" The pen will be at work here, nevertheless, and has been
from the beginning, before the foundations of the Corliss engine were
laid or the granite of Memorial Hall left the quarry. Without this first
of implements none of the other machinery would ever have moved. The pen
is mightier than the piston. It is the invisible steam that impels all.
[Illustration: FRENCH RESTAURANT LA FAYETTE.]
In a visible form also it is here. The publishers of the London _Punch_
have selected as the most comprehensive motto for the case in which they
exhibit copies of their various publications a sentence from Shakspeare:
"Come and take choice of all my library, and so beguile thy sorrow." We
do not know that to dull his sorrows is all that can be done for man.
Literature assumes to do more than make him forget. The lotos-eater is
not its one hero. School-books, piled aloft "in numbers without number
numberless," may to the man be suggestive of hours without thought and
void of grief, but they certainly are not to the boy. Blue books, ground
out in a thousand bureaus, and contributed in like profusion, may be
pronounced a weariness to the adult flesh, however sweet their ultimate
uses. Unhappy those who wade through them for increasing the happiness
of others! These humble but portly representatives of political
literature are the log-books of the ship of state. They chart and
chronicle the currents and winds along its course, so that from the mass
of chaff a grain of guidance may be painfully winnowed out for the
benefit of its next voyage, or for the voyages of other craft
floundering on the same perilous and baffling sea.
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