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years these two books had put two hundred and twelve boys through college and raised Ohio from a rude commonwealth to the ability to claim the presidency of the United States and to get into it a man who was never elected.

Ludwig's genius appeared in his living quarters; the walls were completely lined by bookcases, while the volumes were hidden behind engraved portraits, set into the glass doors, from floor to ceiling. Under each likeness was a beautifully lettered inscription reciting what the subject had done for mankind. There was William Murdock, a Scot, who made illuminating gas commercially possible and refused to patent any of his numerous inventions, preferring to give them to the world. There was James Smithson, Englishman, who gave the whole of his property to the United States for the advancement of science. John Howard, Robert Raikes and William Wilberforce beamed across the room at Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, and Thomas Jefferson. Galileo was there, and Bruno, and Imanuel Kant, Arnold Winkelreid, Louis Pasteur, Robert Morris, John Quincy Adams, Hyam Solomon, Steven Girard, and Horace Mann. We used to hear talk in Ludwig's room when no one but Ludwig was there. We believed he was conversing with these eminent friends.

He had peculiar ideas. He paid us to educate him but ended by educating us. After a few lessons in the Latin Grammar he asserted that the current methods were a laborious absurdity. "No human mind," he said, "can ever learn a language by memorizing tables of forms and matching the words of a discourse with the samples." What has this to do with Saint Boethius? A saying of that worthy is often quoted: "Si Potes, ad fontem, non ad librum aquaticum."—"If you want a drink, go to the well, not to a treatise on hydraulics."

Ludwig bought a Latin Testament and began with the already familiar "Sermon on the Mount." Later he would read in English a more unfamiliar chapter of the book and immediately afterward read the Latin

version. He read Caesar, Cicero, Vergil, Horace, without a dictionary, perusing a chapter in translation first and then in the original. "Sense it, sense it. Don't play chess with it; it will come to you." He turned the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution into the language of the Romans. He became an amateur of medieval, monkish Latin, of Gesta Romanorum and the jocular correspondence of the gay old wags of the twelfth century. His extraordinary skill in lettering books on their backs was paralleled by his ability to be their interior decorator. His mastery of the uncials, the minuscules, the majuscules, the cursive, the Lombardic, the Visigothic, the Merovingian, the Carolingian, the round Caroline, the Gothic, and the humanistic alphabets was a delight to the college librarian. Only he and Ludwig knew one style from another.

In these scholarly pursuits a genealogist might find the workings of the Ludwig ancestry. Parallel with this development there might be noted a striking manifestation of the Boyce heredity. This bookmaker had an uncanny sense of what was going to pay. He foresaw the coming roller-skating fad and built a rink before Cleveland or Ashtabula had one. When the craze died he turned the building into a church and sold it to the Christian Scientists. It became known as the church of the Holy Rollers. He bought Toledo sunken lots on the theory that buildings must go up on them and that cellars and subcellars ready to hand without further excavation meant a profit. He dealt in the best cellars. He foresaw Detroit's great boom and profited. He sent picked students every Saturday charting "For Sale" signs, made personal investigations and guessed right. When the college library burned, he made a free reading room of his own book store and increased his own sales. Then he sold out and returned to Germany. Later came his surprising gift to build and endow in the American college his department of civic duty.

In 1912 I visited Europe. I bought a ticket from Cologne to St. Goar and on one

sunny afternoon in August I came ashore from the long white steamboat at the pretty little village on the west bank of the Rhine at the foot of the Spitzenstein mountain and across from the rock of the Loreli. Sure enough, the wharfman knew Herr Boyce Ludwig. "That is his home, yonder. The pretty little stone house with the rose garden. He lives with his mother, an elderly lady. He is one fine man, very generous. See the schoolhouse, there? Herr Ludwig gave it. He pays the schoolmaster more than the government does. Herr Ludwig built the greenhouse next the school. The children. grow flowers and give them to us. I have a rose garden the school gave me. We wish to call this the Ludwig School. He will not. Herr Ludwig, he is generous." I met my old landlord on the street. The bookbinder embraced me, and, Rhine fashion, kissed me twice. He brought me by the hand to his house and proudly presented me to the little white-haired, white-capped mother. He showed me the sights of the village, the ruined walls of the abbey, the black hole near it called the Devil's Tube, Das Teufelsrohr, in which was growing the fungus known as the Devil's Candlestick. The hole goes down so deep into the rock that no one has found the bottom. Professor Kurtz of Bonn University tried to measure it with a plummet but the string burned in two and smoke and fire came up and singed the professor's whiskers.

