Evening star., 1933-05-30
THIS AND THAT
BY CHARLES E. TRACEWELL.

| boy of those days, was not satisfied
to receive his mental fare forever from
| the lending libraries, however. If he
| were worth his mind, he wanted books
| of his own
Upon occasion, as we note an utter
absence Of this desire in some of the
| young men of the present day. We fall
! to wondering whether that desire for
the personal possession of books of
ones own was not sort of keynote
| to the characters Of those boys.
II
When such young fellow emassed
as much as 35 cents of his own money
it was as likely as not to go into an
| Everyman, perhaps the first volume of
the three which made up the set of
Montaigne.
Or he may have purchased MAJ
zinis Rights of Man" or Spinoza' S
Ethics" or similar heavy" work. He,
no more than the Everyman, tenn
porized with worth. 1t gave him the
best 1t could find, according to its
| light. The universal catering to the
desire for easy reading had not been
heard in the land. when the house of
Dutton lin this country brought out
the first Everyman issues.
There was no compromise with taste.
and has never been, as far as we have
been able to see. OF the making of
books there is no end, and every person
or group of persons will have personal
ideas as to what constitutes good
book" but in the main the evaluations
as contained in this and similar
libraries" are very good.
1t has been said that man might
spend comfortable reading life on a
desert island with no more than the
Everyman, the Modern and the oxford
world classics.
This is true, but it must not be for
gotten that many volumes of the latter
are already in the first and that, of
the books in the modern library, some
yet have to be tested over the years,
while even this essentially modern"
collection has most properly gone back
to Boswells Life of Samuel Johnson -
novels, titles long included in the
Everyman.
The Everyman formal was designed
for a nation which liked pocket
sized" books. In England, the birth
place of this series, it was preferred
In America there has never been such
a vogue.
This library" was popular here, not
because it was small, but because 1t
was cheap, and furnished the younger
book lovers with real opportunity to
own books of their own, in wide
choice.
Our belief is that it still must con-
tinue to function along that line. With
the vogue, during the past five years,
for the so-called dollar books" which
now occupy so many tables in every
bookstore, the Everyman series seem
even smaller.
Nor is there very great difference
In price, even with the recent reduc-
ton. What still appeals, as it has in
the past, and as we hope it will con-
tinue to do, is the remarkable variety,
the long range Of literature covered
the air of essential wisdom and COM
mon sense which may be found in the
selections, which know that youth
dares all-even the best
1t is, thank heaven, young mans
library STILL one suited to the size OF
his purse, as we'll as to the yearning
desire for knowledge which imbues him.
In the Springtime of life one Is seldom
sarcastic and never filled with the
sense Of futility which, unhappily, over
comes so many in their later years.
even though they never admit it. The
books in the Everyman library are
good books, picked at random out of
the worlds literature of the past. Let
the future take care Of its own
libraries