Charles Godfrey Leland - "The Algonquin Legends of New England"

John Lothrop Motley - "History of the United Netherlands, 1587"

Leonard Huxley - "The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2"

Charles Reade - "It Is Never Too Late to Mend"

New Philadelphia Book Publisher Highlights Local Talent
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.

FlatSigned Press Alleges Don Imus Remarks Damage Legacy of President Gerald R. Ford
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: Our Old Home

N >> Nathaniel Hawthorne >> Our Old Home




In due time we were summoned to the table, and went thither in no solemn
procession, but with a good deal of jostling, thrusting behind, and
scrambling for places when we reached our destination. The legal
gentlemen, I suspect, were responsible for this indecorous zeal, which I
never afterwards remarked in a similar party. The dining-hall was of
noble size, and, like the other rooms of the suite, was gorgeously
painted and gilded and brilliantly illuminated. There was a splendid
table-service, and a noble array of footmen, some of them in plain
clothes, and others wearing the town-livery, richly decorated with
gold-lace, and themselves excellent specimens of the blooming young
manhood of Britain. When we were fairly seated, it was certainly an
agreeable spectacle to look up and down the long vista of earnest faces,
and behold them so resolute, so conscious that there was an important
business in hand, and so determined to be equal to the occasion. Indeed,
Englishman or not, I hardly know what can be prettier than a snow-white
table-cloth, a huge heap of flowers as a central decoration, bright
silver, rich china, crystal glasses, decanters of Sherry at due
intervals, a French roll and an artistically folded napkin at each plate,
all that airy portion of a banquet, in short, that comes before the first
mouthful, the whole illuminated by a blaze of artificial light, without
which a dinner of made-dishes looks spectral, and the simplest viands are
the best. Printed bills-of-fare were distributed, representing an
abundant feast, no part of which appeared on the table until called for
in separate plates. I have entirely forgotten what it was, but deem it
no great matter, inasmuch as there is a pervading commonplace and
identicalness in the composition of extensive dinners, on account of the
impossibility of supplying a hundred guests with anything particularly
delicate or rare. It was suggested to me that certain juicy old
gentlemen had a private understanding what to call for, and that it would
be good policy in a stranger to follow in their footsteps through the
feast. I did not care to do so, however, because, like Sancho Panza's
dip out of Camacho's caldron, any sort of pot-luck at such a table would
be sure to suit my purpose; so I chose a dish or two on my own judgment,
and, getting through my labors betimes, had great pleasure in seeing the
Englishmen toil onward to the end.

They drank rather copiously, too, though wisely; for I observed that they
seldom took Hock, and let the Champagne bubble slowly away out of the
goblet, solacing themselves with Sherry, but tasting it warily before
bestowing their final confidence. Their taste in wines, however, did not
seem so exquisite, and certainly was not so various, as that to which
many Americans pretend. This foppery of an intimate acquaintance with
rare vintages does not suit a sensible Englishman, as he is very much in
earnest about his wines, and adopts one or two as his lifelong friends,
seldom exchanging them for any Delilahs of a moment, and reaping the
reward of his constancy in an unimpaired stomach, and only so much gout
as he deems wholesome and desirable. Knowing well the measure of his
powers, he is not apt to fill his glass too often. Society, indeed,
would hardly tolerate habitual imprudences of that kind, though, in my
opinion, the Englishmen now upon the stage could carry off their three
bottles, at need, with as steady a gait as any of their forefathers. It
is not so very long since the three-bottle heroes sank finally under the
table. It may be (at least, I should be glad if it were true) that there
was an occult sympathy between our temperance reform, now somewhat in
abeyance, and the almost simultaneous disappearance of hard-drinking
among the respectable classes in England. I remember a middle-aged
gentleman telling me (in illustration of the very slight importance
attached to breaches of temperance within the memory of men not yet old)
that he had seen a certain magistrate, Sir John Linkwater, or
Drinkwater,--but I think the jolly old knight could hardly have staggered
under so perverse a misnomer as this last,--while sitting on the
magisterial bench, pull out a crown-piece and hand it to the clerk. "Mr.
Clerk," said Sir John, as if it were the most indifferent fact in the
world, "I was drunk last night. There are my five shillings."

