The Manawatu Daily Times Friends of the Library

Manawatu Times, Volume LIX, Issue 7473, 25 May 1934, Page 6

The Manawatu Daily Times Friends of the Library

In a delightful speech at the opening of an extension of the London Library, Mr. Baldwin recalled the days of his youth, when he read, as all early readers, lying on his stomach in front of the lire. But, alas, he said, that was no longer possible. To most of them there came a kind of senile convexity which disturbed that perfect equilibrium which was necessary to that attitude to enjoy what they were reading. In those days, their friends in the library were far more real to them than most of the simulacra proved to be that they met in after life. Those present knew what a library was and what it was for. They did not feel superior in that knowledge; they merely had a happy sense that many people unfortunately were without. If they looked over modern Hats to-day they found that there was not only not room to swing a eat, but not, room to swing a book. They did not want to be told what to read. They knew where their pasture was, and they could each seek out what best could suit their condition. He wasmo scholar, but catholic in his tastes, and he thought he found himself in agreement \\ith Southey when he said: “A fastidious taste is like a squeamish appetite. One has its origin in a disease of the mind and the other in some ailment of the stomach.” When lie was in a library it was no fastidious taste that was bis, but he certainly did wage war against some types of books. That day, when in the library at the House of Commons, ho found his gaze riveted on Volume 165 of English Cases, Ecclesiastical, Admiralty and Probate and Divorce. He felt then that lie was among those books to which Lovell referred when he said that it would be a good thing in all public collections of books to have a wing set apart for works marked ”15 erature suited to desolate islands.” But it took all sorts to make a world, and even of fiction sometimes the spirit wearied. “For us who love libraries,” he said, “and arc debarred from them in the years of maturity and who have to serve in dusty walks of life, whose time is but slight to taste of our own pasturage, may perhaps there not be waiting some day a reunion with those friends we love ? We remember that Brer Rabbit, when thrown into a briar patch by Brer Fox, shouted: ‘Born and bred, in a briar patch.’ So we, born and bred in libraries, hope that we may be thrown back into them. I think that, to one in mature life coming back into the library which has been the spiritual home of his development, such a homecoming would present to him a mirror of his whole life.”