Cameron County press. [volume] (Emporium, Cameron County, Pa.) 1866-1922, 1903-08-13
As TO Rnnks

The man who guards his book-shelves as a
sanctuary, who has "6tn when the baby grabs
some one Of his precious editions and cracks the
covers, who fingers the pages of his books ten
derly and hangs over their illustrations with al
most maternal fondness is book lover. The
man who gathers FIRST editions" refuses to cat
the pages, and keeps them under lock and key,
is CRANK. We cannot all be book lovers, |
suppose We would not wish to be ''cranks"
There are certainly some people with whom
books, like olives, are an acquired taste, or, If
liked, are reserved for rare and desperate occa-
sions. These people are unfortunate, because
they do miss vast amount OF pleasure, to say
nothing of instruction
Next to the world of out-of-doors, where we can
study Mother Nature can conceive Of nothing
more satisfying than the world of books. There
we may seek and find anything we crave. If we
fail to accomplish. we may read of men and wo-
men who have accomplished, and we may steal
their thrills and resolutions and adapt them to
our own use. II wage-earning shuts us up, away
from the woods and mountains, in a stupid,
dingy, noisy city office, where green things are
embodied solely in the office boy, we can yet read
ofpure air, and solitude, and flowers, and green
trees. OF course, we must have Imagination.
That is the tool of the book world. 1t is hard to
see the heroic ia our neighbors, so much does the
pettiness of life get in between them and us.
But give us the right book and by comparison
with its heroism we may see such similarity as to
make our friends living heroes and heroines
We learn to appreciate them by having their un-
conscious good qualities brought before us.
Pleasure, and knowledge, and ethical good, are
not all the joys of the book world. There the
mind can stretch itself and shake off limitations.
Everybody can possess at least one shelf of fa-
vorite books nowadays Books are dirt" cheap,
and the most delightful books in the world. 1t
is the worn-out historical novel of 1923 which
costs s110 Good old-fashioned novels, like
Crawford, or 'The Little Minister, or Lorna
Doone", cost no more than the sacrifice of a neck
tie or two pocket handkerchiefs. Attractive,
up-to-date editions, too, with Remington, or Glib
son, or Peter Newell Illustrations. And after all
these are the stories that stay with us.
Who of US can forget "Babbie", or the delicate
tribute of Barrie to his mother in Margaret OgiI-
Wy? We can smile day long over the four
deacons and their interchanged looks of horror
at finding that what they had taken to be their
little minister's sermon was instead very ardent
love poem; over the old lady in the village who
"doted' on funerals; over the little old maid in
Crawford who put her COW into red and ruffled
flannel drawers lest she take cold All these are
mirthful and homely, and dear. They are the
plainest everyday doings, told with a delicacy
which raises them above the commonplace.
1t is pity that so many of us content ourselves
with summaries of great books when we may
read the books themselves. When we read
about Adam Bede, we are missing the personal
contract with George Eliot, that extraordinary
woman whose understanding of human nature
was so deep. Reading about Hamlet and not the
drama itself, we lose the simple dignity and
the dramatic strength which established Shake
speare in the top niche of English dramatists
Emporium has start toward an excellent
library. 1t has standard histories of the Euro
pean states, England and America and a good
lot of fiction, comprising Dickens Kipling Craw
ford, Wallace, and others. 1t does need biogra-
phy-not of the dry sort-but the kind that
fascinates the ambitious small boy. Boswells
Life ofJohnson, for instance, which is far more
interesting, with its merry necdotes, than that
learned gentleman could have been himself
Lewes' Life of Goethe is bound to interest any
set of girls, and the recently published letters of
that gifted woman, Jane Carlyle in one of which
she relates her trials with Amazon OF q serv-
ant girl would be fun to any housewife. Barrie,
George Eliot, Thackeray, Scott, Hawthorne,
Holmes, Lytton, Maupassant. Meredith,
Stockton-all of these and more we shall
hail with delight when they appear on the read
ing room shelves. AS for the children, Kate
Douglas Wiggin is the mother of them all. Her
Patsy, with his big brown eyes, his freckled
saucy nose, his big heart, bigger far than his
little crippled body and his sad story. must win
everybodys heart.
One thing we have, and that is Mr. Dooley,
about the only true wit we can boast Of
w.