Hypatia




And who could have helped looking at those four colossal kings, who
sat there grim and motionless, their huge hands laid upon their
knees in everlasting self-assured repose, seeming to bear up the
mountain on their stately heads? A sense of awe, weakness, all but
fear, came over him. He dare not stoop to take up the wood at his
feet, their great stern eyes watched him so steadily.

Round their knees and round their thrones were mystic characters
engraved, symbol after symbol, line below line--the ancient wisdom
of the Egyptians, wherein Moses the man of God was learned of old--
why should not he know it too? What awful secrets might not be
hidden there about the great world, past, present, and future, of
which he knew only so small a speck? Those kings who sat there,
they had known it all; their sharp lips seem parting, ready to speak
to him .... Oh that they would speak for once! .... and yet that
grim sneering smile, that seemed to look down on him from the
heights of their power and wisdom, with calm contempt .... him, the
poor youth, picking up the leaving and rags of their past majesty
.... He dared look at them no more.

So he looked past them into the temple halls; into a lustrous abyss
of cool green shade, deepening on and inward, pillar after pillar,
vista after vista, into deepest night. And dimly through the gloom
he could descry, on every wall and column, gorgeous arabesques, long
lines of pictured story; triumphs and labours; rows of captives in
foreign and fantastic dresses, leading strange animals, bearing the
tributes of unknown lands; rows of ladies at feasts, their heads
crowned with garlands, the fragrant lotus-flower in every hand,
while slaves brought wine and perfumes, and children sat upon their
knees, and husbands by their side; and dancing girls, in transparent
robes and golden girdles, tossed their tawny limbs wildly among the
throng .... What was the meaning of it all? Why had it all been?
Why had it gone on thus, the great world, century after century,
millennium after millennium, eating and drinking, and marrying and
giving in marriage, and knowing nothing better .... how could they
know anything better? Their forefathers had lost the light ages and
ages before they were born .... And Christ had not come for ages
and ages after they were dead .... How could they know? .... And
yet they were all in hell .... every one of them. Every one of
these ladies who sat there, with her bushy locks, and garlands, and
jewelled collars, and lotus-flowers, and gauzy dress, displaying all
her slender limbs-who, perhaps, when she was alive, smiled so
sweetly, and went so gaily, and had children, and friends, and never
once thought of what was going to happen to her--what must happen to
her .... She was in hell .... Burning for ever, and ever, and
ever, there below his feet. He stared down on the rocky floors. If
he could but see through them .... and the eye of faith could see
through them .... he should behold her writhing and twisting among
the flickering flame, scorched, glowing .... in everlasting agony,
such as the thought of enduring for a moment made him shudder. He
had burnt his hands once, when a palm-leaf but caught fire .... He
recollected what that was like .... She was enduring ten thousand
times more than that for ever. He should hear her shrieking in vain
for a drop of water to cool her tongue .... He had never heard a
human being shriek but once .... a boy bathing on the opposite Nile
bank, whom a crocodile had dragged down .... and that scream, faint
and distant as it came across the mighty tide, had rung intolerable
in his ears for days .... and to think of all which echoed through
those vaults of fire-for ever! Was the thought bearable!--was it
possible! Millions upon millions burning forever for Adam's fall
.... Could God be just in that? ....

It was the temptation of a fiend! He had entered the unhallowed
precincts, where devils still lingered about their ancient shrines;
he had let his eyes devour the abominations of the heathen, and
given place to the devil. He would flee home to confess it all to
his father. He would punish him as he deserved, pray for him,
forgive him. And yet could he tell him all? Could he, dare he
confess to him the whole truth--the insatiable craving to know the
mysteries of learning--to see the great roaring world of men, which
had been growing up in him slowly, month after month, till now it
had assumed this fearful shape? He could stay no longer in the
desert. This world which sent all souls to hell--was it as bad as
monks declared it was? It must be, else how could such be the fruit
of it? But it was too awful a thought to be taken on trust. No; he
must go and see.

