There is much treasure to be found in Mr. Edmund
Pearson's
Omer Books (Constable, 15s.). Perhaps . the most notable discovery which Mr. Pearson made as a librarian was Mr. Edwin H. Tenny of Tennessee, the most astonishing orator of modern (lines. For Mr. Tenny had a perverted genius for phrases ; classical rotundities poured from his lips and he was only a step from sublimity. Witness his speech on the eighty-third- anniversary Of American Independence : "The ravens croak their death knell and buzzards chant their epitaph, yet the jargon of their eulogiums cannot inumbrate their sepulchre. The worms may have scattered as their bodies have frittered and earth hug the ashes of a tearless grave, yet the recollection of ages Will embalm their fidelity' and 'calify with benedictions each.passing generation." The book is full of these happy explorations.. There- is a particularly charming rhyme, for example,- quoted from the works of a nineteenth-century
moralist :—
" Happy Johnny, how you grow. Do you chew tobacco ? ' No ! And—what is better yet— I never smoked a cigarette.'"
The curiosities of literature which Mr. Pearson describes are all of them American products ; and, perhaps, as we read them with amusement, we may also learn a good deal of American social history.
Previous page
