Desert Islands

Are Your Books Bound in Rubber?

If you plan to be shipwrecked, choose a stout lifebelt and have your library waterproofed. The recent excitement in connection with the answers of various prominent men to the question, " What books would you like to have with you on a desert island?" has begun to quiet down. The chief impression left is one of bulk. Everything from the Encyclopedia to the Presbyterian Hymnal, the complete works of Shakespeare, and the dictionary have been proposed. Will Rogers favors the telephone directory.

It is curious to note how many of the prospective castaways chose works such as Robinson Crusoe, and rejoiced at their escape from modern realism. As a matter of fact, to the limited population of a desert is- land, Robinson Crusoe would have about as much charm as a shopping list. What to us is the essence of romance would be to him the acme of the commonplace. A photographic description of the dullest incidents of daily life in the sordid haunts of civilization, on the other hand, would become to him a golden fairytale, a realization of all his fondest dreams, colored at once with reminiscence and with hope.

The matter uppermost in his mind, probably, would in any case not be the question of passing his idle hours, but of keeping his hours from being idle. Joseph Hergesheimer solved the problem quite simply. He would take ten blank books, and write his own literature to order.

The general principle of selection in such a case as this seems, in any event, to be a selection of the books that it would take a desert island and a lifetime of boredom to make you read. A much fairer test--in many respects--would be to ask the jaded commuter what he would choose to read on the 5:15.

However, a few titles that suggest themselves for the delectation and profit of the ill-starred mariner are the following: (1) Checkbook; (2) Joyce's Ulysses; (3) Cicero's De Senectute; (4) Walter Camp's Daily Dozen; (5) Cookbook; (6) Coue's Self-Mastery Through Conscious Autosuggestion; (7) The Bartender's Guide; (8) The family photograph album; (9) Joke Book; (10) The Book of Etiquette.

The obvious solution, anyway, is to find." sermons in stones and books in the running brooks." J. A. T.