My genial host insisted upon my occupying a charming little room in the Ludwig cottage. "The sun comes up over the hills across the river and gently bids you wake and watch the beautiful boats go gliding up and down." Ludwig's study had latticed windows looking over the cheery orchards to the water's edge and to the terraced vineyards across the Rhine. To the left, down stream, could be seen the spires of Boppard; to the right the twelfth-century church with the stone image of St. Goar. From the back windows the Abbey ruins and the Katzenbogen's Rhinefels castle were always in sight. On the walls of the study were the old bookcases from the doors of which the Howards

and Murdocks and Jeffersons beamed benignantly. A little bookbinding shop opened off, lighted by long windows with roses peeping in like curious children.

Ludwig was especially fond of a little parchment volume in round Caroline lettering with illuminated initials. "This," he said, "is a curious story. It is in mixed Latin. Some of the words are very unfamiliar. They seem old German terms with Latin endings. The syntax is strange; there are broken concords; ablatives or accusatives are used indifferently after the same prepositions. It is the classical tongue changing into the Frankish vernacular and written by someone either too hurried or too ignorant to preserve its purity. It is a narration of the destruction of the old abbey over there." Turning the leaves of the book slowly, the binder continued: "St. Goar was a Greek merchant, Johannes Goros, that is 'John the Round-Shouldered,' who was so given to gardening that he bent his back. He was converted to Christianity and gave all his wealth to a Greek church, and came into the Rhine valley with a bag of cherry stones which he planted, like Johnny Appleseed, in the best places he could find. He was a Johnny Cherry-pit. He preached to the peasants and taught them how to farm. He built the Abbey in the sixth century in the Benedictine mode, for religion, for learning, and for labor, or as the inscription over the gate proclaimed: Deum hominemque discere: Deo hominique servire (To study God and man and serve them both). For so many years did the inmates of this abbey fulfil the aims of the founder that the region roundabout enjoyed a tranquil, happy, Godloving existence without war, without crime, without notoriety, a whole community living like a modest, industrious, honest, religious man. One holy abbot succeeded another, lived to a quiet old age, passed gently away, and another quietly filled his place. Softly the generations of holy brothers came and passed till Father Abbot Mansuetus served out his term and was buried with those who had been before him.

"Now the Devil, Diobolus, Satanas, Ad

versarius, Serpens, Beelzebub, Appolyon, Ma- He taught them to sing new songs:

leficus, for he has as many names as forms, was flying from his winter residence in Avignon to his summer home in Paris and happened to see the pleasant green fields of the Abbey. He looked about and could see no mischief (malignitas) anywhere. He therefore descended to the roadway and took on the appearance of a monk with buskins upon his feet, a cowl upon his head, and a

Altus Goar
Te cantamus
Persuperbi
Ambulamus

Nomen magnum
Fabricamus

zip, boom, bah,
Goar.

Old Goar

Of thee we sing,
Proud we are

Of everything
From afar
To thee we bring
Jolt and jar,
Goar.

gown of yellow, belted with a black cord. Which might be rendered:
Thus garmented and calling himself Philau-
tus, the Devil sauntered up and down the
roadway before the gate. The Devil never
enters anywhere until he is invited. But
he had the Devil's luck; for along came two
monks and bade him in. So he entered the
Abbey and partook of its hospitality. The
gentle brothers were charmed by his manner
and by his rare ability to quote the Scrip-
tures. They elected him to be their Abbott
in Mansuetus's place. Soon he persuaded
them to introduce reforms. 'This,' he said,
'should be the most famous abbey in the
World. Who has ever heard of it? Cluny,
we know; Mount Athos, Grotto Ferrata,
Monte Cassino, St. Gall, and Tours. But
no one hears of St. Goar. Significandum
(it must be advertised); strepitum eget,
(noise is needed). So he taught them to cry
out in unison:

[blocks in formation]

When the brethren did this and when the villagers heard it all would say: 'A great abbey is St. Goar and how eminent is its Abbott, Philautus!'