Filled with such fearful questionings, half-inarticulate and vague,
like the thoughts of a child, the untutored youth went wandering on,
till he reached the edge of the cliff below which lay his home.
It lay pleasantly enough, that lonely Laura, or lane of rude
Cyclopean cells, under the perpetual shadow of the southern wall of
crags, amid its grove of ancient date-trees. A branching cavern in
the cliff supplied the purposes of a chapel, a storehouse, and a
hospital; while on the sunny slope across the glen lay the common
gardens of the brotherhood, green with millet, maize, and beans,
among which a tiny streamlet, husbanded and guided with the most
thrifty care, wandered down from the cliff foot, and spread
perpetual verdure over the little plot which voluntary and fraternal
labour had painfully redeemed from the inroads of the all-devouring
sand. For that garden, like everything else in the Laura, except
each brother's seven feet of stone sleeping-hut, was the common
property, and therefore the common care and joy of all. For the
common good, as well as for his own, each man had toiled up the glen
with his palm-leaf basket of black mud from the river Nile, over
whose broad sheet of silver the glen's mouth yawned abrupt. For the
common good, each man had swept the ledges clear of sand, and sown
in the scanty artificial soil, the harvest of which all were to
share alike. To buy clothes, books, and chapel furniture for the
common necessities, education, and worship, each man sat, day after
day, week after week, his mind full of high and heavenly thoughts,
weaving the leaves of their little palm-copse into baskets, which an
aged monk exchanged for goods with the more prosperous and
frequented monasteries of the opposite bank. Thither Philammon
rowed the old man over, week by week, in a light canoe of papyrus,
and fished, as he sat waiting for him, for the common meal. A
simple, happy, gentle life was that of the Laura, all portioned out
by rules and methods, which were held hardly less sacred than those
of the Scriptures, on which they were supposed (and not so wrongly
either) to have been framed. Each man had food and raiment, shelter
on earth, friends and counsellors, living trust in the continual
care of Almighty God; and, blazing before his eyes, by day and
night, the hope of everlasting glory beyond all poets' dreams ....
And what more would man have had in those days? Thither they had
fled out of cities, compared with which Paris is earnest and
Gomorrha chaste,--out of a rotten, infernal, dying world of tyrants
and slaves, hypocrites and wantons,--to ponder undisturbed on duty
and on judgment, on death and eternity, heaven and hell; to find a
common creed, a common interest, a common hope, common duties,
pleasures, and sorrows .... True, they had many of them fled from
the post where God had placed them, when they fled from man into the
Thebaid waste .... What sort of post and what sort of an age they
were, from which those old monks fled, we shall see, perhaps, before
this tale is told out.

'Thou art late, son,' said the abbot, steadfastly working away at
his palm-basket, as Philammon approached.

'Fuel is scarce, and I was forced to go far.'

'A monk should not answer till he is questioned. I did not ask the
reason. Where didst thou find that wood?'

'Before the temple, far up the glen.'

'The temple! What didst thou see there?'

No answer. Pambo looked up with his keen black eye.

'Thou hast entered it, and lusted after its abominations.'

'I--I did not enter; but I looked--'

'And what didst thou see? Women?'

Philammon was silent.

'Have I not bidden you never to look on the face of women? Are they
not the firstfruits of the devil, the authors of all evil, the
subtlest of all Satan's snares? Are they not accursed for ever, for
the deceit of their first mother, by whom sin entered into the
world? A woman first opened the gates of hell; and, until this day,
they are the portresses thereof. Unhappy boy! What hast thou
done?'

'They were but painted on the walls.'

'Ah!' said the abbot, as if suddenly relieved from a heavy burden.
'But how knewest thou them to be women, when thou hast never yet,
unless thou liest--which I believe not of thee--seen the face of a
daughter of Eve?'

'Perhaps--perhaps,' said Philammon, as if suddenly relieved by a new
suggestion--'perhaps they were only devils. They must have been, I
think, for they were so very beautiful.'

