A HAPPY THOUGHT. BY KATHARINE R. MCDOWELL. "WHAT a looking room!" exclaimed Olive Kendall, as she came in from school and added to the confusion of the sitting-room by throwing her satchel on the lounge. "Why does n't somebody fix it up?" But no one answered. Only Leila and Nora were there to answer, and both their heads were bent over a geographical puzzle. Olive threw herself into an easy-chair and looked out of the large bay-window. It was pleasanter to turn her head that way than to look around the disordered room. She only wished she could turn her thoughts away from the room as easily, but she could not so long as that voice kept saying: "You know that Bridget is out with the twins, and that Kate is busy getting dinner, and that there is no one but yourself to put the room in order -- you and your little sisters. Why not go to work and have a surprise for Mamma when she comes in ?" "Leila and Nora, we really ought to fix up the room," said Olive, with a half-yawn. "The twins have scattered their things. Wont you help?" "In a minute," answered Nora. "We only want a little crooked piece to go right in there." "Yes," responded Leila, "it's Finland. I remember the very piece — colored yellow, and with a bit of sea-coast," as she turned to look for it. "Are n't you coming?" asked Olive, as she listlessly folded an afghan. Again the answer was : "Just as soon as we find Finland." Olive looked about the room in a hopeless, helpless sort of way. "With Leila and Nora both in Finland," she thought, “I may as well give up expecting their help. If it were only a game She stood a moment in thought. Her face suddenly brightened. She went to Mamma's desk and cut six slips of paper, then wrote a word on each. "Are you getting some strips ready for Consequences?" asked Leila, a new interest in her face, as she looked up from the pieces of map. "No," replied Olive, at which the search for Finland was renewed. "Are we going to play Anagrams ? " ventured Nora, to whom Leila had just whispered something as she motioned toward Olive. "Yes, Olive, tell us how," pleaded Leila, "and then we 'll help with the room. We truly will.” "I don't know that you'll like the game," said Olive, "but I'm sure that Mamma will.” "Then we shall, of course," said Nora, very decidedly. "Let's begin it now." So Olive laid the slips on the table- the written side downward. Then she said: "Now we are to draw in turn, the youngest first. Come, Nora !" Nora looked at the different pieces of paper, put her finger on the last, and then suddenly changed her mind and took the one nearest her. "Don't look at it yet, Nora," said Olive. "Oh, I shall certainly look, if Leila does n't hurry," said Nora, excitedly, shutting her eyes very tight, but soon opening them to ask: "Is there a prize, Olive?" and jumping up and down as Olive nodded. After Leila had settled upon one of the slips, she and Nora made Olive shut her eyes while they changed all about the papers that were left, for fear that Olive, having made them, might choose a better one than they. At last they all had slips. "Now read!" signaled Olive. "Table," said Nora, consulting her paper. "Now what?" asked Nora. "Do I pass mine on to Leila?” But Olive was on her knees, picking up a lot of playthings. "Mine was carpet," she said, as she hastily put a handful of toys into a little cart belonging to the twins, “so I'm to take everything off the carpet that does n't belong there. You are to put in order whatever your paper tells you, and the game is to do it as well and as quickly as you can.' Nora flew to the table. She ran into the hall with Teddy's hat, and into the nursery with Freddy's whip. Then she got a brush and prepared to sweep off the table-cover. To do this she piled some books on one of the chairs. "My paper says chairs," cried Leila, "and there are eight of them! If you put those books there, I'll never get through." "The other table is yours also, Nora," said "No, but you've guessed pretty well," admitted Olive, as she straightened the rug in front of the Olive, "for it 's a game- a new one." "A game! A new one!" echoed the little sisters, not only losing interest in Finland, but letting the whole of Europe fall apart. "Let's play it! I'm tired of this map-puzzle." fire. "Look on your paper." Sure enough, there was an s that Nora had overlooked! So the books found a place on the little stand while the big table was being brushed, and were then piled nicely up, and the magazines and papers laid together, after which Nora stood off and viewed the effect with such satisfaction as almost to forget the smaller table. She was reminded of it, however, by Leila, who was flourishing a duster about as she went from one chair to another, fastening a tidy here and shaking up a cushion there, until she was ready to say: "The whole eight are done." "I've finished, too," said Olive, as she brushed the hearth and hung the little broom at one side of the open fire-place. "Now, we all draw again." Nora chose quickly this time, and went right at her work when she saw the word "Mantel," hardly hearing Leila say "Desk," and Olive “Lounge." "Well, what do you think of the game?" asked Olive, a while after, as, having left the room to put away her school-satchel, she returned and found Leila and Nora putting the finishing touches to their tasks, and rejoicing over the finding of Finland in Mamma's desk. "Why, we think it a great success - don't we, Nora? And we see now why you did n't know the name," added Leila, laughingly. "Here comes Mamma up the walk,” announced Nora from the bay-window. "I