How I wonder what you are.
But now it is become:
Twinkle, twinkle, little star,
Teacher’s told me what you are.
Even babies won’t wonder very soon. That is to say, they won’t wonder out loud. Nobody does. Another of my poems was:
Where did you come from, baby dear?
Out of the everywhere into here.
I thought of it the other day when I stepped into the library with the list of books I had to have an opinion about before Mrs. W——‘s Thursday Afternoon, I felt like a literary infant.
Where did you come from, baby fair?
Out of the here into everywhere.
And the bookcases stared at me.
It is a serious question whether the average American youth is ever given a chance to thirst for knowledge. He thirsts for ignorance instead. From the very first he is hemmed in by knowledge. The kindergarten with its suave relentlessness, its perfunctory cheerfulness, closes in upon the life of every child with himself. The dear old-fashioned breathing spell he used to have after getting here—whither has it gone? The rough, strong, ruthless, unseemly, grown-up world crowds to the very edge of every beginning life. It has no patience with trailing clouds of glory. Flocks of infants every year—new-comers to this planet—who can but watch them sadly, huddled closer and closer to the little strip of wonder that is left near the land from which they came? No lingering away from us. No infinite holiday. Childhood walks a precipice crowded to the brink of birth. We tabulate its moods. We register its learning inch by inch. We draw its poor little premature soul out of its body breath by breath. Infants are well informed now. The suckling has nerves. A few days more he will be like all the rest of us. It will be:
Poem: “When I Was Weaned.”
“My First Tooth: A Study.”
The Presiding Genius of the State of Massachusetts, with his dazed, kind look, looked up and said: “I fear, my dear fellow, there is no place for you in the world.”
Thanks. One of the delights of going fishing or hunting is, that one learns how small “a place in the world” is—comes across so many accidentally preserved characters—preserved by not having a place in the world—persons that are interesting to be with—persons you can tell things.
The real object—it seems to me—in meeting another human being is complement—fitting into each other’s ignorances. Sometimes it seems as if it were only where there is something to be caught or shot, or where there is plenty of room, that the highest and most sociable and useful forms of ignorance were allowed to mature.
One can still find such fascinating prejudices, such frank enthusiasms of ignorance, where there’s good fishing; and then, in the stray hamlets, there is the grave whimsicalness and the calm superior air of austerity to cultured people.
Ah, let me live in the Maine woods or wander by the brooks of Virginia, and rest my soul in the delights—in the pomposity—of ignorance—ignorance in its pride and glory and courage and lovableness! I never come back from a vacation without a dream of what I might have been, if I had only dared to know a little less; and even now I sometimes feel I have ignorance enough, if like Elia, for instance, I only knew how to use it, but I cannot as much as get over being ashamed of it. I am nearly gone. I have little left but the gift of being bored. That is something—but hardly a day passes without my slurring over a guilty place in conversation, without my hiding my ignorance under a bushel, where I can go later and take a look at it by myself. Then I know all about it next time and sink lower and lower. A man can do nothing alone. Of course, ignorance must be natural and not acquired in order to have the true ring and afford the most relief in the world; but every wide-awake village that has thoughtful people enough—people who are educated up to it—ought to organise an Ignoramus Club to defend the town from papers and books——.
It was at about this point that The Presiding Genius of the State of Massachusetts took up the subject, and after modulating a little and then modulating a little more, he was soon listening to himself about a book we had not read, and I sat in my chair and wrote out this.
IX
The Bugbear of Being Well Informed—A Practical Suggestion
1. This Club shall be known as the Ignoramus Club of ——.
4. Every member shall be pledged not to read the latest book until people have stopped expecting it.
5. The Club shall have a Standing Committee that shall report at every meeting on New Things That People Do Not Need to Know.
6. It shall have a Public Library Committee, appointed every year, to look over the books in regular order and report on Old Things That People Do Not Need to Know. (Committee instructed to keep the library as small as possible.)
8. No member (vacations excepted) shall read any book that he would not read twice. In case he does, he shall be obliged to read it twice or pay a fine (three times the price of book, net).
11. The Club shall meet weekly.
12. Any person of suitable age shall be eligible for membership in the Club, who, after a written examination in his deficiencies, shall appear, in the opinion of the Examining Board, to have selected his ignorance thoughtfully, conscientiously, and for the protection of his mind.
13. All persons thus approved shall be voted upon at the next regular meeting of the Club—the vote to be taken by ballot (any candidate who has not read When Knighthood Was in Flower, or Audrey, or David Harum—by acclamation).
Perhaps I have quoted from the by-laws sufficiently to give an idea of the spirit and aim of the Club. I append the order of meeting:
1 Called to order.
2 Reports of Committees.
3 General Confession (what members have read during the week).
4 FINES.
5 Review: Books I Have Escaped.
6 Essay: Things Plato Did Not Need to Know.
7 Omniscience. Helpful Hints. Remedies.
8 The Description Evil; followed by an illustration.
9 Not Travelling on the Nile: By One Who Has Been There.
10 Our Village Street: Stereopticon.
11 What Not to Know about Birds.
12 Myself through an Opera-Glass.
13 Sonnet: Botany.
14 Essay: Proper Treatment of Paupers, Insane, and Instructive People.
15 The Fad for Facts.
16 How to Organise a Club against Clubs.
17 Paper: How to Humble Him Who Asks, “Have You Read——?”
18 Essay,