During the dinner, I had a good deal of pleasant conversation with the
gentlemen on either side of me. One of them, a lawyer, expatiated with
great unction on the social standing of the judges. Representing the
dignity and authority of the Crown, they take precedence, during
assize-time, of the highest military men in the kingdom, of the
Lord-Lieutenant of the county, of the Archbishops, of the royal Dukes,
and even of the Prince of Wales. For the nonce, they are the greatest
men in England. With a glow of professional complacency that amounted to
enthusiasm, my friend assured me, that, in case of a royal dinner, a
judge, if actually holding an assize, would be expected to offer his arm
and take the Queen herself to the table. Happening to be in company with
some of these elevated personages, on subsequent occasions, it appeared
to me that the judges are fully conscious of their paramount claims to
respect, and take rather more pains to impress them on their ceremonial
inferiors than men of high hereditary rank are apt to do. Bishops, if it
be not irreverent to say so, are sometimes marked by a similar
characteristic. Dignified position is so sweet to an Englishman, that he
needs to be born in it, and to feel it thoroughly incorporated with his
nature from its original germ, in order to keep him from flaunting it
obtrusively in the faces of innocent bystanders.

My companion on the other side was a thick-set, middle-aged man, uncouth
in manners, and ugly where none were handsome, with a dark, roughly hewn
visage, that looked grim in repose, and secured to hold within itself
the machinery of a very terrific frown. He ate with resolute appetite,
and let slip few opportunities of imbibing whatever liquids happened to
be passing by. I was meditating in what way this grisly featured
table-fellow might most safely be accosted, when he turned to me with a
surly sort of kindness, and invited me to take a glass of wine. We then
began a conversation that abounded, on his part, with sturdy sense, and,
somehow or other, brought me closer to him than I had yet stood to an
Englishman. I should hardly have taken him to be an educated man,
certainly not a scholar of accurate training; and yet he seemed to have
all the resources of education and trained intellectual power at command.
My fresh Americanism, and watchful observation of English
characteristics, appeared either to interest or amuse him, or perhaps
both. Under the mollifying influences of abundance of meat and drink, he
grew very gracious (not that I ought to use such a phrase to describe his
evidently genuine good-will), and by and by expressed a wish for further
acquaintance, asking me to call at his rooms in London and inquire for
Sergeant Wilkins,--throwing out the name forcibly, as if he had no
occasion to be ashamed of it. I remembered Dean Swift's retort to
Sergeant Bettesworth on a similar announcement,--"Of what regiment, pray,
sir?"--and fancied that the same question might not have been quite
amiss, if applied to the rugged individual at my side. But I heard of
him subsequently as one of the prominent men at the English bar, a rough
customer, and a terribly strong champion in criminal cases; and it caused
me more regret than might have been expected, on so slight an
acquaintanceship, when, not long afterwards, I saw his death announced in
the newspapers. Not rich in attractive qualities, he possessed, I think,
the most attractive one of all,--thorough manhood.

After the cloth was removed, a goodly group of decanters were set before
the Mayor, who sent them forth on their outward voyage, full freighted
with Port, Sherry, Madeira, and Claret, of which excellent liquors,
methought, the latter found least acceptance among the guests. When
every man had filled his glass, his Worship stood up and proposed a
toast. It was, of course, "Our gracious Sovereign," or words to that
effect; and immediately a band of musicians, whose preliminary footings
and thrummings I had already heard behind me, struck up "God save the
Queen," and the whole company rose with one impulse to assist in singing
that famous national anthem. It was the first time in my life that I had
ever seen a body of men, or even a single man, under the active influence
of the sentiment of Loyalty; for, though we call ourselves loyal to our
country and institutions, and prove it by our readiness to shed blood and
sacrifice life in their behalf, still the principle is as cold and hard,
in an American bosom, as the steel spring that puts in motion a powerful
machinery. In the Englishman's system, a force similar to that of our
steel spring is generated by the warm throbbings of human hearts. He
clothes our bare abstraction in flesh and blood,--at present, in the
flesh and blood of a woman,--and manages to combine love, awe, and
intellectual reverence, all in one emotion, and to embody his mother, his
wife, his children, the whole idea of kindred, in a single person, and
make her the representative of his country and its laws. We Americans
smile superior, as I did at the Mayor's table; and yet, I fancy, we lose
some very agreeable titillations of the heart in consequence of our proud
prerogative of caring no more about our President than for a man of
straw, or a stuffed scarecrow straddling in a cornfield.

