Our friend, the book;

              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.