THE COLD NIGHTS OF WINTER

What did Nettie Bullis do on a cold winter's evening, as darkness settled in before 5 o'clock and high banks of snow covered the landscape? Like some of us, perhaps she snuggled down in an easy chair with a good book. But what might she have chosen from the three rooms full of books in her house on Canandaigua Road?

She may have picked up 7000 Words Often Mispronounced and nodded in approval when she read that "alpaca" is pronounced al-PAK-a" rather than "al-a-PAK-a," and that one should say "FAM-i-li," not "FAM-li" and "hwich" instead of "wich." (All good reminders when William Henry P. Phyte wrote this reference book more than a hundred years ago--and for us today.)

If she was longing for summertime and a trip up north, Nettie might have looked through H. A. Lapham's collection of indelible photographs, 1000 Islands. Even today these 1891 photos of Alexander Bay, Edgewood Park House, Rose Island, Castle Rest, and Lost Channel bring visions of summer to most winter-weary minds.

And I think Nettie may have ended her evening by leafing through Charles E. Merrill Co.'s 1900 edition of Graded Literature Readers Fifth Book, those stories, poems, and phonics chart eliciting fond memories of her early school days and childhood. And with that, I think she probably went off to bed, warm on the inside, impervious to the cold on the outside.

Can you think of a better way to end a winter's day? Or any day?

THE JOYS OF READING

Renewing old friendships of heroes and heroines;

Traveling to faraway places without leaving home;

Expanding the mind to learn anew;

Studying the past and learning from our ancestors
and much more.

Give yourself the gift of time this winter,
settle down with a good book.

You won't regret it.


HAPPY HOLIDAYS
THE BULLIS ROOM COMMITTEE

A CALENDAR FOR THE NEW YEAR

You may already have a 2009 calendar hanging on your wall, and have several appointments and activities jotted down for the new year. Or perhaps you use an online calendar program to plan your busy days.

Looking through the shelves recently, I found a different kind of calendar in the General Science section of the collection. And it's as current today as it was when it was published in 1892. This calendar is in the form of a book titled Sharp Eyes: A Rambler's Calendar of Fifty-Two Weeks Among Insects, Birds, and Flowers. Illustrations by author Wm. Hamilton Gibson enhance the descriptive prose between the covers of this unique book. Open it at random and you're sure to find something inspiring and informative, no matter the page.

Sharp Eyes impressed me so much I did a web search and, yes, copies are available online. (I've sent a link to my favorite Santa, in hopes he takes the hint.) Fortunately for all of us, it's on the shelf here in the Bullis Room and you're invited to stop by on a Thursday morning to take a relaxing ramble through this beautiful seasonal calendar.

Happy Thanksgiving!

As I pondered this post, I was reminded of the attitude of thankfulness. I believe the Bullis family as a whole experienced thankfulness. In Nettie Bullis' valedictory speech when she graduated from Macedon High School in 1911 she stated, "Life, like every other blessing, derives its value from its use." She valued her life, was thankful for it, and wanted to use it well. She was a woman who looked into the future for our children and made an effort to invest in their lives by setting up a fund to provide scholarships for higher education. Many students of the Palmyra-Macedon Central School District have benefited from that. She knew what it was to be without the finances needed for education. She invested in co-workers lives sometimes with advice and sometimes with finances. We are thankful that she was a woman with foresight. And we are thankful for her life and how she used it.
Happy Thanksgiving! And may we all be willing to invest time and energy into those lives around us.

Henry Drummond

I walked to the shelf this morning and pulled off the book "Henry Drummond's addresses". My favorite essay was "The greatest thing in the world." It is a great essay where he describes love as the greatest thing in the world. He lists the 9 elements of love as patience, kindness, generosity, humility, courtesy, unselfishness, good temper, guilelessness and sincerity. How different the world would be if we all practiced that kind of love.

And then I flipped to the end of the book and found another address titled "A talk on books." And this being a library and all, I proceeded to read it. He shares about authors who enabled him to see the world differently : Ruskin, Emerson, George Eliot, Channing, and F. W. Robertson. And then he writes: "One day as I was looking over my mantelshelf library, it suddenly struck me that all these authors of mine were heretics - these were dangerous books. Undesignedly I had found stimulus and help from teachers who were not credited by orthodoxy. And I have since found that much of the good to be got from books is to be gained from authors often classed as dangerous, for these provoke inquiry, and exercise one's powers."

And another quote from him: "To fall in love with a good book is one of the greatest events that can befall us."

