If you promise not to tell a soul, I've got a book out from the local library, a book that's painfully overdue. It's a wonderful book, full of the obscure histories I wanted it to be, a great deal about the battles, the warfare, that went on here in the region before the white man showed up or started to care about the Indigenous. Native American history is a rare bird anyway, but the history that went on before colonizers slogged out by the thousands, has been left pretty much unrecorded, in large part because Native historians wrote their history in pictures that aren't always easy to interpret.
Besides, who cares before we got here?--right?
Anyway, this very good book is already a month or so overdue, and it grieves me to see it lying here on the steps, where I placed it specifically to remind me to get it out of the house and back to the library.
This morning I ran into a story that relieved me somewhat, the story of a single volume of history borrowed from the Library at Harvard. The story, in short, is that this volume,“The Christian Warfare Against the Devil World and Flesh,” by John Downame, long overdue, has made it back to the Harvard Library, where officials indicated that, oddly enough, there hadn't been much of a waiting list, given the length of its absence from their shelves.
The story lies elsewhere, and it's quite a story.
Harvard College was not in session on the night of January 25, 1764, so there was no one around. That no one was strolling the grounds meant that, quite unnoted, a fire of unknown origin proceeded to burn the entire place down--along with about 5000 books. If that were to happen today, chances are those fiery volumes could be replaced; but back then, there were few additional copies. The man who gave his name to the college, John Harvard, was no shipping magnate with a satchel full of money. He was only in New England for a couple of years before dying, but he gifted the new college with his beloved library, a gift so greatly appreciated that someone determined to remember his largesse by naming the place after him.
Alas, most of the Harvard collection, almost priceless back then, went up in the fire, save 250 books that were set away just then and 144 checked out. Eighty of those checked out were eventually returned, most the others simply assumed lost.
Miraculously, one of those checked out-but-not-returned volumes appeared about twenty years ago. A rare book dealer showed Christian Warfare to a Harvard prof, who recognized its origins--or at least theorized that not only was it ancient property of the college library, but in fact one of those volumes originally bequeathed by John Harvard's estate.
My book is about a month overdue; Christian Warfare's due date was approximately 233 years ago. Such grievance might well mean a hanging if the original thief could ever be known. By this time, the scoundrel has no fear of a rope.
I'm not a serious library patron. I tend to buy books I really want to read--it's an exasperating habit and leads to unending problems late in life. Trust me on that. What the heck are we going to do with all these books?--that question is voiced almost daily in my conscience.
Yes, I have a conscience, and I intend--intend--to return that great book on inter-tribal warfare today. Honestly.
In 1764, books were far, far more precious than they are today, and 5000 of them, going up in flames, had to make some of those Harvard scholars bawl. No matter how you think of it, a dozen years before the American Revolution, that January fire was a disaster.
Then again, given a handy-dandy scanner and a half-dozen work study students, you could put most all of that collection on-line and available to millions at the stroke of a key. Or, how about this? You could take the entire John Harvard library and download it into a thumb drive.
Seriously, that's the state of the world or at least the state of the library today.
Amazing.
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