WHEN I was a lad of fourteen or fifteen years living in a Maine sea coast village an elder brother brought home from Boston a book with this elaborate title The Adventures of Mr Oba diah Oldbuck Wherein are Set Forth His Unconquerable Passion for His Lady Love His Unutterable Despair on Losing Her His Five Attempts at Suicide and His Surprising Exploits in Search of the Beloved Object Also His Final Success The book familiarly known to us as Obadiah Oldbuck was a small oblong folio with two or three engravings on each page The pictures duly set forth the moving adventures of a love lorn bachelor who repeatedly losing the object of his affections as often caught up with her only to be again bereft sometimes by accident and sometimes by the machinations of those whom fate had made his enemies Driven to despair he attempted suicide in divers ways but found himself unable even to end his troubles in that way A hated rival was brought in to complicate the situation and misapprehensions without number were invented to prolong the tale of Mr Oldbuck's misadventures There was just enough letterpress to explain the illustrations which were evidently drawn on stone with a soft free pencil They were spirited broad and grotesquely funny developments of a world common story.

Mr Obadiah Oldbuck became a part of my manhood's possessions and the book was tenderly cherished for the sake of its associations with boyhood as well as for its intrinsic worth After I had gone to California in the early days of migration to the Golden Shore it was sent after me in the goodly company of a few choice old book friends to cheer the exile from home But in California Mr Oldbuck's story was ravished from me by some appreciative book lifter and I mourned the loss as irreparable No dealer had ever even heard of such a book although often entreated to find a copy among the exchanges of old volumes It was not until 1865 that I learned from a magazine article the story of the genius whose pencil liad given the world the type of character endeared to me through many years of intimacy and in spite of subsequent bereavement

Rodolphe Topffer who was born in 1799 and died in 1840 was a professor of belles lettres in the College of Geneva Switzerland in 1832 He was a poet a satirist a political writer and an artist Among the many works which were produced by his pen and pencil his Voyages en Zigzag not only carried the glories and beauties of the Alps to thousands who never saw Switzerland but gave him wide fame He wrote profoundly and sympathetically of art and his Reflexions et Menus Propos d un Peintre Genevois brought him the applause and the friendship of Goethe Sainte Beuve and other eminent literary men of that time In 1840 he threw off the pictorial brochure of M Vieux Bois the original of the well beloved Mr Obadiah Oldbuck of my youth Without a word of explanation as to his origin Monsieur Vieux Bois was done into English by a New York publishing house in 1842 The book liad a great sale and when in the following year the Genevese arti st author brought out his M Cryptogams the same American publishers eagerly snapped up the work and reproduced it here under the title of Bachelor Butterfly But this later book never had the vogue enjoyed by its diverting predecessor It is recorded of Topffer that much of his later humorous work was executed while his health and strength were being slowly undermined by insidious disease He died in 1846 while in the prime of life leaving behind him a legacy of elevated thought artistic knowledge and harmless mirth.

The universality of real genius even when expressed in comic pictures was well illustrated in the world wide acceptance of M Vieux Bois The adventures of the love struck bachelor his passionate quest of a beloved object and the ardor of his flame were not Swiss nor even European in their broad life likeness they were simply human and they appealed to humanity in every clime Translated into Mr Odadiah Oldbuck the central figure in the Swiss idyl ras as much at home with the boys of the Maine seacoast as he was among the lakes and mountains of his native land Topffer's was that touch of nature that makes the whole world kin

This comparatively trifling work had taken such a firm hold upon my affections that I never could wholly give up my search for it As the years went on my sleeping desire would start up again aud recalling vividly to mind the quaint pictures of the little folio I besought dealers in ancient book lore to find my old frieiid For many years this search was in vain until recently when my constancy has been rewarded by a time worn but clean copy I do not know in how many American homes other copies of my boyhood's best beloved book may slumber I only know that my old old friend has come back to me after all these years unchanged of face and dearly familiar in his humorous expression Like other old friends he is not to me altogether what he was when we were both younger He is slightly disappointing those to whom I have lately introduced him as an unfailing fountain of humor perhaps he is a little old fashioned just as George Cruik shank is old fashioned Perhaps he is not even to me the same delightful creature I found him in the ancient days Nevertheless he has come back to me and if the fates are kind to us my book and heart shall never part.

Noah Brooks

The Book Buyer. A Review and Record of Current Literature. Vol XVII, August 1898-January 1899, no. 3, October 1898, pp. 221-2.