Books

Books cheap and dear, in leather, in paper, in boards, beautiful books and ugly ones, books to keep or to throw away are loaded daily in increasing lots upon a great U. S. public. Guardians of these truck- loads of print are the nation's librarians. Some think their duty is to furnish useful knowledge to all. But is it? Have they not already ruined the high aristocracy of thought in vulgarizing education? Should not a large part of the people--the simple, kindly folk--be left in ignorance so that they may carry on the world's most valued work? "Too much reading, even educational, may be stupefying and enslaving as the treadmill rounds of brute labor." Let the librarians concern them- selves with the few, to bring together the right book and the right reader. Let them deal only in the good, the first rate, and leave the "canned goods of literature" to the drugstores and chain libraries who give the public what it wants.

Librarians observe and report readers' tastes. Boys and girls read Lorna Doone; but the girls skip all the fighting, the boys all the lovemaking. Some enter their 'teens hand in hand with Louisa May Alcott, leave them arm in arm with G. B. Shaw. A librarian may fix his attention on special cases: prisons, for example. Girls in correctional institutions do not read so much as boys. They are "ignorant and sophisticated, pathetically childish, wary, scornful and suspicious." They should be given stories written for adults of meagre intelligence, especially those of girls who rise above unfortunate surroundings. Some penologists stuff education into prisoners, like meat into a sausage. But knowledge is a power that can be used for evil as well as good.

Literature is therapeutic. First physician to prescribe reading for his patients was hearty Dr. Frangois Rabelais (Gargantua, Pantagruel) in about 1530. Now bibliotherapy is being studied carefully. Im- probable novels should be given tuberculous patients, so that they will not excite themselves by attempting to emulate what they read. Feverish or resting patients should not read at all.

So last week, in New Haven, Conn, ran the discussions in the annual conference of the American Library Association.

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