"Can" B. Worth - Feeding the Birds - Part Four - The Larger Inside - Part Three

"Can" B. Worth

Feeding the Birds - Part Four

The Large Inside

Part Three

            “I remember sitting… you couldn’t really sit in there… so sort of leaning… with John Brodhead.  We were both summoned for that meeting and that was not a good sign.  We’d heard, of course, how hard he was on character; his grad student’s character.  That’s what he called it; character, your character.  It was understood to be how, as his graduate student, you behaved and how he expected you to behave.  So the two of us wedged in there and he sat at that desk.  He didn’t have the can out; we’d already been through that.  He made no small talk and just looked up at us with a disappointed pout.

            “Do either of you ever DO anything?” he says “beside slouch and forget to shave?  Is there ever any curiosity? Any sensation of being?  Any passing notice of a before you?  There is ALL before you yet you slouch within that radiant light.”

            We said nothing.

            “I do not doubt that you cannot respond.  You have nothing to respond with; no TOOLS, no observation.  No… not even an inkling of coming here, being here or WHY you’re here.  Sidewalk spittle is the SAME… and not even observing that finds you STEPPING IN IT.  TOO.”

            “You have to build a bridge; your OWN bridges.” He continued.  “You have to have something to observe and THEN OBSERVE IT:  FIND SOMETHING and BUILD A BRIDGE from it to yourselves.  FIND YOU IN THAT.   FIND YOU in that NEVER OBSERVED BEFORE.  FIND IT first and THEN BUILD A BRIDGE to YOU; your OWN humanity.  Then write that down and bring it to me.  And THEN we are DONE.” He concluded by placing both hands palms down on the desk top and looking up at us.

            Again we said nothing.

            After a pause, where he remained with his palms down and his eyes upon us, he said “It is really very simple to do.”  He leaned back, pulled open the center desk drawer and from within it retrieved what had to be the most ragged old scraps of old paper ever gathered together to make a booklet .  We both could only see that it was a dirty, torn and chewed old booklet.  We KNEW that he collected rare books but this was hardly what we had in mind.  NOT, as he’d say, that we had ANY mind as to WHAT a rare book was.  But for sure this was NOT a rare book.

            “He placed that booklet in the center of the desk top facing us and started to talk about its raggedy condition.  He started talking and did not stop talking about that ragged booklet for at least forty-five minutes.  He never looked at us at all; only at the booklet  He opened, closed, turned over or turned the pages of it to make a mind boggling array of observations that gushed from him.  These he compounded with connecting points AND more observations ABOUT the current observation he was making.  And fast; it was a very rapid but concise factual summary followed by logical deductions and this led to a building of a story that was at first ABOUT the booklet but soon became a story of the GLORY of the booklet derived from this, as he titled it; READ TO DEATH condition.  This condition, he suggested at the conclusion, was a fair representation of one’s own journey in life; that we all were read to death in life and that our CONDITION showed bare to all just how interesting our lives were to read.  “THAT is what you must find, observe and write down for me.  I must be able to READ that in your writing and can only HOPE that it reads like THIS!” he said.  “If this pamphlet was in as perfect condition as I find you two to be, I would want nothing to do with it at all.  It would tell no story.  At all.”

            He did let us look at the booklet; touch it.  But I remember nothing about what it was.  It had an Indian killing a woman.  It had coffins of the people the Indians killed.  It was filthy, all torn to pieces, missing pages.  But he clearly loved it; loved SHOWING it to us.  I could never understand the whole thing but I do remember every moment of that meeting.  I’d remember the booklet if I saw it again.  Do you think you found something like that in there?”

            “”Yes”.