And yet another quote: "...and I think everyone owes it as a sacred duty to his mind to start a little library of his own."

Mr. Drummond also wrote "Natural law in the spiritual world." We have copies of both of these books in the Bullis Library.

Mr. A. R. Bullis (the surveyor) owned both of these books. I wonder what he gained from them. I wonder if this is where the idea of this family library came from. Hmmm....

World War I

(From King Albert's Book, page 76)

Another interesting title popped up today while making cards for the books in the Bullis collection. This book is entitled: "The Book of King Albert". It was presented to King Albert of Belgium on Christmas of 1914. His country had just been taken over by Germany under Kaiser Wilhelm. This was the beginning of World War I.

This book is not a narrative, nor is it a history of Belgium or King Albert. It is a collection of songs, poems, and general thoughts of sympathy toward the young monarch. There are songs by Claude Debussy, a letter from Claude Monet, a letter from Winston Churchill, and a poem from Rudyard Kipling. There are many other notable figures such as former President William Taft, the Aga Khan, and American novelist Edith Wharton. Besides the songs, poems and letters there are also the occasional sketch, cartoon and painting. This seemingly strange collection all has one thing in common, the heartfelt wish that the Belgian people and especially the young royal family know that the world has them in their prayers.

This book really stood out to me today. Not only are world leaders and national figures trying to help a young monarch through such troubling times, but the depth of feeling in some of these letters is truly touching.

My own heritage is Belgian. My father's grandparents came over from Belgium in the early twentieth century. I'm sure that if they saw this particular book in print they too would have liked to send word to their former king and countrymen.

This is really an interesting work, and the next time you stop into the Bullis room, take a look at it. It is in the World History area, section N, row 1.

Until next time, happy reading!

A Bullis Volunteer

The life and adventures of Arminius Vambery

In the far back corner of the Bullis Collection room, down on
the bottom shelf in the World Biography section, is a book
about a man that people today would know very little about.
The book in question is, "The Life And Adventures of Arminius
Vambery", written by Arminius Vambery.

At first glance, one might say, okay, who is this guy and why
on earth would someone care about his life and adventures?
Good question. I didn't know anything about this fellow until
I picked up the book to write out the card giving the
information about the book.

Arminius was born in the 1830's in Hungary, and he seems to
have had an extremely tough childhood. He left home at age
twelve because his parents could no longer afford to feed or
clothe him. He had an extraordinary gift for languages; he
taught himself French, Scandanavian, Portuguese, and several
others. He traveled widely around the world visiting all
sorts of places.

This is only part of the story to be told and I don't want to
spoil any of it for you. I did pick up an interesting fact
looking up Arminius on the web, though. He is the basis for
which the character of Dr. Van Helsing is based upon in the
Dracula stories. I thought that to be very interesting indeed.

I hope you get a chance to take a look at the book in the
Bullis Room. It is in Section M, row 7, way down on the
bottom shelf.

Until next time, happy reading!

A Bullis Volunteer 

A busy week

So many puzzles, so many ways to get sidetracked in the Bullis Room. It has been a busy week. We have had an appraiser here two days re-evaluating our Science and Horticulture items. (We have the collection divided into different subjects.) So there has been shelf-reading and much manipulation of the Excel spreadsheet to get adequate lists. We sent a few books out for repair last Friday. A whole lot of hands on has been going on.
We have a wonderful young woman who volunteers on a weekly basis (when life doesn't interfere) writing cards for the books. These cards list the official item ID for OWWL, the title, the author, pub. date, subject, and shelf location. We keep them right in the books. The purpose of this is twofold. One, if the item is removed from the shelf and set on the cart, we can find its shelf location by just looking at the card. And two, the item ID number can be quickly punched into our system to show that the item has been used. We can then devolop statistics on how many items are being used, what seems to be the most used subjects, etc. That's a bit down the road in the future. Our volunteer has worked through one whole side of the room. Her big love is European history and that's the section she is in now. So we do anticipate that this section might move a bit slower than the fiction section. We like our volunteers to enjoy themselves. And perhaps we can get her to write a comment or two on the items she's working with. There's so much in this collection of books. Something for everyone!

Adirondack wilderness

A few weeks ago, we found a neat little book about the Adirondacks: Murray's Adventures in the Wilderness, subtitled Camp-life in the Adirondacks (Boston: Fields, Osgood, & Co. successors to Tuchman and Fields, 1869). William H. H. Murray, author of this book (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_H._H._Murray), "dedicated to O. H. Platt, of Meriden Connecticut...in memory of many a tramp and midnight bivouac."

