Note 29 — Chapter Seventeen
Reading edition
I think that David’s library, begun, I always say, back in the days when Father accidentally stumbled across a whole nest of books he had secreted in the spring-house, is probably the greatest commentary of all, upon his kind of intellectual curiosity. On two important occasions, it has fallen to my lot to superintend the moving of his library. First from his home in Springfield to the State Mansion. There were then, as I remember it, about fourteen hundred, exclusive of law-books. Many years later, in the move to Washington, there were over again as many to be recatalogued and boxed. Nor were these volumes books with uncut pages. A book never reached his permanent shelves until its contents had been either read or “duly noted.” Insatiably curious, the headings under which his books fell into catalogue were as grotesque as varied.
He loved and revered lyric poetry, although modern verse was on his shelves. The only soothing agent ever discovered for one of his blinding headaches was curiously enough, Dora’s low and rather sing-song voice which she had cultivated to a monotony that could fairly drone him to sleep on the word-rhythms that he loved.
His personal collection was catalogued under such headlines as Horticulture. Electronic Theory. Soil Chemistry. Parasites in Central American Tropics. Geographies. Organic Chemistry. Evolution. Psychiatry. Aeronautics. Physics. History. Greek, American, French, Russian, Scandinavian Literatures. Drama. Sociology. Church History. Heredity. Determinism. Behaviorism. Anthropology. National Parks. Deserts. Travel. Genetics. Shorthorn Cattle. Morphology. Race. Essays. Philosophy. Waterways. Radio. Theater. Birds. Chess. Dogs. Population. Fundamentalism. Astronomy. Public Health. Theory of Relativity. Fisheries. Astronomy. Furniture. Architecture. Journalism.
Senator Harmon once said of my brother, that he knew so well the secret of surrounding himself with brilliant minds on every subject, that he had only to press a button marked Coinage, Immigration, Mexico, or Techno-Psychology, and lo, a specialist on that subject appeared before him.
That, of course, is an amusing exaggeration. It could more truthfully be said of my brother’s library. Books were literally at his elbow by the thousand, on call for almost any reference.