"Can" B. Worth - Feeding the Birds - Part Three - The Large Inside - Part Two

"Can" B. Worth

Feeding the Birds - Part Three

The Large Inside - Part Two

            The sensation that I most confronted and …this continued to expand its front line before me… was my ACKNOWLEDGEMENT to myself that I lagged behind on the learning curve of where Dead Can “was at”.  I was always, it seemed to me, just behind in enlightenment as to …how sophisticated this rare booker was, how sophisticated he had been and, within the office contents I OWNED, STILL WAS… IF… I did not destroy his boxed messages in …the traditional dealer – commercial rape and pillage frenzy that IS THE NORM in estate lot purchase and distribution and… THAT THIS TOO… was FINE with Dead Can; a “what” HE “expected to happen”.

            Therefore… when during the actual office clean out, I found two smaller old cardboard boxes TOGETHER packed full of copies I quick scanned as “Hawthorne and Longfellow”, not only did I quick chuck them on to the dolly but I also …did not keep them together… in addition to “blowing them off” as of any commercial value.  It was not until I exhumed the larger box within the …six foot deep gravesite of its “bottom of the stack” burial within the cemetery of the full storage unit that was… Dead Can’s “stuff”… THAT I …vaguely… connected a dot… to a dot that caused an “Oh wasn’t there a SECOND smaller box WITH that one TOO?”.

            This was followed by a stand up straight all alone in the current dark hole of the exhumed from burial grave to …over view the whole cemetery… and say… “Oh shit.  I wonder where THAT box is”.  That moment of self-brilliance was a result of a first dot; a single shelved …REFERENCE… book… I had already found.  And blown off.

            That book was the commercially redundant Tryon and Charvat “THE COST BOOKS OF TICKNOR AND FIELDS…”, (Bibliographical Society of America, New York, 1949).  It is SUPPOSE to be “good” for …how about fifty bucks.  True street corner market is, AT BEST, ten bucks with, in fact, a “FOR SIX BUCKS” offering being “sluggish”.  WHEN I found Dead Can’s… “he bought this when it came out” “I know he liked Hawthorne” “He has the Hawthorne bibliography TOO” “He couldn’t afford Hawthorne” to a final “Look at the (shelf) dust on this sucker; it hasn’t been touched in forty years at least” …copy I’d further “Huh” to I KNOW that Ticknor and Field are in addition to being a “THE” American Renaissance publisher from the ye old Boston bookstore’s 17^th century building as their office’s location …that their –brown publisher’s cloth- bindings ARE …THE… symbol of American Renaissance publishing.  So are, therefore, appreciated for THAT quality ALONE… AND THAT appreciation is “NO MONEY” in the market but does created a lot of bibliographical “states and issues” principally involving their (Ticknor and Fields) inserted DATED catalogs AND / OR “binding states”.  AND that all of this WOULD attract Dead Can’s roving eye onward to him actually “doing something with that” to continue to a final:

            “OH MY GOD THIS IS HIS TICKNOR FIELDS COLLECTION” in these two boxes.  “Yep” and I did find the other box and I did NOT destroy the boxes and I did VERY carefully inspect the boxes, review the books and… put them all back just the way I found them and …concluded:  That there was “nothing great” (commercially valuable) in the boxes but that they truly were Dead Can’s hand assembled …by finding one book at a time, two box COLLECTION of his personal FLIRT with… Hawthorne, Longfellow and Ticknor Fields… “in original publisher’s cloth”.  He bought the original reference book.  He, TOO, found that to be useless.  He still liked the wholeness of the publishing and the bindings.  He did not have any money.  He lucked into (found them by chance) the books in the collection.  He gathered them over, perhaps… forty years (?).  He kept them together, eventually boxed them up in the two boxes as a “completed” flirt and… buried them with the rest of his collection.  And… that’s just the way he did these things… after he “came to rare books”.