But, to say the truth, the spectacle struck me rather ludicrously, to see
this party of stout middle-aged and elderly gentlemen, in the fulness of
meat and drink, their ample and ruddy faces glistening with wine,
perspiration, and enthusiasm, rumbling out those strange old stanzas from
the very bottom of their hearts and stomachs, which two organs, in the
English interior arrangement, lie closer together than in ours. The song
seemed to me the rudest old ditty in the world; but I could not wonder at
its universal acceptance and indestructible popularity, considering how
inimitably it expresses the national faith and feeling as regards the
inevitable righteousness of England, the Almighty's consequent respect
and partiality for that redoubtable little island, and his presumed
readiness to strengthen its defence against the contumacious wickedness
and knavery of all other principalities or republics. Tennyson himself,
though evidently English to the very last prejudice, could not write half
so good a song for the purpose. Finding that the entire dinner-table
struck in, with voices of every pitch between rolling thunder and the
squeak of a cart-wheel, and that the strain was not of such delicacy as
to be much hurt by the harshest of them, I determined to lend my own
assistance in swelling the triumphant roar. It seemed but a proper
courtesy to the first Lady in the land, whose guest, in the largest
sense, I might consider myself. Accordingly, my first tuneful efforts
(and probably my last, for I purpose not to sing any more, unless it he
"Hail Columbia" on the restoration of the Union) were poured freely forth
in honor of Queen Victoria. The Sergeant smiled like the carved head of
a Swiss nutcracker, and the other gentlemen in my neighborhood, by nods
and gestures, evinced grave approbation of so suitable a tribute to
English superiority; and we finished our stave and sat down in an
extremely happy frame of mind.

Other toasts followed in honor of the great institutions and interests of
the country, and speeches in response to each were made by individuals
whom the Mayor designated or the company called for. None of them
impressed me with a very high idea of English postprandial oratory. It
is inconceivable, indeed, what ragged and shapeless utterances most
Englishmen are satisfied to give vent to, without attempting anything
like artistic shape, but clapping on a patch here and another there, and
ultimately getting out what they want to say, and generally with a result
of sufficiently good sense, but in some such disorganized mass as if they
had thrown it up rather than spoken it. It seemed to me that this was
almost as much by choice as necessity. An Englishman, ambitious of
public favor, should not be too smooth. If an orator is glib, his
countrymen distrust him. They dislike smartness. The stronger and
heavier his thoughts, the better, provided there be an element of
commonplace running through them; and any rough, yet never vulgar force
of expression, such as would knock an opponent down, if it hit him, only
it must not be too personal, is altogether to their taste; but a studied
neatness of language, or other such superficial graces, they cannot
abide. They do not often permit a man to make himself a fine orator of
malice aforethought, that is, unless he be a nobleman (as, for example,
Lord Stanley, of the Derby family), who, as an hereditary legislator and
necessarily a public speaker, is bound to remedy a poor natural delivery
in the best way he can. On the whole, I partly agree with them, and, if
I cared for any oratory whatever, should be as likely to applaud theirs
as our own. When an English speaker sits down, you feel that you have
been listening to a real man, and not to an actor; his sentiments have a
wholesome earth-smell in them, though, very likely, this apparent
naturalness is as much an art as what we expend in rounding a sentence or
elaborating a peroration.

It is one good effect of this inartificial style, that nobody in England
seems to feel any shyness about shovelling the untrimmed and untrimmable
ideas out of his mind for the benefit of an audience. At least, nobody
did on the occasion now in hand, except a poor little Major of Artillery,
who responded for the Army in a thin, quavering voice, with a terribly
hesitating trickle of fragmentary ideas, and, I question not, would
rather have been bayoneted in front of his batteries than to have said a
word. Not his own mouth, but the cannon's, was this poor Major's proper
organ of utterance.

While I was thus amiably occupied in criticising my fellow-guests, the
Mayor had got up to propose another toast; and listening rather
inattentively to the first sentence or two, I soon became sensible of a
drift in his Worship's remarks that made me glance apprehensively towards
Sergeant Wilkins. "Yes," grumbled that gruff personage, shoving a
decanter of Port towards me, "it is your turn next"; and seeing in my
face, I suppose, the consternation of a wholly unpractised orator, he
kindly added, "It is nothing. A mere acknowledgment will answer the
purpose. The less you say, the better they will like it." That being
the case, I suggested that perhaps they would like it best if I said
nothing at all. But the Sergeant shook his head. Now, on first
receiving the Mayor's invitation to dinner, it had occurred to me that I
might possibly be brought into my present predicament; but I had
dismissed the idea from my mind as too disagreeable to be entertained,
and, moreover, as so alien from my disposition and character that Fate
surely could not keep such a misfortune in store for me. If nothing else
prevented, an earthquake or the crack of doom would certainly interfere
before I need rise to speak. Yet here was the Mayor getting on
inexorably,--and, indeed, I heartily wished that he might get on and on
forever, and of his wordy wanderings find no end.

