Books, Wonderful Books

I spent this past weekend in two delightful towns in Pennsylvania and Delaware visiting two dear friends from college.  The wooded countryside went on for miles, rolling over creeks and down into valleys with old stone houses keeping watch at the top of the hill.

On Monday I visited The Book Barn, a 19th century farmhouse now filled with thousands and thousands of old books.  The old wooden floors creaked upon entry, almost welcoming you into the vast wealth of knowledge.  A wood burning stove filled the air with that smoky smell of fall.  

I got lost in the cookbooks on the first floor and picked up a compilation of recipes from a well-known Washington D.C. hostess and socialite.  For seven dollars, how could I resist?  Sections on gardening and crafting and quilting and entertaining and a whole room of children’s literature beckoned forth, but my friend smiled and suggested we make our way to the second floor.

After climbing up plywood steps and ducking under old barn doors,  I discovered rows of presidential biographies and annals of American history, tales of espionage and theories of political science.  Books on art and photography and the ancient sculptures of Greece and Rome filled a prominent place in the corner.  I even found guides to proper fashion from decades past.  Paul Revere and the World He Lived In by Esther Forbes caught my eye… and soon found a new home.  The Venona Secrets: Exposing Soviet Espionage and America’s Traitors, a handy reference during my thesis writing, also joined the pile.

The third floor was drafty and cold, the wind whistling through the cracks and causing me to shiver.  I barely noticed, as the third floor housed literature of every genre and era imaginable.  Dickens and Thoreau and Cather and Shakespeare and Helprin and Buckley and Tolstoy.  And so many, many more.  I didn’t even know where to begin. 

The forth floor contained volumes on speechwriting and rhetoric, in addition to sections on engineering and psychology and mathematics and science.  I resisted the temptation to buy all five of William Safire’s books on the art of writing.  Someday.  I found an old classic entitled The Modern Man’s Guide to Public Speakingand added it to my stack.  Each chapter had a different piece of advice and/or stylistic rules for those who write speeches and those who give them.  I’m intrigued.

Two glorious hours later we descended back to the first floor and the warmth of the woodburning stove.  Too many books, too little time.  I paid for my treasures and and smiled with satisfaction.

The whole experience made me contemplate the power of the written word.  In a society where words flow freely and often without contemplation, the ability to discover works of careful study was a gift.  The rows of bookshelves went on and on without an end in sight.  A large majority the contents were books that have been read and discussed for years, decades, even centuries.  And I, upon entering that old barn, was ushered into this great tradition, allowed to discover the wealth of the past so that I might, someday, influence the words of the future.

If you are ever in Pennsylvania, be sure to visit The Book Barn.  It will be well worth your while.