Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1931-01-03
THE LIBRARY TABLE
BY the BOoklOver

Every now and then some one comes
forward to say that the automobile. the
movie and the radio have crowded books
out Of our lives so that no longer is
there any reading. Statistics, however,
| show that more books than ever before
| are being published and sold and pre-
Sumably read. The figures of home cir
culation Of books from public libraries
especially are constantly mounting. The
latest available statistics for the 81
American cities above ZOO, 900 popula-
| ton show that more than 121 600 900
I volumes were borrowed annually and
that from IS more cities between 100, 900
and 100000 population $4,000. 900 books
were borrowed. As the average was
more than four books per capita, includ-
ing young children, illiterates and
others who have no use for books or
who get no books from public libraries.
the number of books read by each in
the army of those who go to libraries is
by no means small.
y X
Reports from England also show in
creasing interest in books. At the re-
cent annual meeting of the National
Book Council, its president, Sir Charles
Grant Robertson, of Birmingham w.
versity, declared himself as quite sure
that the percentage of bookless homes Is
lower today than when he was a young
man. He believes that in reading would
be found the true antidote to the toxin
of the increasing mechanization OF life.
But to serve that purpose the books, he
said. must be what De Quincy called the
literature of power as distinguished from
the literature of knowledge. For exam
pie, the mastery of an encyclopedia
would never make a man educated. His
address contained the following note
worthy apothegm:
THE prig Is the man who believes
that all tho secrets of life can only be
found In socks. The fool Is the man
who believes that he can learn nothing
of the secrets of life from books. The
wise Nzd happy are those who have dis
coveeeA-not at once, but slowly and by
what books can do for them and what
they cannot"
Art critics, juries who award prizes
at art exhibitions, artists themselves,
even the practitioners of ultra-ynodern
art, II they have any grain of humor,
cannot fail to enjoy the satire of A. P.
Herbert in his novel THE Water Clip
sies,' when he describes the periods Of
| art development and the art creations
Of the Hon. George Gordon Bryan,
son Of a baron. Little Jane Bell,
daughter of a musician in movie
palace, who lives on barge anchored
near Hammersmith Bridge, on the
Thames, is Mr.. Bryan's domestic serv-
ant his model, and his most frank art
critic. She gives one look at his pic
ture Of Brentford Lock and tells him
that when the lock emptaes his barge
will drift under the bridge, because she
isn't tied up. She hopes when he paints
her picture in THE Blush" he will not
make her look like the portrait of a
lady which hangs in his studio. "She
stood before a set of airy banisters
which were not attached to any stair
and did not reach the floor Her face
was partly dark green and partly pale
green, like the particoloured seas of
Cornwall. She had only one eye, and
that was a large oval of white specks
which overflowed on to the spaces usu-
| ally reserved for the nose and fore
| head. She had two breasts, one the
size of a melon and the other no larger
| than a plum. Her hair unhappily,
grew only on one side and hung down
over her left shoulder in melancholy
snakelike wisps, some black, some
cream coloured. Across her stomach she
held her right forearm, which, affected
with some sort of elephantiasis, grew
1 4dI gel dAlQ ldLbCI ClOOW W WIAoS
and terminated in q monstrous talon.
Beside her sat another female shape Of
similar appearance, but with a white
face and green hair. The only other
! object in the picture was a table, but
| the table was drawn severely in the
normal likeness of table, with straight
legs and square top. Without
the table the ladies might have been
taken for supernatural or fantastic
creatures, grifins, gnomes or extinct
| monsters; but this dull perpendicular
kitchen table made it clear that these
misshapen horrors were female human
beings" AS Mr. Bryan proceeds with
the painting of THE Blush" he is sur
prised and somewhat dismayed to find
that it looks like q very human Jane.
Without intending it, even without
noticing it, he had drawn Jane in q
new style-a style not his own-no tri-
angles, no cubes or stovepipeS, but a
simple figure with two eyes, with nose
| and q mouth and two arms the came
size-a figure, moreover, which was
quite like Jane. He had come very
near to the unforgivable in art, a re-
semblance, almost a photograph What
did this nnean?"
In his new book ON Universities
| American, English, German" DR.. Abra-
ham Flexner has followed the same
| procedure that he adopted 20 years ago
| in dealing with medical schools. The
| book is based on first-hand information
/ and investigation and, while construc-
| tive in its attitude, is a frank and severe
criticism of university methods and
ideals. Columbia, Harvard, Yale, Wis
| consin, Johns Hopkins receive the great
est share of unfavorahle attention; but
| specific charges are brought against
Dartmouth, Stanford, Vassar, Pennsyl-
vania, Michigan, Rollins and others.
They have. thoughtlessly and excess
| sively catered to heeting, transient and
taken the relative Importance to civili-
| zation of things and ideas; they have
/ failed, and they are, in my opinion,
more and more failing to distinguish
| between ripples and waves. They are
in my opinion becoming more and more
tumultuous," declares DR.. Flexner of
| the universities in general And he
finds them "needlessly cheapened, vul-
| CARRIED, and mechanical" His criticism
of particular universities is no less
severe. Appalling" and fragrant" are
| some Of the adjectiveS he applies to
practices Of Columbia, which, with the
University of Chicago, he blames for
the introduction of "the chain store
concept into higher education. He re-
tails some OF the requirements of the
! University of Wisconsin and asks, "IS
it strange that the general American
| public Is utterly at SEA as to what edu-
cation Is, as to what purpose the college
serves, as to where the line should be
drawn between mere tricks, vocational
experience, and intellectual develop
ment, when great universities descend
to such humbug as to confer the degree
of bachelor of arts or bachelor of
i science on the terms above described?
Those responsible for the democrat
ization of the American college are not