            He didn’t give a “rat’s ass” WHAT ANYONE did, said, peeked at, thought of or even COLLECTED.  This was a “MY WAY” guy, with NO MONEY, staying in the fight.  Although my eye could pass back and forth over the accumulated spine ends and poke a tome free to …title page it.  ALTHOUGH I did see old book seller’s notes saying such as “first edition first issue”.  ALTHOUGH I did “that’s not a bad copy” and/or “Huh” and/or “these too?” to the inclusion of the Field family published memory tomes… that he did actually read (?)… there was but one inclusion that really has stuck with me as being “so Dead Can”.  That’s his …singular inclusion of a  “yellow back”:

            His inclusion of a …beat up… “NOTHING” copy of Hawthorne’s SCARLET LETTER in the English cheap edition “yellow back” soft cover format:  Do not for a minute did… I… think that this was a chance, an accident or a “nothing”:  HE KNEW that… Melville’s “THE WHALE” is “a first” in this format.  HE KNEW he’d “never own that”.  HE KNEW that THIS was HAWTHORNE in YELLOW BACK.  And… he noted JUST as I DID that this actual copy was …ink stamped on the title page… by a Constantinople bookseller… so:  “Wow, cool” to that too.  And…through all of this… I came further to be enlightened as to how “only Dead Can would do that” (make up the collection of ‘junk copies’ over forty years, box it up and bury it after tossing his SINGLE ONE HE OWNED “yellow back” in… too).

"Can B. Worth" - Feeding the Birds - Part Two - The Large Inside - Part One

"Can" B. Worth - Feeding the Birds

Part Two

The Large Inside

Part One

            What ever happened next in Dead Can’s life, it was overshadowed by his active absorption of his self by his “came to rare books”.  Simplified, he mentally and physically “came to rare books” and… never came back.  He didn’t notice this and would not have cared if he had noticed it.  Quickly, “collecting” was dropped.  He couldn’t afford what he wanted and the minor funding he did have was supervised by a… rare book hater.  “Rare book hater” became an expanding universe OUTSIDE.  This was fine for Dead Can discovered that he was most interested in the…process… of …rare books… and that the terms of this discovery was “peper and solt it as thay plese” with a touch of bibliomania.  Although he had his of-the-moment preferences or fantasies, Dead Can really sought no specific or fixed “came to rare books”.  He was actually open to all of the “came to” AND enthralled with this happenstance TOO.  It was endless shelter from the expanding universe OUTSIDE. 

Brilliance, academic disciplines and physical dexterity combined with slight of hand, quickly showed Dead Can a maze of inside footpaths that he could scurry about on without …ever leaving rare books… or …ever being detected doing that (not leaving).  For example, he could peruse a loose copy “THE MONTH AT GOODSPEED’S”, the premier Boston rare bookseller’s monthly …to a lay person… “MAGAZINE”… without any anyone ever noticing AND should interruption intercede, the little handheld ditty easily disappeared into an inner jacket pocket BEFORE questions could be asked.  Jury duty, hospital baby born duty, school play duty, wife’s relatives over duty and ANY OUTSIDE DUTY that has a few loose minutes… “THE MONTH” was PERFECT.  It seemed to Dead Can to be MADE with him in mind.  And it was.

Even I… “know that trick” for the rare book iota content of “THE MONTH” is still just as good today as it was on the first day.  AND the slight ephemeral quality but HEAVY ON GOOD CONTENT clarity of the little “what’s that?” DOES purvey slight of hand bibliomania support BEST.  If questioned one may turn it over to a rare book hater to inspect and… they will be handing it back shortly with a shrug.  I noted Dead Can’s stash of “THE MONTHS”… with his pencil notes in the margins… and “handy to the desk” storage…  right along and NEVER kept them anywhere else except moving to join my own cache.  Although I have not crosschecked for duplicates… “it doesn’t matter”.  I have… often… “sat in the Mall” reading a “THE MONTH” while “they shop”.

