READERS OF BOOKS

Evening Post, Volume CVIII, Issue 120, 16 November 1929, Page 7

READERS OF BOOKS

POLITE AND IMPOLITE

A CRITICISM AND A PLEA

A little boy no higher than the table complained the other day that he hated the American's English. "Right now" was the expression which roused his ire, and he flung the book containing the expression from him with scorn. "Right now,"'well it is an objectionable term,, but the actual story was so excitiijj that most people would havjt: condoned it. Eut the child persisted that he did not like the book any more, and refused to read a single line. A great many grown-up people are like him, for the man who has a passion for style must inevitably lose a great deal that the easy-going reader gains (writes D.E.P. in the "Age"). It does not do to pry behind tha scenes too much if we seek enchantment, and some of us are apt to ba more interested in the author's methods than in the tale he unfolds. It ia like spoiling a watch in the endeavour to see how the wheels go round, and no matter how fascinating it is to observe how a writer makes his points and leads his plot up to consummation, when we let this become an obsession, we lose the sense of reality which is the chief charm of a story. \ TYPES OF READERS. „ There are people' who sfiip ■ and reread, people who look. at the end of the book before they have finished the first "chapter, people who turn down'a leaf because they fail to remember where they left off, and slow, conscientious readers who never miss a word; th polite readers, who spend nerve, and. imagination, and brain in their attempt to become one with the author. These people, the polite readers, are artists in their way; connoisseurs who have no time for rubbish, serious folk, seekers after the rare and ..eautiful. Tou meet them ill the second-hand book shops, in libraries, in such, that hymn by Addison, those lines of Wesley's, that collect, nothing escapes them; their minds aro sensitive to every' impression as they lay up golden stores of solace for a happy old age. It is interesting to note the taste for books in a single family. There is the boy who goes to sleep with his cheek pillowed on Morte d'Arthur, the girl who appreciates Alice in Wonderland, and rejects Pilgrims' Progress; the little fellow who will read nothing but books on cricket and wireless, and the tiny one who devours every thing that comes his way, from comic-papers to the poetry of Walter de la Mare. Edgewort'i 's ' 'Parents' Assistance, " Frank ana Louisa 11. Alcott, were the treasures t>f our generation, and exquisite we found them, but best of all, perhaps,- were the nursery rhymes with delightful illustrations by Caldecott. Undine and Sintram and his companions and the Castle of Otranto, are ideal for the imaginative cnild who passes easily to the fairy .land of poetry. Meg Merilees and La Belle Dame Sans Merer enter the pictures they conjure up, Mrs. Browning's Little Ellie, and the Swan's Nest. The Ancient Mariner,'' The Cloud and The Sky Lark. Here is enchantment indeed, the pot of gold we find at "the foot of. every rainbow. Books first, books again, and angels can do no more. What matters it.if our hat- is a landmark and our coat has served'as long as Jacob did for Rachael, if we have access to the great minds? There is no firmer bond between friends than, a mutual love for the same authors. How your heart goes out to your companion when he tells you that he was moved to tears by the identical passage that brought a lump into your throat when you read the Hound of Heaven, when lie shares your delight m the Meynells and Katherine Tynan, and you both recall in the same breath. Alice Meynell's Jove for the single trumpet daffodil, and the fact that you never see the golden bloom without, remembering it. i THE SPIRIT OF POETRY. It is a pleasant pastime to commit the words of the poets to memory, to make them our own for all.time, bright visions to charm away spirits of depression and insomnia— . "lis a woodland enchanted By no sadder spirit . Than blackbirds and thrushes ■ < That whistle to cheer it. . Those lovely lines of Lowell's express what we strive to convey, for poetry, can. transform the dreariest heart 'into a woodland enchanted. The man -whom we regard with pity from the bottom of our hearts is he who does not love books and cannot endure poetry. Perhaps he did not begin young enough or was it because he had a mother like Mrs. Sedgewick's heroine '.' Dark Hester who set her face against fairr tales? Ji A world without books would be like a world without flowers, a hearth without a fire, a sky without stars. For many of us, life only begins when we settle down in the evening with a book, forgetting our petty cares in the magic of the written word. No longer cribbed, cabined, and confined, we explore:, strange lands and mix with all sorts and conditions of,men. The suburbs lie far behind as we fly back,- till we touch Greee— • ■ The Isles of Greece, the Isles of Greece Where burning Sappho loVed and sungj' and where "American English" was