"Goar, the founder of the Abbey, as all antiquarians know, had foreseen the weakness of human nature and had been constrained to devise penance for offences. The form it took here was the wearing of the iron collar of St. Bernard-one day for light offences, longer for more serious breaches of the rules. Philautus, making clear that the old traditions of the abbey must be respected but that improvement rather than abolition was justified, showed the brethren how coating the iron collar with tallow made it a fairly comfortable adornment. This is cited because it and the following improvement were celebrated in song. The other suggestion was concerned with the Abbey's well-known rule: Persistamus ad summum (persevere till you reach the top). It was Philautus who showed how persisto, and adhero are exactly the same, 'I stick'; and is not adhesio or glue, that is, coagmentum, implied? Accordingly he had each brother place a small drop of glue on the top of his head, that is, ad summum, and that took care of the persistimus ad summum. It was these two ideas that Brother Tinnitus

Don't icicle 'em

worked into what became one of the favorite

songs:

Here's to the Abbey

Whose collars we wear

Hurrah for the tallow and the glue.

There had been for many generations an inscription over the second gateway: Consecrati sanescere possumus (we are devoted to integrity). Some stain, uncleanness, defilement, stercus avium, came upon this lettering so that the a of the main word looked like an o, to make it read: Consecrati sonescere possumus; (we are dedicated to the hullaballoo). "Philautus exhorted the brethren to form themselves into convivia or clubs in which there should be no constraint. For this he For this he quoted the rule of St. Benedict: prodesse majis quam praeesse pater monasterii; (the abbot should profit his monks rather than rule over them.) Philautus suggested for these unions Greekish names for distinction: 'Ate a new pie' (E. N. π.) ‘Fie, Fie' (Þ. P.),

etc.

"In the management of the Abbey Philautus made many changes. From St. Goar, the founder, to Father Mansuetus, the last abbot, the daily activities of all the brethren had been ordered with a succession of Orare, observare, operare, the three o's which must be translated into the three p's—pray, peruse, and perform; but Philautus showed them that oro plainly meant to use the mouth; observo, ob and servo, clearly signified to wait; and opero was plainly a misprint for otior which everybody knows means "take it easy." But if there were any brethren who desired to adhere to the old interpretation of the rule, far was it from the gentle Abbot to interfere. There would be a selective system. Each brother would Each brother would decide for himself whether to choose to be operosus or otiosus; he could elect 'working' or 'shirking.' Regarding this the Lord Abbot said: 'Doth not the holy founder of all our abbeys say: In nostro institutione nihil asperum nihil grave nos constituros speramus? (There shall be nothing harsh; nothing burdensome). Or may we put it into more classical form by rendering it:

Do not prickle 'em Tickle em.

"For spreading abroad the fame of the Abbey, my lord Abbot sent forth choirs of brethren to contrive assemblies of people and to sing to them ditties, ballads, catches, and the zip, boom, bah. He sent out brethren apt to play the buffoon, merryandrew, and zany, especially those who put on women's garments.

"It was the Abbot Philautus who decreed the great ritual of the porcuspellandus in honor of the founder, St. Goar. For, as all loyal sons of the Abbey knew, St. Goar, the first Abbot, when he was once bringing from the liniena, or slaughter house, across the field, to the sutrina, or cobbler shop of the monastery, a pigskin for shoes for the brethren, was fallen upon by eleven ruffians who would fain have robbed him of it; but ten of the brethren seeing his plight ran forth from the Abbey and valiantly contended with the miscreants. For long they battled up and down the field, and many blows were given and received, until at last the monks of St. Goar and their Abbot brought the pigskin to the cobblery. For the great fame of St. Goar did the new Abbot, Philautus, decree the pigskin ceremony. He did comb the country for the juvenci that is, the huskies, robusti, the sluggers, and brought them to the abbey to train for the greatness of St. Goar. Upon the field between the liniena and sutrina contending bands would reënact the ancient battle of the pigskin before a multitude of people from miles around; whereby the fame of St. Goar was spread abroad and many came to join the ranks of the brethren. With masterly skill Philautus showed the monks that the ancient maxim of St. Goar: palpator pellendus; (the flatterer should be spurned) was easily equivalent to Pellis Palpandus; (let the pigskin be praised). Thus did he make it the chief pursuit of the Abbey.

