[Illustration: "THE PLEASANT FACE OF ITS CREATOR ... SMILES UPON YOU."]
Ah! this antique library is not as is a church graveyard, only a
cemetery for the dead; it is also a mansion for the living. These
alcoves are trysting places for elemental shades. Essences of
disenthralled minds meet here and revel. Thoughts of the past take shape
and live in this atmosphere,--who can say that pulsations unperceived,
beyond the reach of physics or of chemistry, are not as ethereal
mind-seeds which, although unseen, yet, in living brain, exposed to such
an atmosphere as this, formulate embryotic thought-expressions destined
to become energetic intellectual forces? I sit in such a weird library
and meditate. The shades of grim authors whisper in my ear, skeleton
forms oppose my own, and phantoms possess the gloomy alcoves of the
library I am building.
[Illustration: "SKELETON FORMS OPPOSE MY OWN."]
With the object of carrying to the future a section of thought current
from the past, the antiquarian libraries of many nations have been
culled, and purchases made in every book market of the world. These
books surround me. Naturally many persons have become interested in the
movement, and, considering it a worthy one, unite to further the
project, for the purpose is not personal gain. Thus it is not unusual
for boxes of old chemical or pharmacal volumes to arrive by freight or
express, without a word as to the donor. The mail brings manuscripts
unprinted, and pamphlets recondite, with no word of introduction. They
come unheralded. The authors or the senders realize that in this unique
library a place is vacant if any work on connected subjects is missing,
and thinking men of the world are uniting their contributions to fill
such vacancies.
* * * * *
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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