Dorothy A. Johnson
English I (7)
October 27, 1922
A Summer's ExperienceThere are ways and ways of spending a summer. One way is to adjourn to the seashore or the mountains and while away the weeks in hiking, swimming, motoring, and having a good time in general. I think that this is most people's idea of a really pleasant summer. It used to be mine. But last summer I found that there are other ways of spending a pleasant summer and profitable vacation. Being siezed [sic] with an inspiration of a thrifty and practical nature, I went to work, at the Connecticut State Library in Hartford.
State Library work is not at all like ordinary Public Library work. One of the most important departments is the Cataloging Department, where all books which come into the Library are brought to be given a number so that they may be readily found in their proper places on the shelves. Another interesting department is that which cares for the state archives. This department looks after all the valuable old books which have to do with state history.
All these departments call for trained Library workers. As I was only a summer worker, I was employed with "odd jobs" of all sorts and descriptions. They were so many and so varied that I could go on indefinitely ennumerating [sic] and describing them, but there was one odd job which interested me particularly. And that was - dusting books. You are now prepared to hear me say, no doubt, that I like dusting and sweeping and all things domestic of which girls are supposed to be fond. But I don't. I despise them. In fact, I groaned when my employer told me that my next job would be to dust a very large, but very valuable collection of books which had been accumulating layers of very black dirt in a hot, stuffy vault for ten years or more. But I found a lot besides dirt in that vault. My real duty was to take down one book after another, dust it, and return it to its original position one shelf higher up. To reach the highest shelves, I stood on a rickety wooden platform which the janitor had constructed for me. It sometimes took me at least an hour to dust one book. I would take down some dog-eared, much thumbed volume of epitaphs from old church-yards, and the dust cloth would be forgotten. My fellow workers in the room just outside must have thought I was crazy, for those ridiculous epitaphs kept me in gales of laughter. The one which I remember as being the most ridiculous went as follows:
"A grieving father had engraved on his little son's tombstone:
'We can't have everything to please us
Little Tommy's gone to Jesus.'A sympathetic friend, misunderstanding the sentiment, added the following inscription:
'Cheer up, dear friend, all may be well.
Perhaps your Tommy's gone to Hell.'"Such a thing seems to us so irreverent that we can hardly believe it to be really true, but I have actually seen others almost as bad, for instance, the following:
"Here lies the mother of children five.
Two are dead and three alive;
The two that are dead prefering [sic] rather
To go with mother than live with father."After some time I would come to, with a start, and dust several shelves farther on, until I was lost again, this time, perhaps, in some ancient history of witch-craft which I could hardly read because the s's were like f's and the pages were yellowed with age. I must have been a strange apparition, sitting all hunched up on a very small box, with my hands and face, and practically every exposed part of me as black as a chimney-sweep's, but I didn't care. I was three hundred years in the past, listening to grave-faced men in leather jackets and tall-crowned hats discuss laws; and listening to the dying screams of poor souls who were forced to die horrible deaths because of the ignorance and superstition of their fellow beings. What mattered a little dirt!
As I have said before, the collection was a very valuable one. It was made up largely of Connecticut histories, biographies, and other material pertaining to the state, though there were books under many other subjects. The price paid for each book was marked on the fly-leaf, and some of the prices were inconceivable. It was hard to imagine how one small volume, only about six by four inches in size, could possibly have cost more than five-hundred dollars! And it was hard for even a book-lover to imagine how anyone could pay that price for it. The most valuable of the books were bound in beautiful, colored leather, which formed a striking contrast to the torn, yellowed pages.
Perhaps others may have had more thrilling summers' experiences, but I am sure that even they must admit that the humble task of dusting books may be educational and enjoyable.