of English Verse" and
Boswell's Johnson? Suppose we want to look up a quotation, in
those late hours of the night when all really worthwhile reading
is done? Our memory is knitted with a wide mesh. Suppose we want
to be sure just what it was that Shakespeare said happened to him
in his "sessions of sweet silent thought," what are we going to
do? We will have to fall back on the customary recourse of the
minor poet--if you can't remember one of Shakespeare's sonnets,
at least you can write one of your own instead. Speaking of
literature, it is a curious thing that the essayists have so
neglected this topic of moving. It would be pleasant to know how
the good and the great have faced this peculiarly terrible crisis
of domestic affairs. When the Bard himself moved back to
Stratford after his years in London, what did he think about it?
How did he get all his papers packed up, and did he, in mere
weariness, destroy the half-done manuscripts of plays? Charles
Lamb moved round London a good deal; did he never write of his
experience? We like to think of Emerson: did he ever move, and if
so, how did he behave when the fatal day came? Did he sit on a
packing case and utter sepulchral aphorisms? Think of Lord Bacon
and how he would have crystallized the matter in a phrase.

Of course in bachelor days moving may be a huge lark, a humorous
escapade. We remember some high-spirited young men, three of
them, who were moving their chattels from rooms on Twenty-first
Street to a flat on Irving Place. Frugality was their necessary
watchword, and they hired a pushcart in which to transport the
dunnage. It was necessary to do this on Sunday, and one of the
trio, more sensitive than the others, begged that they should
rise and accomplish the public shame early in the morning, before
the streets were alive. In particular, he begged, let the route
be chosen to avoid a certain club on Gramercy Park where he had
many friends, and where he was loath to be seen pushing his
humble intimacies. The others, scenting sport, and brazenly hardy
of spirit, contrived to delay the start on one pretext or another
until the middle of the forenoon. Then, by main force, ignoring
his bitter protest, they impelled the staggering vehicle, grossly
overloaded, past the very door of the club my friend had wished
to avoid. Here, by malicious inspiration, they tilted the wain to
one side and strewed the paving with their property. They skipped
nimbly round the co