Today, we took another look at this book, which begins with "Why I go to the Wilderness." Magnificent scenery is one of Murray's reasons and another is "to restore impaired health." In expounding on the second reason, Murray writes on page 12:

The spruce, hemlock, balsam, and pine, which largely compose this Wilderness,

yield upon the air, and especially at night, all their curative qualities.

Murray also lists the cost of the trip:

Guide - $2.50 per day

Board for self and guide while in the woods - $2.00 each per week

Miscellanies, "here is where the ten-dollar green-backs come in" $25.00

$50 pays one's traveling expenses both ways from Boston to Lower Saranac Lake

(from New York the expense is about the same)

"It's safe to say that $125 will pay all the expense of a trip of a month's duration in the Wilderness."

Murray adds, "I know of no other excursion in which such a small sum of money will return such percent of health, pleasure, and profit."

Ahhh, those good ole days. We can't bring them back but, thanks to authors like William H. H. Murray, we can still enjoy them through books.

Goodies from San Antonio

When you volunteer in the Bullis Room, you have great opportunity to research the family. This happens especially when you decide to vacation in a place where there are Bullis connections. One of our volunteers spent a few days in San Antonio a couple of weeks ago. She told me as she was leaving the library that she would be not be able to come the next week because she was going to San Antonio. Well, let me tell you my excitement level. Brig. Gen. John Lapham Bullis had a home built for him and his family there when he was the Paymaster at Fort Sam Houston. It is currently a bed and breakfast on Pierce Ave. across from the Fort. My wonderful volunteer and her husband went to the house, spoke with the owners, brought back pictures. What a wonderful experience! They also went to the Texas Institute of Culture and brought back more information.
Who was Brig. Gen. John Lapham Bullis? He was born here in Macedon. His father was a physician and had a practice in the hamlet of Pumpkin Hook for many years. After John's mother passed away, he joined the army and fought at Harper's Ferry and Gettysburg. He was captured there and spent time in Libby Prison and was paroled. He then became a leader of the black troops for the remainder of the war. He left the military for a year or so and then chose a military career. His best known accomplishment was that of leading the Seminole Negro Indian Scouts. While he was their Lieutenant, none perished and he was rescued from certain death at one point by two scouts. These two men received the Medal of Honor for their bravery. And there is so much more to tell about Brig. Gen. Bullis' life which we will share from time to time.

WAYNE COUNTY DIRECTORY, 1867-8

Want the low-down on Wayne County businesses 140 years ago? Stop by and take a look at this gazetteer loaded with interesting facts on all of the towns that made up Wayne County in 1867-68. Long lists detail shopkeepers, blacksmiths, farmers, and other business people in towns, villages, and hamlets in the county.

There are also stamp duties, postal rates and regulations, law maxims, interest rates, and a 20-year calendar. Information about "the states, their settlements, etc." is also included. You can even get some ideas on "How to Succeed in Business" in 1867-8.

The directory advertises Mrs. Bristol's Baby Soother, manufactured by Arbuckle & Co. "sole manufacturers" and sold for 25 cents. Newark businessman, D. C. Bristol, Dealer in Drugs, Medicines, Stationery, Fancy Goods and Dye Stuffs, offers a reassuring statement, "Physician Prescriptions carefully compounded." And if you were living in the area 140 years ago, you might have purchased blinds, sashes, or doors from A. C. Bartle on Palmyra Street.

This directory provides hours of pleasurable browsing for those interested in the "good ole days." You're invited to stop by and take a look at it some Thursday morning.

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This week in the Bullis Library

Monday we found a neat little book about the Adirondacks titled "Murray's Adventures in the Wilderness ". The subtitle is "Camp-life in the Adirondacks". We can't wait to explore more in this book. It has advertisements, etchings, photos, and a newspaper article pasted in the back entailing the"Other Side of the Story - The Horrors of the Adirondacks".

Tuesday our volunteers continued their work on Increase Lapham's semi-circular genealogy. It was a good idea in theory but is not quite practical for our reading.

Wednesday we had more volunteers making cards for books (maybe more about this later) and
choosing books to review. Another volunteer worked on transcribing Dr. Abram Bullis' notebook.

And Thursday here we are updating the blog.

Welcome

Welcome to the Bullis Book Chronicles. And what will you find in the Chronicles? You will find Bullis book history (how they came to the Macedon Public Library), book reviews (of some very old books), history of the Bullis family (who, when and where), and just some old book interest items (repair, maintenance and collectibility).