Robert Browning wrote about love and relationships.
Today we glance at the selected works of R.B. ("Stay a while; read a book!")


"...To-morrow we meet the same then, dearest?
May I take your hand in mine?
Mere friends are we,  well, friends the merest
Keep much that I resign:


For each glance of the eye so bright and black,
Though I keep with heart's endeavor, ~
Your voice, when you wish the snowdrops back,
Though it stay in my soul forever! ~


Yet I will but say what mere friends say,
Or only a thought stronger;
I will hold your hand but as long as all may,
Or so very little longer!"

~ from The Lost Mistress.

"Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations.  Books, the oldest and the best, stand naturally and rightfully on the shelves of every cottage.  They have no cause of their own to plead, but while they enlighten and sustain the reader his common sense will not refuse them.  Their authors are a natural and irresistible aristocracy in every society, and, more than kings or emperors, exert an influence on mankind."
~ Henry D. Thoreau, Walden, Life in The Woods.  American author, poet and philosopher (1817 - 1862)

"How many a man has dated a new era in his life from reading a book?  The book exists for us perchance which will explain our miracles and reveal new ones.  The at present unutterable things we may find somewhere uttered.  These same questions that disturb and puzzle and confound us have in their turn occurred to all the wise men; not one has been omitted; and each has answered them, according to his ability, by his words and his life.  Moreover, with wisdom we shall learn liberality."

~ Henry D. Thoreau (1817 - 1862) Walden, Life In The Woods, Ticknor & Fields,1854.

"It is not all books that are as dull as their readers.  There are probably words addressed to our condition exactly, which, if we could really hear and understand, would be more salutary than the morning or the spring to our lives, and possibly put a new aspect on the face of things for us." ~ H. D. T.
Photo:  Rock Glen Falls, Ausable Gorge, Ontario, L. B. Walker

When Catcher in the Rye was chosen as the main selection of the Book-of-the-Month Club in 1951, the president of the club expressed anxiety over the book's somewhat ambiguous title.  He asked the author, J. D. Salinger if he would consider a title change, Salinger simply replied, "Holden Caulfield wouldn't like that."
A first edition, signed, of Catcher in the Rye now sells in the vicinity of fifty-five thousand dollars.
~ The Little Brown Book of Anecdotes, Editor, Clifton Fadiman, 1985.

Thought For Today ~

Thomas Edison, famous for inventing the electric light bulb, was asked to sign a guest book that had the usual columns for name and address, as well as one for "Interested In."  In this last column Edison entered the word:  " Everything."

THE LITTLE, BROWN BOOK OF Anecdotes, 1985, edited by Clifton Fadiman

Join us today at 1:30 p.m. for a warm-up for Valentine's Day.  Karen Richardson, Curator of Haldimand County Museum, will be at The Neat Little Bookshop.  Round Table discussion on romance!    Do you have any old love letters, tokens of love or maybe a love story?

~ Postcard collection courtesy of John Walker

Familiar with Elizabeth Barrett Browning's poem, "How do I love thee?  Let me count the ways?"
Following, is an excerpt from an early letter ~ Robert Browning to Elizabeth Barrett.

"I LOVE your verses with all my heart, dear Miss Barrett,  and this is no off-hand complimentary letter that I shall write, ~ whatever else, no prompt matter-of-course recognition of your genius, and there a graceful and natural end of the thing.
Since the day last week when I first read your poems, I quite laugh to remember how I have been turning and turning again in my mind what I should be able to tell you of their effect upon me...
"...this great living poetry of yours, not a flower of which but took root and grew ~ Oh, how different that is from lying to be dried and pressed flat, and prized highly, and put in a book with a proper account at top and bottom, and shut up and put away."

~ THE WORLD'S GREAT LETTERS, Edited by M. L. Schuster, Simon & Schuster Inc., 1940.