Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1905-04-01
PRESIDENT AS READER.
Devouring Taste Consumes a Library
in a Year.

| From the Philadelphia Ledger.
An anonymous investigator records In
| the April Century the results of an in
quiry into the reading habits Of President
Roosevelt which ought to make the per-
| sons who say they have not time to read
| ashamed of themselves. This remarkable
| list of books, which Is too volumnous to be
printed here in full, covers the reading of
| the President for the two years ending In
| the first week of November, 1903. Properly
| enough the old heroic age of Greece was
not neglected. He read parts of Herodotus,
| of Thucydides. Plutarch; all Of Polybius;
some of the plays of Aeschylus.. Euripides.
| Sophocles and Aristophanes; the Politics"
| or Aristotle; Ridgeways THE Early Age
| of Greece some of the studies of the
| Greek world by Mahaffy; two of Maspero's
volumes ON the early Syrian. Chaldean and
Egyptian civilizations; some chapters OF
Froissart; the memoirs of Marriott; Bafn's
Charles XII" Mahan's Types of Naval
Officers" some of Macauley's essays; part
of Gibbons Decline and Fall of the Ro-
| man Empire the lives of some great ad-
mirals in French; the Battles in Car
lyles Frederick the Great" all of Hay
Lincoln's Complete Works. Bacon's es-
says and half dozen of Shakespeare's
plays; some of Milton Paradise Lost" and
| Michael Drayton's poems; parts of the
Inferno the Old English or Anglo-Sax-
on epic, 'Beowulf." In which the sword
play is gigantic and strenuous: Morris
| some of the Celtic "sagas."
| This Is only the beginning. and, as the
recorder of the list says, let us pause for
| breath. He perused. still purely for en-
| joyment," play by Moliere and one by
Beaumarchais; most of Ambassador JUS
serand's books; Tolstoy's and Sienkewicz's
novels. five of scott's novels and some of
his longer poems; some of Fenimore Coop
er's novels; some Of Bret Harte's
| nicholas Nickleby;;" four of Thackeray's
| novels. Conan Doyle's White Company"
mances of our own Charles Brockden
| Brown. He dipped into the poets often
Keats, Browning. Poe. Tennyson.. Longfel-
| low. Kipling and Bliss Carman: 1t need
| Ing could not be read by the President. Poe 8
| TALES" and Lowells essays formed a part
| Of the mass of intellectual provender, and
Allingham's British Ballads were not
Life"
Great piles of books on the Boer war
| were faithfully perused. and in the chill
| dren's hour for reading aloud Hans Chris
tan Andersen's stories. Grimm's fairy
| tales. Uncle Remus" and Thackeray's
skits were a delight. OF the current now
| els and stories the books by Janvier. Jack
London. Owen Wister. John Fox, Hamlin
Garland, Booth Harrington, Winston
Churchill. Mrs. Rice's Mrs. Wigs and
"Lovey Mary" Conrad, Kenneth Grahame,
Octave Thanet and others, besides the
"ephemeral novels
Books on hunting and outdoor life, In
GLIDING the writings of John Burroughs;
books of travel Elizabeth and Her Ger
man Garden" Mark Twain's Tom Saw
yer" Trevelyans American Revolution
and many others, besides the current books
On the problems of labor and capital, world
politics and the like. unfolded new worlds
to an eager and inquisitive mind.
The curious writer, who has his infor-
| nation from personal friends of the Presi-
dent, has not made record of the recent
reading, but he says that he is credbly in
formed that the President Is keeping the
pace" Some men who are professed read
ers do not get through thick volumes like
Mor1eys Gladstone" or James Ford
Rhodes History of the United States"
very promptly; but the President read them
'hot from the press" and gained new
views of Gladstone, whom he had not pre-
viously thoroughly understood.
While the President was reading this re-
markable list he had a Congress on his
hands, was meeting delegations every day
from every part of the country; was per-
forming the various and unending duties
of the presidential Office with an energy
and an attention to detail seldom equaled
In the annals of the country and as a mere
diversion delivered addresses to mothers
congresses and chambers of commerce and
Annapolis academies. What catholic
taste, what a capacity to devour, which
may be likened to the avidity of the corn
shelter. What drones are the most of us!
File on this quiet life!