Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1929-12-17
THIS AND THAT
BY CHARLES E. TRACEWELL.
Come. and take choice of all my
library.
And SO beguile thy sorrow"
Titus Andronicus.

Come, and take choice of all my
library.
And SO beguile thy sorrow"
Titus Andronicus.
Shakespeare knew the POWER Of books
to take ones mind of trouble.
Today the whoop-hooray attitude
which prevails in Bookdom tends to
obscure this essentially Useful quality
which has helped thousands in every
generation.
Despite the prevalence of optimism
as a cult. widespread throughout the
earth, men and women everywhere
meet the same problems that always
have confronted them, sometimes with
success, sometimes with failure.
The same rounds of life leave in their
paths tears and sadness, Ill health and
sickness, the last gasp and inevitable
death. Those who would say otherwise
are trying to blink life with the mind
which was given them to comprehend 1t.
These things happen to rich and
poor alike. Great families and low
families know them ALL at some time or
other; sorrow may invade the palace
of king as well as the tiny apartment
no longer hovel-of the very poor.
x x X X
In all these situations there is no
greater Solace than love of books.
Just as some men plunge into work,
and more work, to take their minds
off themselves, as the saying has it, so
Others begin to read madly, as If their
very lives depended upon it.
If they do not entirely obscure their
pain, they at least muff1e it, and this
is a great deal. One advantage books
have as a pain killer is that any sort
will do. A reader is not driven to re-
ligious books more than to detective
tales, if one may put it bluntly.
Poetry, novels histories, biographies,
essays, these and many others play a
part in the book cure. A fast-moving
piece of fiction often serves a major
purpose. Yet the precise nature of the
books to be read in such emergencies
must depend in the last analysis, upon
the temperament of the reader.
Any misguided person who attempts
to advise another in this matter must
suffer the fate of the Inwanted. Each
is a law unto himself, and knows bet
ter than all the rest of the world what
he needs.
He may make a mature return to his
childhood love for Dickens. The inter-
vening years brought to him much
criticism of the favorite novelist of the
VictorianS, but he refused to believe
that Nicholas Nickleby" was not a
great novel. biIIle NcH was CdlICO
Stuffy. oliver Twist" melodrama, "A
Tale of Two Cities" wooden.
D Let him read them over again, and
see for sure that he does not agree with
such precious criticism. If he once liked
Longfellow, who more than any other
has suffered at the hands of the mod
ern know-it-allS he can return to Long
fellow with much profit and some pleas
ure THE Psalm of Life" may be bro
mfdic. but it is pretty sure that none
of his modern critics could do as well,
line for line, word for word.
X X
At this season of the year he might
profitably make his annual pilgrimage
to "A Christmas Carol" The number of
those who reread this masterpiece
every December Is growing year by year.
Some think that no greater Christmas
piece can be written. 1t was one OF
those lay inspirations which come once
in a lifetime Dickens tried to do 1t
again, many times, but never succeeded
in making more than tolerably good
limitations
All the hearty good cheer which has