Mr. Beemis is an elderly, quiet, and frequent visitor to the Hoosac Public Library. He is described as “a secretive little character who spent about six nights a week in the library, aimlessly leafing through books and magazines” [The Lamp from the Warlock's Tomb; 34] and sometimes playing chess [The Mansion in the Mist; 96].
Inspiration
Hoosac's library patron shares a similar-sounding name with the character Henry Bemis, the man obsessed with reading in the Twilight Zone episode "Time Enough at Last" (originally broadcast November 20, 1959). Bemis (Burgess Meredith) is a bookworm who yearns for more time to read; a nuclear holocaust leaves him alone in the world with plenty of time to read and one ironic twist:
- "Collected works of Dickens! Collected works of George Bernard Shaw! Poems by Browning, Shelley, and Keats! Books! Books! All the books I'll need! All the books, all the books I'll ever want! Shelley, Shakespeare, Shaw, ohhh! All the books I want!"
There is also a Mount Bemis in the White Mountains of New Hampshire.
External links
- Wikipedia: Time Enough at Last