'Ah! how knowest thou that devils are beautiful?'

'I was launching the boat, a week ago, with Father Aufugus; and on
the bank,....not very near,....there were two creatures....with long
hair, and striped all over the lower half of their bodies with
black, and red, and yellow....and they were gathering flowers on the
shore. Father Aufugus turned away; but I .... I could not help
thinking them the most beautiful things that I had ever seen....so I
asked him why he turned away; and he said that those were the same
sort of devils which tempted the blessed St. Anthony. Then I
recollected having heard it read aloud, how Satan tempted Anthony in
the shape of a beautiful woman .... And so .... and so .... those
figures on the wall were very like .... and I thought they might
be....'

And the poor boy, who considered that he was making confession of a
deadly and shameful sin, blushed scarlet, and stammered, and at last
stopped.

'And thou thoughtest them beautiful? Oh utter corruption of the
flesh!--oh subtilty of Satan! The Lord forgive thee, as I do, my
poor child; henceforth thou goest not beyond the garden walls.'

'Not beyond the walls! Impossible! I cannot! If thou wert not my
father, I would say, I will not!--I must have liberty!--I must see
for myself--I must judge for myself, what this world is of which you
all talk so bitterly. I long for no pomps and vanities. I will
promise you this moment, if you will, never to re-enter a heathen
temple--to hide my face in the dust whenever I approach a woman.
But I must--I must see the world; I must see the great mother-church
in Alexandria, and the patriarch, and his clergy. If they can serve
God in the city, why not I? I could do more for God there than here
.... Not that I despise this work--not that I am ungrateful to you
--oh, never, never that!--but I pant for the battle. Let me go! I
am not discontented with you, but with myself. I know that
obedience is noble; but danger is nobler still. If you have seen
the world, why should not I? If you have fled from it because you
found it too evil to live in, why should not I, and return to you
here of my own will, never to leave you? And yet Cyril and his
clergy have not fled from it....'

Desperately and breathlessly did Philammon drive this speech out of
his inmost heart; and then waited, expecting the good abbot to
strike him on the spot. If he had, the young man would have
submitted patiently; so would any man, however venerable, in that
monastery. Why not? Duly, after long companionship, thought, and
prayer, they had elected Pambo for their abbot--Abba--father--the
wisest, eldest-hearted and headed of them--if he was that, it was
time that he should be obeyed. And obeyed he was, with a loyal,
reasonable love, and yet with an implicit, soldier-like obedience,
which many a king and conqueror might envy. Were they cowards and
slaves? The Roman legionaries should be good judges on that point.
They used to say that no armed barbarian, Goth or Vandal, Moor or
Spaniard, was so terrible as the unarmed monk of the Thebaid.

Twice the old man lifted his staff to strike; twice he laid it down
again; and then, slowly rising, left Philammon kneeling there, and
moved away deliberately, and with eyes fixed on the ground, to the
house of the brother Aufugus.

Every one in the Laura honoured Aufugus. There was a mystery about
him which heightened the charm of his surpassing sanctity, his
childlike sweetness and humility. It was whispered--when the monks
seldom and cautiously did whisper together in their lonely walks--
that he had been once a great man; that he had come from a great
city--perhaps from Rome itself. And the simple monks were proud to
think that they had among them a man who had seen Rome. At least,
Abbot Pambo respected him. He was never beaten; never even
reproved--perhaps he never required it; but still it was the meed of
all; and was not the abbot a little partial? Yet, certainly, when
Theophilus sent up a messenger from Alexandria, rousing every Laura
with the news of the sack of Rome by Alaric, did not Pambo take him
first to the cell of Aufugus, and sit with him there three whole
hours in secret consultation, before he told the awful story to the
rest of the brotherhood? And did not Aufugus himself give letters
to the messenger, written with his own hand, containing, as was
said, deep secrets of worldly policy, known only to himself? So,
when the little lane of holy men, each peering stealthily over his
plaiting work from the doorway of his sandstone cell, saw the abbot,
after his unwonted passion, leave the culprit kneeling, and take his
way toward the sage's dwelling, they judged that something strange
and delicate had befallen the common weal, and each wished, without
envy, that he were as wise as the man whose counsel was to solve the
difficulty.

