



Produced by Al Haines.





                            OPEN THAT DOOR!


                                   BY

                        ROBERT STURGIS INGERSOLL



                         PHILADELPHIA & LONDON
                        J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY
                                  1916




              COPYRIGHT, 1916, BY J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY

                       PUBLISHED SEPTEMBER, 1916



                  PRINTED BY J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY
                     AT THE WASHINGTON SQUARE PRESS
                          PHILADELPHIA, U.S.A.




                               *CONTENTS*

CHAPTER

      I. Walled In
     II. An Open Door
    III. Reading Fiction with an Eye on Life
     IV. History and Your Vote
      V. Clio's Vintage
     VI. The Poet and the Reader
    VII. The Children of Pan
   VIII. Men Behind Books
     IX. Keeping up with Life




                           *OPEN THAT DOOR!*



                              *CHAPTER I*

                              *WALLED IN*


The brave man carves out his fortune, and every man is the son of his
own works.--CERVANTES


An author is of necessity a rather egotistical sort of a fellow, or else
he would not trumpet abroad his name upon the title-page of a book.  If
we should measure this egotism by the size of the audience to which he
hopes to appeal, we fear that the sponsor of this little book should
make humble apologies in behalf of his phrenological egocentric bump.
He who writes upon how to grow fat, modestly limits his audience to
those who, from pride of appearance, or upon doctor's orders, desire to
add to their avoirdupois.  There is a similar modesty upon the part of
those who limit their audiences by writing cook-books for the cooks,
temperance appeals for the drunkards, novels for the seminary ladies,
war books for the valiant, peace books for the pacificists.  We
(notwithstanding the fact that he fears to call himself "I" in the first
chapter) acknowledge no such modesty.  Every one wants to get the best
of life.  This general statement is as true as the more specific ones
that every one wants to enjoy his dinner, his work, his family, and his
friends. The desire to obtain satisfaction through the passing of the
years is the prime motive in the actions of the male and the female, the
fat and the thin, the long and the short, the stupid and the wise, the
railroad president and the ditch digger.  It is for this cosmopolitan,
democratic crowd of you and myself and every one else that there is, or
is not, a message in the following pages.


One of the most stimulating thoughts to which mankind is heir is the
realization of the handicaps under which we are all laboring.  This is a
great thought in that it is so universal, so levelling, so powerful in
making us truly appreciate that we are all brothers one unto another.
The millionaire is a slave to his money; another man is embittered by
poverty, a third carries the burden of an unsound body, a fourth of a
selfish nature, a fifth of an unhappy family life, a sixth is
overwhelmed by his own stupidity, a seventh by his sense of duty towards
others, an eighth by a sense of duty towards himself, and so it goes
through the rank and file, the humble and the mighty.  How many of us
take the bit in our teeth, and have a glorious revel in enjoying every
furlong of life's race-course? To run such a race is a hard task, as
there is always some handicap hanging on our shoulders.  We are afraid
to knock it off.  Oftentimes the burden is terrifically hard for the man
who carries it to define, and yet, when you look into your inmost self
you realize that the precious hours of life are slipping by without your
cramming into them all the good things that you feel should be offered
by a world in which there is the romance of other people's lives, the
blue of the sky, the play of the sunlight, the success of your rivals.
There seems too often a wall between ourselves and that romance, that
sky, that sunlight and that success.  There is indeed this wall between
us and our ideal.  If we break through it, there is another one that
dares our courage to the assault and capture of our greater, enlarged
ideal.  This is stimulating and comforting, as each man and woman has to
make his own assault; there is no one so lucky as to get the prizes of
life without a fight, and no one so unlucky as to be without the desire,
no matter how deeply it may be buried in his nature, to make that