A LIBRARY FOR EXILES.

Dunstan Times, Issue 3355, 3 January 1927, Page 7

A LIBRARY FOR EXILES.

LITERARY FARE IN FOREIGN LANDS. A grievance of long standing with those whose vocations set thems in remote places of the earth is the difficulty they experience m indulging any taste for reading winch they may have acquired at home. At first, friends keep them supplied with regular parcels of tho latest books, but, unless the bonds of friendship are unusually strong, tUe parcels gradually become less and less frequent until finally they cease altogether. To the writer’s knowledge there is only one library in London that makes the exiled reader one of its first considerations. It is * the Catholic Truth Society Lending Library, which is in no way limited to Roman Catholic subscribers. Fourteen years ago an American layman founded a small parish library at Bexhill with a few hundred works of fiction and reference. Though ,ai first, it was intended 1 to fill local needs only, he soon found that many visitors who borrowed volumes took them away, aaid returned them by post with requests for more. These requests, which came from all parts of this and other conn trios, gradually embraoeu a wider field of reading than the library had originally aimed to cover. In order that its range of usefulness might be extended, the borrowers, whose only payment hitherto had been the postage on the books, were _ non asked for donations, which came in s<; rapidly that the library was soon in a flourishing condition with an assured future. It remained at Ilex hill until three years ago, when it was taken over by the Catholic Truth Society and brought to London and an animal subscription of Is. , The library now consists of oyer Ib,(JUO volumes embracing 6000 different English titles and 1500 French works. The librarians have found that the heavier type of reading matter is the most favored, and that theological hooks, histories, and biographies are in constant demand. The books are grouped under the following general classification: Apologetics, Archaeology . Belles-Lettres, Biographies, Devotional Works, Fiction, Hagiology, Physical Science, Sociology, Theology, and travel. The subscription list of the library is literally universal, for requests for books are regularly received from borrowers in Egypt, China, Cuba, Uppei Burma, Japan, North Africa, Italy, Gold Const, and the United States of 4 inerica. The system of supplying tho books is simplicity itself. Each subscriber ivho goes abroad has a parcel of books sent to him directly he leaves England ; a month later another parcel is ’dispatched to him. Then as, cac.i set of returned books is received by the library, a fresh stock is immediately forwarded to him. In this way the subscriber always retains three or four volumes in his possession. Despite the thousands of miles that some of the books travel, very few of them go astray. Oue man living on the Gold Coast sends lus books to the mail boat by a native earner through miles of swamp and forest. The uisl batch received showed obvious signs of rough handling, and a Tetter received later explained that the boy had slipped into a uver swollen in hood, and had only saved the books by strapping them above Ins head!