For an hour or more the abbot remained there, talking earnestly and
low; and then a solemn sound as of the two old men praying with sobs
and tears; and every brother bowed his head, and whispered a hope
that He whom they served might guide them for the good of the Laura,
and of His Church, and of the great heathen world beyond; and still
Philammon knelt motionless, awaiting his sentence; his heart filled-
who can tell how? 'The heart knoweth its own bitterness, and a
stranger intermeddleth not with its joy.' So thought he as he
knelt; and so think I, too, knowing that in the pettiest character
there are unfathomable depths, which the poet, all-seeing though he
may pretend to be, can never analyse, but must only dimly guess at,
and still more dimly sketch them by the actions which they beget.

At last Pambo returned, deliberate, still, and slow, as he had gone,
and seating himself within his cell, spoke--

'And the youngest said, Father, give me the portion of goods that
falleth to my share .... And he took his journey into a far
country, and there wasted his substance with riotous living. Thou
shalt go, my son. But first come after me, and speak with Aufugus.'

Philammon, like everyone else, loved Aufugus; and when the abbot
retired and left the two alone together, he felt no dread or shame
about unburdening his whole heart to him. Long and passionately he
spoke, in answer to the gentle questions of the old man, who,
without the rigidity or pedantic solemnity of the monk, interrupted
the youth, and let himself be interrupted in return, gracefully,
genially, almost playfully. And yet there was a melancholy about
his tone as he answered to the youth's appeal--

'Tertullian, Origen, Clement, Cyprian--all these moved in the world;
all these and many more beside, whose names we honour, whose prayers
we invoke, were learned in the wisdom of the heathen, and fought and
laboured, unspotted, in the world; and why not I? Cyril the
patriarch himself, was he not called from the caves of Nitria to sit
on the throne of Alexandria?'

Slowly the old man lifted his band, and putting back the thick locks
of the kneeling youth, gazed, with soft pitying eyes, long and
earnestly into his face.

'And thou wouldst see the world, poor fool? And thou wouldst see
the world?'

'I would convert the world!'

'Thou must know it first. And shall I tell thee what that world is
like, which seems to thee so easy to convert? Here I sit, the poor
unknown old monk, until I die, fasting and praying, if perhaps God
will have mercy on my soul: but little thou knowest how I have seen
it. Little thou knowest, or thou wouldst be well content to rest
here till the end. I was Arsenius .... Ah! vain old man that I am!
Thou hast never heard that name, at which once queens would whisper
and grow pale. Vanitas vanitatum! omnia vanitas! And yet he, at
whose frown half the world trembles, has trembled himself at mine.
I was the tutor of Arcadius.'

'The Emperor of Byzantium?'

'Even so, my son, even so. There I saw the world which thou wouldst
see. And what saw I? Even what thou wilt see. Eunuchs the tyrants
of their own sovereigns. Bishops kissing the feet of parricides and
harlots. Saints tearing saints in pieces for a word, while sinners
cheer them on to the unnatural fight. Liars thanked for lying,
hypocrites taking pride in their hypocrisy. The many sold and
butchered for the malice, the caprice, the vanity of the few. The
plunderers of the poor plundered in their turn by worse devourers
than themselves. Every attempt at reform the parent of worse
scandals; every mercy begetting fresh cruelties; every persecutor
silenced, only to enable others to persecute him in their turn:
every devil who is exorcised, returning with seven others worsethan
himself; falsehood and selfishness, spite and lust, confusion seven
times confounded, Satan casting out Satan everywhere--from the
emperor who wantons on his throne, to the slave who blasphemes
beneath his fetters.'