left of relief, as she glanced about the room. her getting rubbers for the twins, and feared she would n't return till dinner-time." "She is n't home, Mamma," said Olive, while Nora and Leila exchanged happy glances, and Nora could n't keep from saying (though she said afterward she tried hard not to tell): "We fixed it, Mamma. It's Olive's game!" Then, of course, Mamma had to hear all about it, and Papa, too, when he came to dinner. Otherwise he might not have brought up those slips of red card-board that he did that evening, nor have seated himself in the midst of them all, and said: "Now, I propose we make a set of cards in fine style," as he proceeded to write on each the word that Olive or Leila or Nora would tell him. "And now, what shall we call the game?" asked Papa, with pen ready to put the name on the other side of the six bright cards. "How would the 'Game of Usefulness' do?" suggested Olive. "Or Daily Duty'?" put in Leila; "for we 've promised to play it every day." "Well, don't say anything, and see if she notices that, for, when Nora went up to bed, one of her the room," suggested Leila. Mamma came to the sitting-room door, and looked in. No wonder she smiled at the picture. The room a model of neatness, the winter's sun streaming in at the window, the fire crackling on the hearth, and three faces upturned for a kiss. "So Bridget is home," said Mamma, in a tone plump hands held the new cards, and the name that Mamma had proposed was written on each. "I wonder what the prize was?" she asked Leila the last thing that night. "I guess it must have been Mamma's smile when she looked in," said Leila. And was not that a prize worth trying for? AN OLD ROMAN LIBRARY. By C. L. G. SCALES. THE boys and girls of the nineteenth century probably seldom think of the marvelous changes that have been wrought in our modern civilization by the invention of printing; but, if some mischievous fairy should suddenly whisk out of sight all the books, pamphlets, newspapers, and magazines in the land, and leave not a trace of a printed page behind, then doubtless we should all begin to realize something of what the printingpress has done for us, and perhaps take to wondering how people got on in the days when it was not known. Books of some sort, however, the people of that time must have had, for the complaint that "of making many books there is no end" comes echoing down to us even from the far off era of King Solomon. But, how could they have been made, and what kind of books were they? Very unlike our own, as we shall presently see. The old authors of Greece and Rome, over whose works your big brothers and sisters, too — are still poring in high school and college, would never recognize their own writings in the new dress the printers have given them; and, if ushered into a modern library, they would stare with astonishment at the strange scenes before them. But a glimpse of their book-shelves would be no less of a surprise to some of us. It so happens that some of those old-time authors have been so kind as to leave their librarydoors ajar behind them, and, by taking the trouble to clear away from the pathway the rubbish and the dust of ages, we may enter and survey at our leisure the quaint appointments and the rare treasures within. Come with me, then, and let us see what an old Roman library is like-the library of a man who never dreamed of a printed page. The library itself is a comparatively small room. Entering the door, we first note the windows, few in number, and so high up in the wall that there is plainly little danger of their tempting the student or reader to gaze abroad; then the floor of plain, smooth marble, or laid in mosaics with marbles of little cells, are the books, many of them classics, which have been reprinted in our modern text, and are read and admired by the scholars and wise men of to-day. Let us look at this one in a gay, yellow dress, which beams out at us with its one round black eye like a cheerful little Cyclops, and see what kind of a book it is. We take up the roll, which is, perhaps, ten inches in width, and begin to unfold it. But it seems to have no end, and at last unrolls before our astonished gaze one continuous sheet of thick, tough paper, some ten feet in length, the inner end of which is fastened to the rod with the various sorts; the walls covered with arabesques and traceries from the Greek mythology, and presenting at intervals busts of famous old Greek and Roman authors. Next our wondering glances fall upon a row of presses or cupboards, some six feet in height, ranged around the sides of the room. Each is filled with shelves divided off into little compartments or pigeon-holes, and in these snugly repose curious purple, yellow, and grayish rolls of different sizes, from the centers of which project slender rods, terminating in polished knobs. From each of these rods dangles a small label, covered with hieroglyphics in light red ink. The letters of the text, out projecting knobs. A second glance shows us that the whole of one side is closely covered with text written in parallel columns from left to right, up and down the sheet, the spaces between being defined by light red lines which curiously intersect the whole expanse. lined almost in relief by the thick, black ink with which they are written, look out at us with an unrecognizing stare, wholly ignoring the fact that, in their modern dress, some of us have had a hard struggle with them in order to maintain our rank in the Latin class at school. But the words, as we see them here on this