My 1838 Webster's Dictionary

No book on my shelves can find comparison with this single volume. And it is not merely the cash value of an 1838 Webster’s Dictionary. I have avoided collecting pressed pulp for monetary profit, but instead gather to myself books that can withstand the act of reading.

This 15th edition of Webster’s great book was once owned by the Rev. W. G. Bonoman, if I am correctly deciphering the name. The script seems unpracticed, not as clear as one expects from the antique hand. It is also made in pencil on the blank cover page, rather than the usual bleeding ink lines. On the reverse side, in similar pencil lines but a different hand, is the simple name Mrs. J. M. Herndon.

Another pencil inscription, carved randomly on the top of a page of the book, appears to say:

Once my Fathers
now Mrs. J. M. Herndons

The outwardly simple reflection is yet cryptic, but the placement of the note smacks of spontaneity, as if written on some dreary day after receiving the dictionary of a father passed away. The definitions below offer no clear hints to why Mrs. Herndon was visiting those words on that particular day. All the words begin with BEA. Beat, beast, beatitude,

BEARHERD, n. One who tends to bears.

But the provenance of my Webster has little bearing on its dearness to me. I cherish the book for two reasons. One, of course, is the definitions.

SAUCE, n. 1. A mixture or composition to be eaten with food for improving its relish.—2. In New England, culinary vegetables and roots eaten with flesh.—To serve one the same sauce, is to retaliate one injury with another; [vulgar.]

Like a history book, an antique dictionary fills your mind with the words, and therefore a sliver of the worldview, of a time and people of the past.

My two favorite definitions from the famous book follow. They are simple, but exhibit an multi-dimensional archaicness to the modern ear and mind that is seldom equaled.

ELOPE, v.i. [D. loopen, wegloopen] To run away, to quit one’s station, without permission or right; to escape privately; to depart without permission. Particularly, to run away from a husband, or to quit a father’s house, privately or without permission.

ELOPING, ppr. Running away; departing privately, or without permission, from a husband, father, or master.

The second, and the most important reason why the book is dear to me, is for the silly fact that it was a Christmas present from my wife and was purchased using the very last of our money at the time. I still keep it in the unlabeled white box in which it rested when I received it, enveloped by brightly-colored tissue paper. I pretend that the thin sheets will trap any moisture making an attack on this precious volume.

Every time I open the book, I study the yellow splotches that spread across every page, and ache. I worry that I don’t care for the book enough, that I will some day have to dismantle it and have it rebound in some modern, foreign material. It has become a symbol of my marriage, and especially of my wife’s generous (though not endless) patience with my obsessive study.



I one day found a very special inclusion within my dictionary. Someone, perhaps Mrs. Herndon, pressed two small flowers in the dictionary. And until I found them, they had been forgotten.