'If Satan cast out Satan, his kingdom shall not stand.'

'In the world to come. But in this world it shall stand and
conquer, even worse and worse, until the end. These are the last
days spoken of by the prophets,--the beginning of woes such as never
have been on the earth before--"On earth distress of nations with
perplexity, men's hearts failing them for fear, and for the dread of
those things which are coming on the earth." I have seen it long.
Year after year I have watched them coming nearer and ever nearer in
their course like the whirling sand-storms of the desert, which
sweep past the caravan, and past again, and yet overwhelm it after
all--that black flood of the northern barbarians. I foretold it; I
prayed against it; but, like Cassandra's of old, my prophecy and my
prayers were alike unheard. My pupil spurned my warnings. The
lusts of youth, the intrigues of courtiers, were stronger than the
warning voice of God; then I ceased to hope; I ceased to pray for
the glorious city, for I knew that her sentence was gone forth; I
saw her in the spirit, even as St. John saw her in the Revelations;
her, and her sins, and her ruin. And I fled secretly at night, and
buried myself here in the desert, to await the end of the world.
Night and day I pray the Lord to accomplish His elect, and to hasten
His kingdom. Morning by morning I look up trembling, and yet in
hope, for the sign of the Son of man in heaven, when the sun shall
be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, and the stars
shall fall from heaven, and the skies pass away like a scroll, and
the fountains of the nether fire burst up around our feet, and the
end of all shall come. And thou wouldst go into the world from
which I fled?'

'If the harvest be at hand, the Lord needs labourers. If the times
be awful, I should be doing awful things in them. Send me, and let
that day find me, where I long to be, in the forefront of the battle
of the Lord.'

'The Lord's voice be obeyed! Thou shalt go. Here are letters to
Cyril the patriarch. He will love thee for my sake: and for thine
own sake, too, I trust. Thou goest of our free will as well as
thine own. The abbot and I have watched thee long, knowing that the
Lord bad need of such as thee elsewhere. We did but prove thee, to
see by thy readiness to obey, whether thou wert fit to rule. Go,
and God be with thee. Covet no man's gold or silver. Neither eat
flesh nor drink wine, but live as thou hast lived--a Nazarite of the
Lord. Fear not the face of man; but look not on the face of woman.
In an evil hour came they into the world, the mothers of all
mischiefs which I have seen under the sun. Come; the abbot waits
for us at the gate.'

With tears of surprise, joy, sorrow, almost of dread, Philammon hung
back.

'Nay--come. Why shouldst thou break thy brethren's hearts and ours
by many leave-takings! Bring from the storehouse a week's provision
of dried dates and millet. The papyrus boat lies at the ferry; thou
shalt descend in it. The Lord will replace it for us when we need
it. Speak with no man on the river except the monks of God. When
thou hast gone five days' journey downward, ask for the mouth of the
canal of Alexandria. Once in the city, any monk will guide thee to
the archbishop. Send us news of thy welfare by some holy mouth.
Come.'

Silently they paced together down the glen to the lonely beach of
the great stream. Pambo was there already, his white hair
glittering in the rising moon, as with slow and feeble arms he
launched the light canoe. Philammon flung himself at the old men's
feet, and besought, with many tears, their forgiveness and their
blessing.'We have nothing to forgive. Follow thou thine inward call.
If it be of the flesh, it will avenge itself; if it be of the
Spirit, who are we that we should fight against God? Farewell.' A
few minutes more, and the youth and his canoe were lessening down
the rapid stream in the golden summer twilight. Again a minute, and
the swift southern night had fallen, and all was dark but the cold
glare of the moon on the river, and on the rock-faces, and on the
two old men, as they knelt upon the beach, and with their heads upon
each other's shoulders, like two children, sobbed and prayed
together for the lost darling of their age.



