On every page he is aware of his own mind running with him, tingling
him with needle-pricks of conscience for the golden chapters he has
never written. And so his reading is, in a way, the perfection of
exquisite misery--and his writing also. When he writes, he yearns to
be reading; when he reads, he yearns to be writing.
But the Perfect Reader, for whom all fine things are written, knows
no such delicate anguish. When he reads, it is without any _arriere
pensee_, any twingeing consciousness of self. I like to think of one
Perfect Reader of my acquaintance. He is a seafaring man, and this
very evening he is in his bunk, at sea, the day's tasks completed.
Over his head is a suitable electric lamp. In his mouth is a pipe
with that fine wine-dark mahogany sheen that resides upon excellent
briar of many years' service. He has had (though I speak only by
guess) a rummer of hot toddy to celebrate the greatest of all
Evenings. At his elbow is a porthole, brightly curtained with a
scrap of clean chintz, and he can hear the swash of the seas along
his ship's tall side. And now he is reading. I can see him reading.
I know just how his mind feels! Oh, the Perfect Reader! There is not
an allusion that he misses; in all those lovely printed words he
sees the subtle secrets that a lesser soul would miss. He (bless his
heart!) is not thinking how he himself would have written it; his
clear, keen, outreaching mind is intent only to be one in spirit
with the invisible and long-dead author.
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