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Bulletin HASKINS & SELLS 35 Our Friend, The Book By ANNA BURNS, Librarian, Executive Offices A F T E R the long sleep of winter, the season of nature's awakening is at hand. Like a hibernating animal, the city dweller comes out of the steam-heated house that has sheltered him during the winter months, and fills his lungs with fresh air. Everyone rejoices in the spring. The outlying country is an allurement not to be resisted, and the end of every week sees thousands streaming out of the city for the refreshment and vitalizing breath of the open fields. Here one finds awakening life everywhere. The piping of frogs, the songs of birds, the unfolding of myriads of tiny leaves, are evidences of the new activity spreading over the world. The fields, under the hand of the farmer, lie richly brown in the sunshine, ready to yield the fruits of the earth. But no matter how rich and full of promise the soil may be, it cannot yield its fruit without cultivation. Left to itself the earth becomes fallow or rank. These thoughts steal upon the mind rather idly, it must be confessed, as the landscape glides rapidly past a car window. And the analogy that we like to feel is ever-present between nature and man immediately suggests itself. For a man's mind, if it is to be productive, must also have cultivation. His faculties must be used and developed during his childhood and youth. His memory must be trained. His intelligence becomes more keen, his taste more discriminating. His will is strengthened by contact with the actualities of existence. His character affirms itself more and more under the influence of his environment and the problems he is called upon to face. None of this gradual development of the personality is possible without care, nurture, instruction on the part of others, and effort. The mere act of living may be made a part of the process of cultivation. In fact there is no part or parcel of our life and work that cannot be made a contributing factor. In a more obvious and tangible sense, however, the greatest instrument for cultivation ready to our hand is the book. Books are truly all things to all men. The definition found in the dictionary—"a number of sheets of paper bound or stitched together"—falls so far short of the vital, energizing thing that a book may be that its literalness almost provokes a smile. Books minister to needs so diverse—practical, sentimental, recreative, or inspirational— that it would be futile to attempt to consider them in bulk, as it were. Each book is an individual. There are books as impersonal as the dictionary itself; books for our work and business hours, as well as for our leisure; books which comfort us when we are ill or sorrowful, or even those which put us to sleep—a quite worthy function, be it observed in passing. It has been remarked by some over-conscientious reader that it is an insult to read while eating—whether the insult is to the book or the food was not made clear. The man whose daily habit it is to take his newspaper with his morning coffee knows that the thing can be done without hard feeling. Our serious concern, however, is with the book as an instrument of cultivation. Though reading, to be productive, should have a serious purpose, it does not necessarily follow that it must be heavy or dull. On the contrary, it is one of life's delights, and like air and water, those other indis-pensables, lies within the reach of all.
Object Description
Title |
Our friend, the book |
Author |
Burns, Ann |
Subject |
Books Reading |
Office/Department |
Haskins & Sells. Library Haskins & Sells. Executive Offices |
Citation |
Haskins & Sells Bulletin, Vol. 06, no. 05 (1923 May), p. 35-36 |
Date-Issued | 1923 |
Source | Originally published by: Haskins & Sells |
Type | Text |
Collection | Deloitte Digital Collection |
Digital Publisher | University of Mississippi Libraries. Accounting Collection |
Date-Digitally Created | 2009 |
Identifier | HS Bulletin 6-p35 |