CHAPTER II: THE DYING WORLD


In the upper story of a house in the Museum Street of Alexandria,
built and fitted up on the old Athenian model, was a small room. It
had been chosen by its occupant, not merely on account of its quiet;
for though it was tolerably out of hearing of the female slaves who
worked, and chattered, and quarrelled under the cloisters of the
women's court on the south side, yet it was exposed to the rattle of
carriages and the voices of passengers in the fashionable street
below, and to strange bursts of roaring, squealing, trumpeting from
the Menagerie, a short way off, on the opposite side of the street.
The attraction of the situation lay, perhaps, in the view which it
commanded over the wall of the Museum gardens, of flower-beds,
shrubberies, fountains, statues, walks, and alcoves, which had
echoed for nearly seven hundred years to the wisdom of the
Alexandrian sages and poets. School after school, they had all
walked, and taught, and sung there, beneath the spreading planes and
chestnuts, figs and palm-trees. The place seemed fragrant with all
the riches of Greek thought and song, since the days when Ptolemy
Philadelphus walked there with Euclid and Theocritus, Callimachus
and Lycophron.

On the left of the garden stretched the lofty eastern front of the
Museum itself, with its picture galleries, halls of statuary,
dining-halls, and lecture-rooms; one huge wing containing that
famous library, founded by the father of Philadelphus, which hold in
the time of Seneca, even after the destruction of a great part of it
in Caesar's siege, four hundred thousand manuscripts. There it
towered up, the wonder of the world, its white roof bright against
the rainless blue; and beyond it, among the ridges and pediments of
noble buildings, a broad glimpse of the bright blue sea.

The room was fitted up in the purest Greek style, not without an
affectation of archaism, in the severe forms and subdued half-tints
of the frescoes which ornamented the walls with scenes from the old
myths of Athene. Yet the general effect, even under the blazing sun
which poured in through the mosquito nets of the courtyard windows,
was one of exquisite coolness, and cleanliness, and repose. The
room had neither carpet nor fireplace; and the only movables in it
were a sofa-bed, a table, and an arm-chair, all of such delicate and
graceful forms as may be seen on ancient vases of a far earlier
period than thatwhereof we write. But, most probably, had any of us
entered that room that morning, we should not have been able to
spare a look either for the furniture, or the general effect, or the
Museum gardens, or the sparkling Mediterranean beyond; but we should
have agreed that the room was quite rich enough for human eyes, for
the sake of one treasure which it possessed, and, beside which,
nothing was worth a moment's glance. For in the light arm-chair,
reading a manuscript which lay on the table, sat a woman, of some
five-and-twenty years, evidently the tutelary goddess of that little
shrine, dressed in perfect keeping with the archaism of the chamber,
in simple old snow-white Ionic robe, falling to the feet and
reaching to the throat, and of that peculiarly severe and graceful
fashion in which the upper part of the dress falls downward again
from the neck to the waist in a sort of cape, entirely hiding the
outline of the bust, while it leaves the arms and the point of the
shoulders bare. Her dress was entirely without ornament, except the
two narrow purple stripes down the front, which marked her rank as a
Roman citizen, the gold embroidered shoes upon her feet, and the
gold net, which looped back, from her forehead to her neck, hair the
colour and gloss of which were hardly distinguishable from that of
the metal itself, such as Athene herself might haveenvied for tint,
and mass, and ripple. Her features, arms, and hands were of the
severest and grandest type of old Greek beauty, at once showing
everywhere the high development of the bones, and covering them with
that firm, round, ripe outline, and waxy morbidezza of skin, which
the old Greeks owed to their continual use not only of the bath and
muscular exercise, but also of daily unguents. There might have
seemed to us too much sadness in that clear gray eye; too much self-
conscious restraint in those sharp curved lips; too much affectation
in the studied severity of her posture as she read, copied, as it
seemed, from some old vase or bas-relief. But the glorious grace
and beauty of every line of face and figure would have excused, even
hidden those defects, and we should have only recognised the marked
resemblance to the ideal portraits of Athene which adorned every
panel of the walls.