Is that a Classic in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?

A recent gift of yard saling thrift ( See, I can rhyme! And use yard saling as a verb!) has opened a portal to 1910, wherein I am learning much about the authors of the time.

Though the book's title is benign enough The Ridpath Library of Universal Literature, it is the subtitle that amuses me: A Biographical and Bibliographical Summary of the World’s Most Eminent Authors, including the Choicest Selections and Masterpieces from their Writings, Comprising the Best Features of Many Celebrated Compilations, Notably: The Guersey Collection, The De Guy Collection, The Ridpath Collection CAREFULLY EDITED AND ARRANGED BY A CORPS OF THE MOST CAPABLE SCHOLARS.

I don's know what is funnier: That the editor went to such great lengths to indicate that this is the BEST literature the world has to offer, (God forbid that we would soil our eyeballs with the reading of anything less than John Milton!) or that all of the best literature is European, while the rest of us ( American, African, etc) ---just suck.

So, over the next couple of weeks I will be reading this tome to find out how amusing the European literature of 1910 may be, and try really really hard not laugh when I think that this was published in New York.