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 Arthur Conan Doyle: Through the Magic Door==========================================a machine-readable transcriptionVersion 1.0: 1993-02-081.1: 1993-04-07 corrected a number of transcriptionerrorsThis is a machine-readable transcription of Arthur Conan Doyle's`Through the Magic Door', published by Thomas Nelson and Sons, Ltd.:London, [1919]. It was first published by Smith, Elder & Co.: London,1907.Transcription principles:-------------------------The index of the printed text has been deleted as being of fairlylittle interest for an e-text edition.Each line in the file correspond to a line in the book, except thatend-of-line hyphenation has been removed. Page breaks have not beenretained.Dropped capitals have been converted to ordinary capitals. Theimmediately following words in caps have been converted to lower- andupper-case letters as appropriate.Italics have been placed inside underscore characters (_). Threehyphens (---) represent an em dash. Longer sequences of hyphensrepresent correspondingly longer dashes.Accented characters have been represented by the following encoding:<e'> e acute<e`> e grave<e:> e diaeresis<o^> e circumflex<ae> ae ligature<OE> OE ligature<oe> oe ligatureI trust the principles are fairly clear.There is one possible printing error in the book, which has been leftuncorrected: 'Paraquay'.The transcription and proof-reading was done by Anders Thulin,Rydsvagen 288, S-582 50 Linkoping, Sweden.Email: ath@linkoping.trab.se.I'd be grateful to learn of any errors you find in the text.THROUGH THEMAGIC DOORBY
 
 ARTHUR CONAN DOYLETHROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR.I.I care not how humble your bookshelf maybe, nor how lowly the room which it adorns.Close the door of that room behind you, shutoff with it all the cares of the outer world,plunge back into the soothing company of thegreat dead, and then you are through themagic portal into that fair land whither worryand vexation can follow you no more. Youhave left all that is vulgar and all that is sordidbehind you. There stand your noble, silentcomrades, waiting in their ranks. Pass youreye down their files. Choose your man. Andthen you have but to hold up your hand tohim and away you go together into dreamland.Surely there would be something eerie abouta line of books were it not that familiarity hasdeadened our sense of it. Each is a mummifiedsoul embalmed in cere-cloth and natronof leather and printer's ink. Each cover of atrue book enfolds the concentrated essence ofa man. The personalities of the writers havefaded into the thinnest shadows, as their bodiesinto impalpable dust, yet here are their veryspirits at your command.It is our familiarity also which has lessenedour perception of the miraculous goodfortune which we enjoy. Let us suppose thatwe were suddenly to learn that Shakespearehad returned to earth, and that he wouldfavour any of us with an hour of his wit andhis fancy. How eagerly we would seek himout! And yet we have him---the very bestof him---at our elbows from week to week,and hardly trouble ourselves to put out ourhands to beckon him down. No matter whatmood a man may be in, when once he haspassed through the magic door he can summonthe world's greatest to sympathize withhim in it. If he be thoughtful, here are thekings of thought. If he be dreamy, here arethe masters of fancy. Or is it amusementthat he lacks? He can signal to any one ofthe world's great story-tellers, and out comesthe dead man and holds him enthralled by thehour. The dead are such good company thatone may come to think too little of the living.It is a real and a pressing danger with manyof us, that we should never find our ownthoughts and our own souls, but be ever obsessedby the dead. Yet second-hand romance
 
and second-hand emotion are surely betterthan the dull, soul-killing monotony whichlife brings to most of the human race. Butbest of all when the dead man's wisdom andstrength in the living of our own strenuousdays.Come through the magic door with me,and sit here on the green settee, where youcan see the old oak case with its untidy linesof volumes. Smoking is not forbidden.Would you care to hear me talk of them?Well, I ask nothing better, for there is novolume there which is not a dear, personalfriend, and what can a man talk of morepleasantly than that? The other books areover yonder, but these are my own favourites---the ones I care to re-read and to have nearmy elbow. There is not a tattered coverwhich does not bring its mellow memoriesto me.Some of them represent those little sacrificeswhich make a possession dearer. Yousee the line of old, brown volumes at thebottom? Every one of those represents alunch. They were bought in my student days,when times were not too affluent. Threepencewas my modest allowance for my midday sandwichand glass of beer; but, as luck wouldhave it, my way to the classes led past themost fascinating bookshop in the world. Outsidethe door of it stood a large tub filled withan ever-changing litter of tattered books, witha card above which announced that any volumetherein could be purchased for the identicalsum which I carried in my pocket. As I approachedit a combat ever raged betwixt thehunger of a youthful body and that of an inquiringand omnivorous mind. Five times out ofsix the animal won. But when the mentalprevailed, then there was an entrancing fiveminutes' digging among out-of-date almanacs,volumes of Scotch theology, and tables of logarithms,until one found something which madeit all worth while. If you will look over thesetitles, you will see that I did not do so verybadly. Four volumes of Gordon's ``Tacitus''(life is too short to read originals, so longas there are good translations), Sir WilliamTemple's Essays, Addison's works, Swift's``Tale of a Tub,'' Clarendon's ``History,''``Gil Blas,'' Buckingham's Poems, Churchill'sPoems, ``Life of Bacon''---not so bad forthe old threepenny tub.They were not always in such plebeian company.Look at the thickness of the richleather, and the richness of the dim goldlettering. Once they adorned the shelves ofsome noble library, and even among the odd
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