While sliding ever deeper into rare book process study… Dead Can continued to never come home empty handed.  Although cost conscious at any or all rare books for sale, he DID “find” “rare books” and those he plopped down the “a few pennies” and “brought home”.  Extravagant expense was for … “reference”.  No rare bookseller or bookman may read that last word without a knowing nod.  That IS what he should “spend on” and… he did.  And he was all over the place doing that too.  ANY bibliographic tome was “worth” “it”.  (?).  Having at hand a university library jammed with unused (except by Dead Can) rare book reference WAS NOT ENOUGH to stop a bibliomania ish fixture of biblio accumulation by “adding” another… generally never used or read and shortly BURIED IN A BOX and LOST but still always “I have that”… bibliography or critical study or some …odd or obscure “I only used that ONCE” rare book study reference book.  Dead Can, being an “enthralled with all of it” DID go to some …quiet footpaths in rare books.

Want an example?  I will now supply one but qualify this lone example as being but a type specimen for many other examples hidden within his boxes.  Just the initially examined desk drawers (Part Four) alone fully suggest what I found that he “came to” in his lifetime of “came to rare books”.  The purpose of this example is to demonstrate how deeply and soon …to remain there for ever… Dead Can “came to rare books”.

"Can" B. Worth - Feeding the Birds - Part One - The Outside

"Can" B. Worth

Feeding the Birds

Part One - The Outside

            It was the outside… that caused the building of the inside… and that inside… was built inside a larger inside… and this larger inside was built by the one who built the smaller inside… while they built that smaller inside.  Both the smaller inside and the larger inside were built to keep out the outside.  Both insides were never completed and they were never intended to be completed but were forever “work in progress”.

            When Dead Can first “came to collecting rare books”… he was one of the “outside” the rare book community.  He… only a few years after “he came”… shortened his description of himself to “came to rare books”.  He discovered very early that he could never actually “collect” rare books and corrected his self description to himself.  Dead Can was polished at not engaging self delusion.  He could not collect rare books, he discerned, because he did not have enough money to collect them.  This never bothered him.  The big world of the inside of rare books perpetually fascinated him and fully engaged him.  Rare books never faltered.  Rare books, for Dead Can, were a wholeness that included peeking into the old Tyrolean’s candy box AND sitting on his steps for three hours.  Soon after “coming to rare books” (the larger inside), the “outside” where he started… “floated away”

            It actually did not float away at all.  It actually became an obsessive demon pursuing him and endeavoring, to the day he died, to bring him back to being an outsider.  He skillfully avoided this and was genuinely unaware of how strategically escalated the struggle had become.  He did not perceive that he had fabricated two inner worlds to “defend himself from it”.

            If Dead Can had not been as brilliant, as educated and as successful within the education industry AND completely, knowingly, actively alive and at home in the social action of  that education industry community, he well could have found the terrain more difficult.  As it was, the book was an “automatic” in his world.  To step IN to a smaller world of “rare books” was NOT “odd” for a professional man like Dead Can.  No one noticed or cared.  Except one person.

            At first Dead Can’s handling of his new and growing …interest… in rare books blended casually with his whole persona in the “outside”.  An old book here and there caused no notice.  “Babbling about a rare book” anything; a summarial notice by the outside toward an inside rare booker, was not a problem because it appeared to “stop” and “go away” and everything was “normal”.  The Christmas tree was decorated, the grandparents were invited to hold the babies, the gas was always in the car, the doors were locked and …even though there seemed to be an “old book” around here and there, they were of no consequence and “picked-up”.

