I’ve owned this domain for almost 3 years now and have done precious little with it. There have been times when I have been motivated with fire and brimstone to be faithful to it, but, as is the custom of my generation, after a brief flurry of posts I went back to my refined laziness. But, what the hell, might as well try one mor time:
Elbert Hubbard’s Scrapbook Project
When I was in my teens I found a book that belonged to my Grandfather, Francis William Covello. It was artistically bound and proclaimed to be produced by the Roycrofters in 1923. Many years later I came to understand that the Roycrofters were a formidable part of the craftsman movement in America, the movement that included William Morris and Gustav Stickley. Surprisingly, some decades after I moved to the San Francisco Bay area, I learned from an exhibit at the library that they had a strong affect on the city of Burlingame, one of the more affluent communities on the San Francisco Peninsula. The book is a collection of sayings and writings that Elbert Hubbard, Chief of the Roycrofters (which has a frighteningly autocratic ring to it), had collected. In my twenties I found the book inspiring. I particularly remember the quote of Cardinal Newman; ” Fear not that thy life shall come to an end, but rather fear that it shall never have a beginning.”
It’s not hard to hook a twenty year old kid.
Anyway, since we seem to be entering an autocratic era, even here in America, I thought it might be of some use to try to reproduce the book here on the website. I’ll scan in the pages that are background material with pictures as well as pages that seem to have artistic value, like the cover, but the quotations, which represent the bulk of the book I intend to transcribe manually, one page per day. The entire atmosphere of the project and the book are brimming with modernist sentiment from Fin de Siecle taht can be fund in the Joyce novels and teh Thorton Wilder plays. Now as we enter the Post Human era and lack the desire to reconcile the universal and singular experiences of life – indeed, there is little faith in the validity of any universality of experience – I find myself called to explore that age of innocence. I long to once again consider the question, ” Are we humans merely animals or are we bound for something more?” Even as the world turns to the question, ” Are we humans anything more than complicated machines?”
So, welcome to the project. Here are the scanned pages at the start of the scrapbook:
There is an ancient legend which tells us that when a man first achieved a most notable deed he wished to explain to his tribe what he had done. As soon as he began to speak, however, he was smitten with dumbness, he lacked words, and sat down. Then there arose — according to the story — a masterless man, one who had taken no part in the action of his fellow, who had no special virtues, but afflicted — that is the phrase — with the magic of the necessary words. He saw, he told, he described the merits of the notable deed in such a fashion, we are assured, that the words, “became alive and walked up and down in the hearts of all his hearers.” Thereupon, the tribe seeing that the words were certainly alive, and fearing lest the man with the words would hand down untrue tales about them to their children, they took and killed him. But later they saw that the magic was in the words, not the man.
–KIpling