Evening star., 1928-12-18

upon every subject under the sun; there
is book for every mood: there Is book
for happiness and book for sadness.
Childhood has its volumes. youth has
its books. old age has its peculiar tones.
Between these states are million vari-
ations all mingling and intermingling,
until q good book for child becomes
a good book for the old man who holds
true to the heart of child.
A good book is one of the few things
in the world which permit man to
eat his cake and have it, too. Perhaps
the pristine SAVIOR of the mental fare
may never be exactly the same again.
Who can ever forget his first reading
of "Pickwick Papers? Or the keen in
terest with which he first read Ben
Hur" or Quo Vadis"?
These first grand impressions. like the
aroma of cakes just out of the oven,
vanish with the years, just as the odor
did with the passing hours. In the
larger sense, however, one is just in
saving that one may read book and
still have it.
He actually possesses it, in a physical
as we'll as mental sense, after he has
read it. In addition. there is another
possession still remaining. 1t is that he
may reread it. If the time which has
passed has been sufficient the booklover
! VIII find that his cake tastes almost as
good as it ever did.
There will always be those book cakes
which, to paraphrase Shakespeare, time
cannot wither nor custom stale
One of these is Charles Dickens great
Christmas Carol" We were delighted
the other day to meet gentleman who
said that the article upon "A Christ
mas CAROL which appeared in these
columns several years ago is pasted in
the front OF his copy of Dickens i'm
mortal tale and that he invariably reads
the article before he makes his annual
reading of the story.
This was a gracious land most ap-
preciated) compliment. Inclusion in
"A Christmas Carol" whether by paste
or other method, is an honor Surely
the Carol" must stand as a supreme
example of the ageless story, the book
which is great despite physical small
ness. After the lengthier and heavier
novels have passed aWay--if ever, which
we doubt-"A Christmas Carol" will be
read by the generations of man. Some
where in its makeup the novelist man
aged to incorporate Immortality. How
he did it, analysis will not discover Dis
sect it as you may, the secret escapes
you. 1t escaped even Dickens himself.
He wrote a score of other Christmas
stories, but not one of them begins
to equal this masterpiece. 1t stands
alone.
There are other works in world lit
erature of like immortality, heavier or
lighter, yet each undimmed by passing
time. The crowning joy of the great
habit of reading is to search out as
many of them as one may before the
time comes to leave the library of this
life. He who imagined. in the mad
pride of intellectually, as Poe called it,
that he had read all the great books,
has discovered ere this that he had but
begun on them.
Every tongue has its great books. He
who has knowledge of one only perhaps
will forever miss some of the greatest.
Intellectual curiosity brings more and
more of them to him in translation.
National pride deprives him of some,
until maturity teaches him better To
dip into the good books of all libraries.
as Lucretiu5' bee did into the honey of
antiquity, is to come into manhood in
reading, that one great habit which
grows stronger with time.