            It was when this last started to stop… that “the problem” began.  “The problem” was defined by the outside first.  The old books around and …around and… NOT picked up attracted attention from Dead Can’s …wife.  She started with a “WHAT are these OLD BOOKS EVERYWHERE” self observation that was only lightly commented upon in a “should be” picked-up situation …every now and then but… increasingly more often.  THIS held steady until a curious inkling on her part prompted the self suggestion that “funds” were “a little short” meaning that the paycheck incoming seemed to have more money on it than she was actually finding “at hand”.  She self-audited with a pencil and an index card.  Funds were missing.  “WHERE COULD THEY HAVE GONE?”.  She began a reconnaissance.  This took a while because the …culprit… was “SO UNBELIEVEABLE” that “THOSE OLD BOOKS” “COST THAT MUCH” once SHE privately flushed “THIS” “INTO THE OPEN” “WHAT DO YOU THINK YOUR DOING?”  Dead Can defended this discovery and direct assault by… “I need them for my work” and… taking his rare book purchasing “underground”.  Forever.  The wife simply sharpened her eye AND her ability to locate the penciled dealer’s price on the inside of a “old book “ “CAN YOU BELIEVE HE PAID THAT FOR THAT!”.  Right here, there, now and then… began a FIFTY YEAR WAR “against” “rare books”.  On the surface; the social, the professional, the community, the in-house and the …personal relationship… ALL remained “standard” to all eyes and… the “each other”.  Behind that façade, just steaming hot inches away was… “war”.  Initially “over money”, Dead Can’s skillful adaptation of …spending “no money” “on books” quickly altered the demon eye to “any old book” and “ANYTHING” about “old books” “THEY HAVE RUINED MY LIFE”.  The only good rare book… to this clearly demarked “outside” view was a …rare book… “in the trash can”.  To Dead Can, this “outside” “just floated away”?

"Can" B. Worth - Epilogue - Part Twelve

"Can" B. Worth

Epilogue - Part Twelve

            “As you wish”… to “point out”:  I, the tale teller, has STRAYED with “baby on board”?  Corpulent in your soft chair, reading between the story lines and/or being… “plastic leather sheltered” within that slippery chair… FINDS YOU passing directive… to I… about I… telling you… this tale?  Well… I will just have to take you somewhere else; a higher ground for viewing, for “looking over”, for… “finding direction”.

            “Dead Can”; “Carl”, did …what I did… at the old Tyrolean’s for …nearly half a century.  “Weekly” at least and more often “as needed” meaning both a “rare book emergency” OR the more probable “JUST GET AWAY FROM IT FOR A MINUTE”.  Could the story be true that … the old Tyrolean troubled “Carl” to show him OUT due to the Tyrolean’s need to depart for a medical appointment, how he watched “Carl” settle down on the Tyrolean’s front step.  How he departed with him sitting there… to return THREE HOURS LATER… to find “Carl” STILL SITTING THERE and …whereupon the Tyrolean’s return, “Carl” followed him back inside and “lingered” “through supper”?

            Impudent miss-reader… how many hours does one need to spend in the old Tyrolean’s rare book room… and qualify that by having that one be “desperate” and “CRAZY”… behind the fortress of “rare books” and THEIR OWN constructed fortress of rare books within that larger sprawl?  HOW MANY HOURS?

            Now…:  I have taken one on a very standard …privateer’s sailing ship cannonade broadside… of a dealer to dealer visit INCLUDING a wholesome fact gathering “click bang” Dead Can chit-chat AND molesting the rare bookie in thee by buying the here and there “obviously good”.  And finalizing that visit by I telling the old Tyrolean “I’m done”.  So let me state clearly that AS I STOOD, WHERE I stood… and giving benefit to doubt… as I SLEUTHED AND PURCHASED… IS THE SAME as how Dead Can visited the “rare book room” TOO.  The “b of d” is that Dead Can did NOT purchase, in the broad sweep of the hand, the way just I did.  He, even with the “not buy”, DID cover (“see”) as I recorded… I SAW… I promise and… particularly as he was “here” “a lot”.  This all is defined as “HE KNEW THE STOCK”… to the smallest iota.

            This is ALL enhanced by reminding that all this rare bookishness …moves ponderously slow, so, for example, that candy box of maps was probably inspected by Dead Can weekly for over a quarter century… WITH HIM NEVER BUYING ONE… as reported by the old Tyrolean.  THIS IS THE PICTURE I PAINTED and THIS WAS Dead Can’s RARE BOOK WORLD shown IN THAT PAINTED PICTURE.  I… am most likely the only person to have touched the box of maps OTHER THAN Dead Can EVER.  From Dead Can’s vantage, there is NO DIFFERENCE between looking in that candy box OR sitting on the Tyrolean’s front steps for “a mere” three hours.  IT; this all, IS Dead Can’s IT; his fortress within the fortress sanctuary of “rare books”

