Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1930-06-06
THIS AND THAT
BY CHARLES e. TRACEWELL.

/ Ouixote,' Mr.. Pickwick.' 'Huck Finn,
to act as a bond between you and every
one else, living or dead-and not yet
born"
Now, We like that way of putting It,
| They recall to us Carlyle's brave words
''Of the things which man can do or
make here below. by far the most mo-
mentous, wonderful and worthy are the
| things we call Books" Carlyle, of
course, was an interested party; lie
wrote books the inventor of some great
machine which gives thousands Of men
employment might disagree with him,
and properly, perhaps. We do not know.
1t is great question.
| We have not compared the Golden
Books" selections with those of Sir
John Lubbock made many years ago,
but have no doubt that it will be found
to contain many Of the works which
appeared in the previous list. Many OF
them, such as the Bible, the "Iliad," the
Odyssey" "Plutarch's LiveS,P Marcus
Aurelius' "Meditations," are inevitable.
One would not dare to leave them out,
no matter what ones personal tastes
were.
The Bible, for instance. Whether one
believes, with the editors Of the Golden
Book" that 1T is the most inspiring
and the most beautiful collection OF
prose and poetry in the heritage of our
race" or not, there would be no ques-
ton with any cultured person in put
ting it In such list.
| * Il
We recommend to our readers, as we
did to the young man, that they look
up the May number of the magazine
and go over the list for themselves. An
interesting hour may be spent in noting
just which cnes Of the books the reader
has himself read.
that he has not read every book in the
| list. Probably no one has Why should
one? Dante Alighieri's masterpiece, for
instance. We have been reading it for
a lifetime, but we do not like it, and
do not mind sayin, SO at all. To us it
is outworn, uninteresting and unin-
! spring We have read at it (notice the
"at") since we were years old, and
can say truthfully Ivy this time that
THE Divine Comedy is not for us.
Every reader will find several books,
perhaps many books, which fall into the
same category. An individual rejection,
it must be borne in mind, is by no
means Judgment. One may not care
for a book, and still pass no Judgment
on 1t for others, or even upon it for
itself. One may admit, theoretically,
that THE Divine Comedy is great
human effort.
In the Golden Books" list the reader
will find such old favorites as Cervantes'
Don Quixote," which perhaps holds the
record for being miSpronounced He
will find Montaignes Essays" Pepys'
DIARY" and LIE Sage's Gil Bias. "
Every one ought to read "Gil Bias" Of
course, but many have not. And every
one ought to have read, too, Henry
Fielding's Tom Jones'"
Here we have the poetry of Byron,
Wordsworth, Shelley. Keats, Browning,
/ Tennyson. Arnold, Walt Whitman; the
ESSAYS" of Hawthorne and the Scarlet
Letter" Of Ralph Waldo Emerson This,
Of course, is a slip-up, and should SIM
ply be reversed.
We believe that every serious reader
will be interested and helped by this
list. No reader, however mighty a
reader he is, can have read every
thing" In looking over the Golden
Books" list he will no doubt see sew
eral titles which he realizes that he
should read which he must read, to be
the man he fancies himself to be- Such
selections serve q most useful purpose