Horizon

Narcissism

Somehow, handling books brings out the navel-gazer in people. I've been playing around with my gift subscription to LibraryThing and find that entering a mere shelf-and-a-half of books has probably doubled my pomposity quotient.

It's not just me, though. Inside the back cover of my 1896 First Greek Book is this handwritten note, probably by the Leo Budovsky whose name is inside the front cover:

N.B. -
This book is the first one to find its way into my library. It dates back to a very early period of my life. At that time I was still a student in elementary school. It seems to have been obtained for my father by a man (an educated, cultured man, as I recollect) of Greek descent who, like my father, still greatly treasured and heartily cherished the love and noble works of antiquity in which he had been nurtured and inspired by good teachers in his native homeland. Many a time and oft he was wont to come to my father's newsstand and discourse with him on subjects of cultural interest and things that pertain to the mind and soul, and I was frequently near at hand and eagerly drank in what I could. These memories are the dearest and prettiest of my childhood days.

I look back to those early days now that I am a grown man, though still young (twenty five and my twenty sixth birthday comes on October 30) and I smile as with my mind's eye I survey these and other childhood scenes. Yes, charming, appealingly lovely, romantically attractive were those early days of boyhood fancy, work, and idle hopes. Yes, truly, I look back and am charmed. Will some chance reader perhaps, in time to come, rummaging among my posthumous writings long years after I am gone, when my mortal remains will long since have found their last earthly rest and I and all I had vainly and fondly hoped and planned to do, am naught but an empty memory, will he too be charmed and even inspired in reading this? Away with thee, silly, empty, transitory thought! And yet, amidst the gloom, the bitterness, the dreary darkness, mortal anguish and dismal travail of these years I still can smile, -- feebly and wanly, it is true, and refresh myself with these early recollections. I shall live with them, love and cherish them forever, and may peace and contentment someday visit my troubled soul.