A Reading Guild

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXIII, Issue 31, 3 August 1905, Page 2

A Reading Guild

Gilbert White is a writer whose charm is evergreen. He found the study of bird-ways and insect-life in the fields and groves and hedge-rows of Selborne a romance of surpassing interest. It was, said he, 'an innocent and healthful employment of the mind, distracting one from too continual study of himself, sm.4 leading him to dwell rather upon the indigestions of the elements than his own.' But White's enjoyment of his robin redbreasts and his moths and stag-beetles was not a selfish one. He shared his treasures of observation with the world at large, and his ' Natural History of Selborne ' —though written as far back as the fateful year 1789— is still a thing of beauty and a joy for ever to multitudes of eager readers. The gentle curate of Selborne wrought and wrote from the fulness of a heart that overflowed with intelligent delight at God's wonderful ways with the lesseir forms of His creation. His life and work are reminders, to those that taste the benefits of life, of the joy of sharing them unselfishly with others. ' There is still,' says Knowlson, ' room in that choir invisible *' whose music is the gladness of the \voil<l " ' One of the thousand easy and obvious uays in which many of our co-religionists can share their blessings with others is by forwarding their used Catholic newspapers and Catholic magazines to hospitals, homes for the agevl, and other public institutions For ,se\eral years past' the Catholic Reading Guild has been doing excellent work along these lines in Great Britain Iks object is ' the general dissemination of Catholic literature, especially by distributing our newspapers or maga'/ines, when read for the benefit of others.' We learn from a circular sent to us by his Lordship the Bishop of Christchurch that ' at present 350 Catholic periodicals are being sent ■regularly, each week or month, to 190 Public Libraries in Great Britain and 60 Military Stations throughout the Empire.' The International Catholic Truth Society (Brooklyn, U.S.A.) is carrying on a good work on similar lines, and catering, in addition, for the neglected poor in various remote parts of the Union. There is a wide scope for such a Guild in New Zealand. And we have every hope that it will materialise in the early future and enter upon what, we trust, will be a long career of usefulness and sweet charity.