To read good books is like holding a conversation with the most eminent minds of past centuries and, moreover, a studied conversation in which these authors reveal to us only the best of their thoughts.

— René Descartes, Discourse on the Method, 1637

For him, books were like friends, and reading an extension of companionship — a way of expanding beyond the circumference of time and place the circle of one’s kindred acquaintances.

— Michael Holroyd, Lytton Strachey, 1971

‘There is nothing like books’; — of all things sold incomparably the cheapest, of all pleasures the least palling, they take up little room, keep quiet when they are not wanted, and, when taken up, bring us face to face with the choicest men who have ever lived, at their choicest moments.

As my walking companion in the country, I was so UnEnglish (excuse the two capitals) as on the whole, to prefer my pocket Milton which I carried for twenty years, to the not unbeloved bull terrier Trimmer, who accompanied me for five — for Milton never fidgeted, frightened horses, ran after sheep or got run over by a goods-van.

— Samuel Palmer, letter to Charles West Cape, Jan. 31, 1880

In a very real sense, then, people who have read good literature have lived more than people who cannot or will not read. … It is not true that we have only one life to live; if we can read, we can live as many more lives and as many kinds of lives as we wish.

— S.I. Hayakawa, Language in Thought and Action, 1952

Submitted by Lewis Allen for Life magazine’s 1915 short story contest:

‘Isn’t that young Griggs and Miss Deering?’ asked the captain, peering down from the bridge at a dark spot silhouetted against the moonlit sea.

‘Yes, sir,’ replied the second officer.

‘It’s the speediest shipboard romance I’ve ever seen in all my thirty years aboard a liner,’ remarked the captain, smiling.

‘I understand they never saw or heard of each other until they met at dinner, Tuesday. Have you talked much with them, sir? I see they sit next you at table.’

‘Oh, yes, that’s true. Why, on the second dinner out he complained because there was no jewellery shop aboard. She looked as happy as a kid with a lollypop, and blushed.’

‘Whew! Engaged within forty-eight hours! Going some! I suppose they’ll be married by the American consul before they’ve been ashore an hour.’

‘Not a bit of doubt of it,’ grinned the captain. ‘True love at sight in this case, all right. Well, they have my blessings. I fell in love with my Missus the same way, but we waited three months. I’ll go below. What’s she making?’

‘Nineteen, sir. Good-night.’

* * *

Two hours later there came a terrific explosion away down in the hold amongst the cargo. The ship trembled and listed.

‘Women and children first! No danger! Time enough for all!’ shouted the officers, as the frantic passengers surged about the life-boats.

She was going down rapidly by her stern. There came another explosion, this from the boilers.

‘All women and children off?’ bellowed the captain.

‘Aye, aye, sir,’ answered the second officer.

‘Married men next!’ shouted the captain as the men began scrambling into the boats. A score of men paused, bowed, and stepped back. Young Griggs tore his way through and started to clamber into the boat.

‘Damn you, for a coward!’ cursed the second officer, dragging him back.

Young Griggs yanked away and again clutched at the boat. This time the second officer struck him square in the face and he went down.

The boatload of married men was merely cut away, so low was the ship in the water. Then came a lurch, and the waves closed over the great ship.

* * *

The next evening the Associated Press sent out, from its St. Louis office, this paragraph:

‘Among those lost was H.G. Griggs, junior partner of the Wells & Griggs Steel Co. He leaves a wife and infant son in this city. It is feared Mrs. Griggs will not recover from the shock.’

When Robert Southey boasted to Richard Porson of the greatness of his poem Madoc, Porson answered:

“Madoc will be read when Homer and Virgil are forgotten.”

In James Joyce’s Ulysses, as Bloom attends Dignam’s funeral, an odd thought passes through his mind: “Now who is that lankylooking galoot over there in the macintosh? Now who is he I’d like to know? Now, I’d give a trifle to know who he is. Always someone turns up you never dreamt of.” The interloper’s presence seems significant: “Mr Bloom stood far back, his hat in his hand, counting the bared heads. Twelve. I’m thirteen. No. The chap in the macintosh is thirteen. Death’s number. Where the deuce did he pop out of? He wasn’t in the chapel, that I’ll swear. Silly superstition that about thirteen.”

He turns up again later: “In Lower Mount street a pedestrian in a brown macintosh, eating dry bread, passed swiftly and unscathed across the viceroy’s path.”

And still later: “A man in a brown macintosh springs up through a trapdoor.”

Altogether the mysterious man is mentioned 11 times in the novel. In the Cyclops episode we’re told, “The man in the brown macintosh loves a lady who is dead,” and in Ithaca, a catechism of questions and answers, we’re asked, “What selfinvolved enigma did Bloom risen, going, gathering multicoloured multiform multitudinous garments, voluntarily apprehending, not comprehend? Who was M’Intosh?”

The question has never been answered definitively. But in his Cornell University lectures on Ulysses, Vladimir Nabokov suggested that the “chap in the macintosh” is none other than James Joyce himself. In the library episode, “Scylla and Charybdis,” Stephen Dedalus explains that Shakespeare “has hidden his own name, a fair name, William, in the plays, a super here, a clown there, as a painter of old Italy set his face in a dark corner of his canvas.” This “is exactly what Joyce has done — setting his face in a dark corner of his canvas. The Man in the Brown Macintosh who passes through the dream of the book is no other than the author himself. Bloom glimpses his maker!”