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Sunday, April 03, 2005
A PERFECT JEWEL
I have a copy of one of those giant collections of all sorts of literary miscellany which were so popular as to demand a place in the proper “Parlor Rooms” of thousands of America's finest homes during the later decades of the 1800's.
The 608 page volume, offering several hundred poems, musical scores, essays and terse aphorisms, was elegantly printed and sturdily bound. The book plate inside the front cover tells us it originally,belonged to R.E. Harvey. He, or she, purchased the heavy volume September 1, 1885 for $5.50 and a portion identifies this particular copy as being ”No. 279” in what one must assume was a Limited Edition, published in 1885 by Mills, Dodge & Pomeroy, Adrian, Michigan.
The collection - titled “Perfect Jewels” - was compiled by one William Ralston Blach, and credits are included identifying him as the author of eight books , two about James Garfield, A “People's Dictionary”, “Every-Day Encyclopedia”, and several on the mining industry in America. An exceptional feature of this book is that he does not parade a raft of educational honors either at this point or in the short “Preface” in the text of the book itself. The man who wrote the ”Introduction” - T. DeWitt Talmage identifies himself with a D.D showing he was Pastor of “Brooklyn Tabernacle” and Editor of “Sunday Magazine” His Introduction is dated “Brooklyn 1884” and the Preface by Blach is designated only as “Philadelphia, -1884”. The book itself is marked “Copyright 1884 by John Blakey”.
Typical of the oddity I find in this rather unusual “parlor book”, here in an item said to have been written by one Thomas Jefferson which I do not recall ever having seen before.
“A New Ten Commandments.”
Never put off till to-morrow what you can do to-day.
Never trouble another for what you can do yourself.
Never spend your money before you have it.
Never buy what you do not want because it is cheap; it will be dear to you.
Pride costs us more than hunger, thirst and cold.
We never repent of having eaten toolittle.
Nothing is troublesome that we do willingly.
How much pain have cost us the evils that have never happened.
Take things always by their smooth handle.
When angry, count ten before you speak; if very angry, an hundred.
Thomas Jefferson”
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A.L.M. April 3, 2005 [c401wds]
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