old scroll, seem an unknown But these queer rolls, so snugly reposing in their tongue to us, till the title of the book, written at the end next the staff, as well as at the beginning, explains the mystery. The volume we hold is, it seems, the Annales of Q. Ennius, the "Father Ennius" mentioned by Horace and other Latin poets. And, satisfied with this, we replace the book in its pigeon-hole, and pass on to the more familiar names of Horace and Martial, that greet us on the pendent labels of two rolls that the li brarius (one of the slaves whose task is the care of the library and the copying of books) has just brought in and placed in a hitherto vacant niche of the library. But a short examination of these volumes soon convinces us that, for practical purposes, our well-thumbed "Anthon," "Harkness," or "Chase and Stewart's," are more desirable. Fancy, for instance, a luckless school-boy rising to recite in Horace or Virgil, with one of these cumbersome rolls to be held up and uncoiled while gazing wildly up and down this wilderness of words, which at first glance seems to be chiefly composed of v's, owing to the queer practice of the old Romans in making their u's like v's! And a second glance, moreover, shows that we have before us indeed a pathless wilderness of words, for not a single punctuation-mark (save here and there a lonesomelooking period) holds out its friendly signal to mark the boundary lines of the author's thought. But now, through the half-open door by which the librarius has just entered, we catch a glimpse of an adjoining room, where his fellow-slaves are busily at work copying manuscripts and performing the various other operations connected with the art of Roman book-making. At our request the librarius allows us to enter this room, and accompanies us himself to explain the new and strange process we are about to witness. Seated near the door is a slave, who is busily engaged in gluing together, into one long sheet, strips of paper, made, we are told, of a reed that grows on the banks of the Nile and is called papyrus. When this sheet is long enough, he passes it to the next slave, who stains its back with saffron and then hands to another, receiving from him in return a simila sheet, covered, on one side only, with the same parallel columns of closely written text with which we have already become familiar. This is now handed to another slave, whose task it is to fasten it by the end which bears the corona or flourisha mark denoting that the transcriber's and the reader's task is done to a cylindrical stick of polished ivory terminating in glistening knobs of the same material. Glancing over his shoulder, we see another slave with a pile of these cylindrical sticks, some of ivory, some of woods of various sorts. These latter he rubs vigorously with pumice-stone preparatory to staining them with the purple, yellow, and black dyes at his side. But let us see what further befalls the sheet just attached to the ivory staff. We find that it has been coiled deftly around its center-piece, its ends have been polished and colored, and it is now ready for its cover of parchment, which has also made the acquaintance of the brittle pumice and brilliant dyes, its margins being adorned with scarlet lines which gleam out vividly along the less glowing purple of its surface. Cedar-oil, too, has been rubbed into it to check the depredations of insects, and now the long sheet is rolled up tight and tied with the "red thongs." The label, with the name of the work and its author, is attached, and a new volume is ready for the Roman readingpublic. With books like these, however, we can well understand why it is that in every Roman library the door faced to the east, in order to give the scrolls the benefit of the morning sun, and prevent the formation of mold upon the cherished volumes. Realizing after all this the immense labor and pains involved in the production of such works as these, we turn to the obliging librarius and ask him what price they bring in the market. Judge of our surprise when he assures us that, though a volume so carefully prepared as the one we have just seen may sell for somewhat more, yet twenty cents of our money is an ordinary price, and that many books, by even so popular an author as Martial, are sold for a still smaller sum. 66 "ye Indeed, a new book" that does not happen to suit the popular taste, he tells us, often finds its way directly to the fish-markets and groceries, to be used by the clerks for casting up accounts, or for wrapping up goods for delivery to their customers. Greatly astonished at this revelation as to the abundant supply and slight value of books in “ olden time," we continue our questioning, and, bethinking ourselves that they have no newspapers here, we ask how the literary world becomes aware of the publication of a new work. To this he replies that the book-sellers announce its appearance on the posts of their shop-doors, and that it is also customary for an author to send early copies to his rich and powerful friends and patrons, some of whom will not fail to give it notoriety by repeating passages from it at the next dinner-party which they attend. But one question only suggests another, and we find ourselves quite in danger of turning into animated interrogation-points, when, fortunately, the gathering shadows warn us that we must take our departure and journey back to the modern world with its myriad book-shelves, which the printing-press has filled with volumes so unlike the rare, quaint treasures of this old Roman library. |