If the gentle reader, my kindest friend and closest confidant, deigns to
desire it, I can impart to him my own experience as a public speaker
quite as indifferently as if it concerned another person. Indeed, it
does concern another, or a mere spectral phenomenon, for it was not I, in
my proper and natural self, that sat there at table or subsequently rose
to speak. At the moment, then, if the choice had been offered me whether
the Mayor should let off a speech at my head or a pistol, I should
unhesitatingly have taken the latter alternative. I had really nothing
to say, not an idea in my head, nor, which was a great deal worse, any
flowing words or embroidered sentences in which to dress out that empty
Nothing, and give it a cunning aspect of intelligence, such as might last
the poor vacuity the little time it had to live. But time pressed; the
Mayor brought his remarks, affectionately eulogistic of the United States
and highly complimentary to their distinguished representative at that
table, to a close, amid a vast deal of cheering; and the band struck up
"Hail Columbia," I believe, though it might have been "Old Hundred," or
"God save the Queen" over again, for anything that I should have known or
cared. When the music ceased, there was an intensely disagreeable
instant, during which I seemed to rend away and fling off the habit of a
lifetime, and rose, still void of ideas, but with preternatural
composure, to make a speech. The guests rattled on the table, and cried,
"Hear!" most vociferously, as if now, at length, in this foolish and idly
garrulous world, had come the long-expected moment when one golden word
was to be spoken; and in that imminent crisis, I caught a glimpse of a
little bit of an effusion of international sentiment, which it might, and
must, and should do to utter.

Well; it was nothing, as the Sergeant had said. What surprised me most,
was the sound of my own voice, which I had never before heard at a
declamatory pitch, and which impressed me as belonging to some other
person, who, and not myself, would be responsible for the speech: a
prodigious consolation and encouragement under the circumstances! I went
on without the slightest embarrassment, and sat down amid great applause,
wholly undeserved by anything that I had spoken, but well won from
Englishmen, methought, by the new development of pluck that alone had
enabled me to speak at all. "It was handsomely done!" quoth Sergeant
Wilkins; and I felt like a recruit who had been for the first time under
fire.

I would gladly have ended my oratorical career then and there forever,
but was often placed in a similar or worse position, and compelled to
meet it as I best might; for this was one of the necessities of an office
which I had voluntarily taken on my shoulders, and beneath which I might
be crushed by no moral delinquency on my own part, but could not shirk
without cowardice and shame. My subsequent fortune was various. Once,
though I felt it to be a kind of imposture, I got a speech by heart, and
doubtless it might have been a very pretty one, only I forgot every
syllable at the moment of need, and had to improvise another as well as I
could. I found it a better method to prearrange a few points in my mind,
and trust to the spur of the occasion, and the kind aid of Providence,
for enabling me to bring them to bear. The presence of any considerable
proportion of personal friends generally dumbfounded me. I would rather
have talked with an enemy in the gate. Invariably, too, I was much
embarrassed by a small audience, and succeeded better with a large one,--
the sympathy of a multitude possessing a buoyant effect, which lifts the
speaker a little way out of his individuality and tosses him towards a
perhaps better range of sentiment than his private one. Again, if I rose
carelessly and confidently, with an expectation of going through the
business entirely at my ease, I often found that I had little or nothing
to say; whereas, if I came to the charge in perfect despair, and at a
crisis when failure would have been horrible, it once or twice happened
that the frightful emergency concentrated my poor faculties, and enabled
me to give definite and vigorous expression to sentiments which an
instant before looked as vague and far off as the clouds in the
atmosphere. On the whole, poor as my own success may have been, I
apprehend that any intelligent man with a tongue possesses the chief
requisite of oratorical power, and may develop many of the others, if he
deems it worth while to bestow a great amount of labor and pains on an
object which the most accomplished orators, I suspect, have not found
altogether satisfactory to their highest impulses. At any rate, it must
be a remarkably true man who can keep his own elevated conception of
truth when the lower feeling of a multitude is assailing his natural
sympathies, and who can speak out frankly the best that there is in him,
when by adulterating it a little, or a good deal, he knows that he may
make it ten times as acceptable to the audience.


