A most amazing thing took place this afternoon. On my way to get some coffee, I of course wandered into a local used book store. My intention was as usual to find yet another history book or biography. Well, I did both, then took my finds to the counter, where I chatted briefly with the owner.
Once he got a sense of my true interest in history, he turned away and went to fetch something behind him. It was a small book, bound in cracked brown leather, its pages hopelessly yellow. “This is the oldest book in the store,” he said. Or possibly the oldest book in my town. He opened it and I looked at the title page.
I quickly read the year at the bottom in roman numerals. 1751. My heart began to race! May I hold it? For this may be the oldest object I have ever touched, unless you count Parisian side-streets touched by my feet. That’s how it is when you spend your life on the west coast. The pages were incredibly delicate, ruined by moisture, but still soft and intact.
There was another book, this one of even greater interest to me. It was an annual compendium of newspaper and magazine articles published in the Colonies, 1774. A digest, if you will, a “best of.” Essays, poetry, royal decrees, deaths. Gaze upon this, familiarize your eyes with strange “s” shapes and Latin, and behold, a Message From the King!
His Majesty was very upset about the destruction of a cargo of tea in Boston, and had thusly instituted a blockade to become law on June 1. I wonder how that all played out?
I also carefully turned a few pages to find this helpful advice to the Ladies.
“No longer be won by faces with brainless heads to them, or silk stockings with run-away spindle legs beneath them. Neither mistake a low bow for pure good manners; nor a powdered tortured head with a long tail for gentility; nor laced cloathes for an estate; nor servile cringing for true love; nor a smooth tongue for good sense.”
That paragraph is about men. A long tail!!! The book also contained an essay by a certain John Hancock, but I didn’t have time to read it. I promised I would be back to visit with it again.
Oh the delight I felt in reading a couple of softened, yellowed parchment pages, I was literally moved… to feel that what I have devoted countless hours of the past year to, that has lived only in my mind and in abstraction, suddenly came to life in my hands! To touch a thing that was once made in an ancient press and held by the hands of an unknown American colonist. I mean. I can scarcely find any other words except that I must and I will someday travel east.