"For the cost of the great things and new, Abbot Philautus brought to the Abbey of St. Goar gifts from the rich and powerful, from

Rubert the Robber Count Palatine. From Eberhard the Bandit and Sigismund the Pilferer, and their names he cut upon the doorway of the slaughter house, the swine pens and the kitchens.

"Philautus taught them that to make a great Abbey each of them must himself achieve greatness; magnae partes, magnum totum; (the whole is but the sum of its parts). He instituted certatio among them, emulation. All the work of the monastery was so ordered that every brother received an aestimatio, or mark, or rating. For the highest there was given a spolium or prize. The brethren were exhorted to be conquiritores that is "go-getter's," because the more things they would get, the more the abbey would have, and the greater it would be.

"Now St. Goar, who had established the Abbey, had founded it because he conceived it would be to the advantage of his fellow farmers to have a center of true religion among them radiating its holiness throughout the countryside. He had set apart from each of the fields and terraces cultivated by his willing neighbors, portions of land for the support of the Abbey. Philautus, the new abbot, assigned one monk to each of these portions and bade them all cultivate as much as the land would bear of cherries, grapes, beans, wheat, and succulent roots. Each brother he persuaded to keep goats for milk, swine for fat, and bees for honey. Each was to have for himself all that he could produce. 'This,' he said, 'is that you may grow more extensive, more expansive, rotundiores, prepinguiores, greater, to the glory of St. Goar.' He showed them that He showed them that this was directly derivable from the founder's well known precept: Quibuscum estis memento non te preferenentem esse sed fratrem ominium; (wherever you are, remember not to be preferring yourself but become a brother of all). This maxim had for generations been recited every day at the close of the morning meal. Under the rule of Dominus Philautus it was speeded up more and more until it sounded like one long word, -Quibuscumstmementn, like that. Grad

ually all the syllables dropped out of the middle until it was Quibuscum omnium, and later, Quib nium, and finally transposed to Quid meum, which, as everybody knows, means: What is there in it for me? This grew to be a motto of the Abbey.

"It was not long before the new system of Abbot Philautus began to show gains. He was able to praise each of his pupils for a well-rounded training. You might say they had gained poise―avoirdupois.

"This was not true of a young novitiate whom the gentle Abbot Mansuetus had brought into the fold. Mansuetus named him Brother Boethius and taught him to read, to pray, and to aspire to the holy life. They had made him the reparator, the mender, to the Abbey. The new dispensation bewildered him, albeit he desired in all ways to serve and obey. He toiled with zeal, mending the mattocks, the flails, the swine pens, the wine press, and the bee houses. But as the other brethren waxed in amplitude, he waned to emptitude. There was to him some failure of the system somewhere, although the earnest young Boethius desired with all his different kind of heart to serve God and his abbot.

"Now as mighty Pater Philautus beheld the triumph of his system, he proclaimed a great festum remunerabile, or feast of reward. It was held in the vast refectory. One wondrously long table was set in the center of it. Many lamps hung from their cranes. A huge steelyard to weigh the winners was set up. The serving men of the village of St. Goar were drilled in their duties. At the appointed hour the big brethren of the Abbey by hundreds, slowly maneuvered their greatnesses to the benches at the board. There was Brother Fatuus who was so large he had to sleep on the floor. There was Brother Dolium who swallowed the kettle of soup on Michalmas day and then asked for a drink. There was Brother Ventricosus who sat upon three stools at once. There was Brother Abdomenus who, when sleeping in the field, had been wounded by the fork of a farmer, mistaking him for a mow of hay. There was Brother Globosus, whom the lavator used to

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