This slight article on the civic banquets of England would be too
wretchedly imperfect, without an attempted description of a Lord Mayor's
dinner at the Mansion House in London. I should have preferred the
annual feast at Guildhall, but never had the good fortune to witness it.
Once, however, I was honored with an invitation to one of the regular
dinners, and gladly accepted it,--taking the precaution, nevertheless,
though it hardly seemed necessary, to inform the City-King, through a
mutual friend, that I was no fit representative of American eloquence,
and must humbly make it a condition that I should not be expected to open
my mouth, except for the reception of his Lordship's bountiful
hospitality. The reply was gracious and acquiescent; so that I presented
myself in the great entrance-hall of the Mansion House, at half past six
o'clock, in a state of most enjoyable freedom from the pusillanimous
apprehensions that often tormented me at such times. The Mansion House
was built in Queen Anne's days, in the very heart of old London, and is a
palace worthy of its inhabitant, were he really as great a man as his
traditionary state and pomp would seem to indicate. Times are changed,
however, since the days of Whittington, or even of Hogarth's Industrious
Apprentice, to whom the highest imaginable reward of lifelong integrity
was a seat in the Lord Mayor's chair. People nowadays say that the real
dignity and importance have perished out of the office, as they do,
sooner or later, out of all earthly institutions, leaving only a painted
and gilded shell like that of an Easter egg, and that it is only
second-rate and third-rate men who now condescend to be ambitious of the
Mayoralty. I felt a little grieved at this; for the original emigrants
of New England had strong sympathies with the people of London, who were
mostly Puritans in religion and Parliamentarians in politics, in the
early days of our country; so that the Lord Mayor was a potentate of huge
dimensions in the estimation of our forefathers, and held to be hardly
second to the prime minister of the throne. The true great men of the
city now appear to have aims beyond city greatness, connecting themselves
with national politics, and seeking to be identified with the aristocracy
of the country.

In the entrance-hall I was received by a body of footmen dressed in a
livery of blue coats and buff breeches, in which they looked wonderfully
like American Revolutionary generals, only bedizened with far more lace
and embroidery than those simple and grand old heroes ever dreamed of
wearing. There were likewise two very imposing figures, whom I should
have taken to be military men of rank, being arrayed in scarlet coats and
large silver epaulets; but they turned out to be officers of the Lord
Mayor's household, and were now employed in assigning to the guests the
places which they were respectively to occupy at the dinner-table. Our
names (for I had included myself in a little group of friends) were
announced; and ascending the staircase, we met his Lordship in the
doorway of the first reception-room, where, also, we had the advantage of
a presentation to the Lady Mayoress. As this distinguished couple
retired into private life at the termination of their year of office, it
is inadmissible to make any remarks, critical or laudatory, on the
manners and bearing of two personages suddenly emerging from a position
of respectable mediocrity into one of pre-eminent dignity within their
own sphere. Such individuals almost always seem to grow nearly or quite
to the full size of their office. If it were desirable to write an essay
on the latent aptitude of ordinary people for grandeur, we have an
exemplification in our own country, and on a scale incomparably greater
than that of the Mayoralty, though invested with nothing like the outward
magnificence that gilds and embroiders the latter. If I have been
correctly informed, the Lord Mayor's salary is exactly double that of the
President of the United States, and yet is found very inadequate to his
necessary expenditure.

There were two reception-rooms, thrown into one by the opening of wide
folding-doors; and though in an old style, and not yet so old as to be
venerable, they are remarkably handsome apartments, lofty as well as
spacious, with carved ceilings and walls, and at either end a splendid
fireplace of white marble, ornamented with sculptured wreaths of flowers
and foliage. The company were about three hundred, many of them
celebrities in politics, war, literature, and science, though I recollect
none preeminently distinguished in either department. But it is
certainly a pleasant mode of doing honor to men of literature, for
example, who deserve well of the public, yet do not often meet it face to
face, thus to bring them together under genial auspices, in connection
with persons of note in other lines. I know not what may be the Lord
Mayor's mode or principle of selecting his guests, nor whether, during
his official term, he can proffer his hospitality to every man of
noticeable talent in the wide world of London, nor, in fine, whether his
Lordship's invitation is much sought for or valued; but it seemed to me
that this periodical feast is one of the many sagacious methods which the
English have contrived for keeping up a good understanding among
different sorts of people. Like most other distinctions of society,
however, I presume that the Lord Mayor's card does not often seek out
modest merit, but comes at last when the recipient is conscious of the
bore, and doubtful about the honor.