OCR Text |
Show IN OTHER PEOPLE'S WINDOWS Most of Us, It Would Seem, Find a Certain Fascination in Gazing Into Them. Reading some books is like looking into people's houses in the evening after the lights are turned on and before be-fore the shades are pulled down, declares de-clares a well-known writer. To some of us, looking into people's peo-ple's houses is more interesting and even more exciting than the theater. When the darkness makes all things outside lonesome and strange we like to take one small, polite look into a sitting-room where there is a fire and a reading table and a family, or into a dining-room, where another family is eating supper, and where we can see the cups and plates marching in dusty array around the room on a plate rail. Usually we see only plain folk, doing the most ordinary things, and still we like to look at them and like to read the books that make us feel as though we were looking. Of course, it is not at all fair to accuse ac-cuse Dickens of sneaking around and peering in at parties and fireside conversations, con-versations, and nobody is going to believe be-lieve that Longfellow spied upon his neighbors, or that Whittier was eavesdropping eaves-dropping when he wrote Snowbound, or that Burns was watching the cotter's cot-ter's cottage that Saturday night or that Riley saw all he has told us about by looking through his folks' parlor or kitchen windows. But when we read the things these men wrote we feel as though we ourselves had been stealing glimpses into other people's peo-ple's houses. It is very true that many of us prefer pre-fer reading something thrilling, and fascinating about very fashionable society, so-ciety, or very Bohemian artists, or a very wild west, or something very troublesome about problems, or very sentimental about souls or states of mind. These things are so very different dif-ferent from anything that anybody really knows that they seem to be as eagerly read as easily written. But those of us who read these things can never know the peculiar, satisfied and comfortable enjoyment that the books which are like looking into people's peo-ple's windows give the rest of us. |