            I, to no surprise, was going to have to take a little longer to actually clamber up, over and into Dead Can’s personal rare book fortress.  As I paid and left the old Tyrolean’s now barren rare book room, I regurgitated and chewed that gathering of click-bangs I had garnered and… although gaining perspective, did not yet “see clearly”.  Am I going to have to peddle the darker journey to Dead Can’s rare book mania?  Does not the complex weave so far recorded suggest that a darker hiding hole for one was fabricated WITHIN that weave… to be found and then… found to be that one’s pot of gold?  Or darkness plunge?

            A double edge vantage for myself began the final journey.  I had started with the my most traditional, professional and commercial intentions, acted those well and …captured the estate (office contents).  Contentment and glory-to-the-dollar was the directive.  Shortly, and from within that muck of the estate contents, personal and professional curiosity and intrigue bothered this first ratio.  Exploring that footpath took me away from the safety of that “move the product” commercial execution.  I, myself, found out about and willfully began traveling to the curiosity and intrigue …bothers.  The old Tyrolean, between his gobbled cheese and shrimp, bullet listed… footpath after footpath.  These safe paths lead to his allusion through remembered tall tales (the three hours on the front steps) of a biblio fantasy creature roaming the local rare book community.  How much of those unsubstantiated rumor (“Really?  Three hours?”) was my gut telling me was true?  Too much.  And I wanted to believe.  Too.  It was the double edge that allowed ME to a step beyond.

            I AM a dealer’s view.  I am a collector’s manager.  I am the certificate of value.  “Can” B. Worth is a line in sand of principle.  I… may mark that line, stand on either side of that line or …step back and forth over it.  What I’d never included in this powerful dealer view… was denoting that someone… well, well, well upon the rare book footpaths… would NOT care a hoot for… “Can” B. Worth.  As a dealer… I could actually see that when I …saw that… and… “never seen THAT before”; that this is the closest I came to “choking to death on my own barf” in this escapade.  Quickly my curiosity and intrigue bothers utilized the bulleted list and pulled me back from that cliff fall.  I embraced from my gut that the three hour steps tall tale was not only true and not only equal to the “looked in the candy box every week for a quarter century” tall tale but was also a “good” and a “right thing to do.”  I, by gut, chose to FOLLOW Dead Can’s vantage of rare books… as he created it.

"Can" B. Worth - Epilogue - Part Eleven

"Can" B. Worth

Epilogue - Part Eleven

            Once past “the problem”; that I’d found the pocket map lot in the candy box, wanted them, determined the lack of price upon it and/or all, configured the “price attack position”, acted on that, successfully purchased the lot and …watched the old Tyrolean put the lid back on the candy box, set the box on the workstation table and… dutifully pencil down the “$1500.” as a separate column head notice on his account-balance-due from-me… “paper trail”… “I can leave now?”.

            No.  I COULD leave now but I “did not go there” because I was already… gone-HERE-fussbudget-ONTO… that other lone protruding spine end I’d “too expensive – drop it” mere minutes ago.  Spirited by commercial success upon the map lot… I hesitated not at all to return, revive and RE-THINK that third “old book”.

            “Re-think” is the wrong word for the actual action.  The actual action was denoted at the beginning of the Americana self wall inspection start:  “remind myself to let it come to you”.  This gets a little past “listening to your gut” but not TOO far out into the spirit worlds of divining in a beyond realm.  Simply, if an “I” go around on and on constantly all the time seeking Rare Americana, it WILL come to “I”.  I have faith, confidence, years of commercial evidence and legacy of “having a good eye” meaning “having good historic sensitivity” meaning “I can smell it” meaning LISTEN TO ALL THAT and ACT ON IT.  Here, when the “too expensive – drop it” “old book” KEPT SPEAKING TO ME wordlessly from it’s pulled spine poise… I returned to it.

            I looked at the spine as I pulled the whole book out… CAREFULLY and NOT BY THE SPINE TOP… and read the gilt spine end title “BAYONET EXERCISES FOR THE ARMY” again: “Huh”.  I opened the volume and glanced over the publisher’s promotional end papers: “Huh”.  I skipped to the title page (but noted a hand written ink name at the fly leaf head) where I …title paged it:  “Huh”.  I skipped BACK to the ink note and read it and… understood that …this 1861American military manual on bayonet use by “George B.  McClellan, Commander-in-Chief, U. S. Army” was, evidenced by owner’s signature, owned by a Maine Lieutenant named Hovey Austin of Co. C. 16^th Maine Infantry:  “Huh”.  I skipped back to the penciled price of “$300.-“:  “Huh”.

            I really didn’t want it at that price.  Even less thirty percent OFF ($210.00) …I didn’t want it.

            “THAT WAS OWNED BY A MAINE SOLDIER” came to my ears from the old Tyrolean.

            “Had that a while?” I said back… holding the book in my right hand.

            “GREAT CONDITION on THAT” he said.

            “A great price today?”

            “Let me see it”.

            I hand him the book.  He opens it and views the “$300.-“ and… does nothing but makes a …slightest release of air from his mouth.  Then HE title pages it, looks at the ink name, closes the book, look the condition over quickly and says “TWO HUNDRED”.

            He hands the book back to me.  I take it and… put it directly up into its shelf spot and… again very carefully… push the tome into its shelf spot and… get it almost all the way back into that shelf spot when… a little tiny something from deepest darkest of black hole space-beyond twitches somewhere beyond the universe I stand in and my darkest, deepest and black holed internal furthest space-beyond universe CAPTURES that MESSAGE and I… pulled the tome back out VERY CAREFULLY and… hand it back to the old Tyrolean and say “ok”.

            HE sets the book on top of the candy box and pencils “200” under the “1500” on his paper slip and… looks up at me.  “I’m done.” I say.

            It was THREE MONTHS at least before I “look at” that book.  It’s just the way I found it when I do.  I punch Hovey Austin into internet search land.  UP he comes:  Maine. 31 years old.  Enlists Oct. 1862.  First Lt..  Goes to Washington D.C. with 16^th.  Goes to Fredericksburg Dec. 12^th, 1862.  The morning of Dec. 13^th finds him on the Union left entering combat and the War for the first time.  The 16^th advances under orders.  16^th continues to advance after ordered “Charge bayonets.  Forward double-quick”.  Hovey hit.  March 23, 1863 Hovey is discharged due to his wound.  Dies.

             Two things come out of this.  One:  On the one day that Hovey Austin is in the Civil War, he orders and participates in… a bayonet charge.  In that charge he is wounded so badly he is discharged and dies.  He was in the Civil War one day.  His only action taken while he was in the Civil War was to order and participate in a bayonet charge.  The book, including its how to bayonet charge text, he probably purchased in Washington just prior to going to Fredericksburg.

            Two:  WHEN Hovey is hit (wounded), the bullet “glances off” a “tintype picture” thereby only severely wounding him and not killing him there and then.  THIS occurrence, remarkably, is recorded in passing by a seventeen year old soldier in Hovey’s company.  Thomas S. Hopkins, Company C, 16^th Maine, writing after the battle for “THE YOUTH’S COMPANION” magazine not only records in detail the whole saga of Company C, 16^th Maine going to Washington - Fredericksburg and arriving upon the Union left Dec. 13^th, but details the bayonet charge wherein he TOO is wounded AND:  He also specifically records that “Lieutenant A------ of my company was saved by a tintype picture…”.  This narrative is reprinted by the 16^th in their regimental history (A. R. Small, author, Portland, Maine, 1886).

            In Rare Americana, the reach to the heartstring of real history lived …and having that heartstring captured in ink… IS the poignant purposeful passion… of “rare” Americana.  To find truly …poignant, purposeful, passionate… rare Americana, I “let it come to you”.