Books.

White Ribbon, Volume 15, Issue 179, 18 May 1910, Page 6

Books.

Hooks are not made for libraries, hut libraries for hooks. They are not made to ho owned in sets, hut to ho read by sentences. They are not meant to become the mural decoration of a rich man’s home, a luxury of the eternal life; hut they are meuut to ho serviceable to the inner life of rich and poor alike. Many hooks have been destined to pass an idle hour and then die forgotten. Some hooks have been destined to till leisure to the full with beauty, and they live while they are enjoyed; hut a few hooks there are that death cannot kill—they are perennial in their repeated resurrections and everlasting in their influence, for these few express ideals that encourage the germination of the spirit in soil long fallow. •Suppose that a certain great hook is read only by one great man in each century ? Is he alone the gainer by his perusal of it? Will he not, becaue of it, rise to greater achievement and more abundantly benefit his times? Will not the thoughts expressed in it tiller through his mind into the minds of those with whom he has human relations? W ill they not gain dignity by contact with whatever of insight and nobility he has gained from that book ? Wise folk distrust all hooks beneath their own status of nobility, attainment.

and power, and love those with a stern challenge, those that are stimulating and helpful in their several vocations, those that inspire the darkest hours, and those that are not inconsistent with ardour and joy. They do not rejoice in the possession of any goo l hook unless they are willing to share it; or, failing this, they do their best to radiate its light. —Marguerite Ogden liigelon'.

S. A. Knopf, M R, Xew York, Honorary Vice-1 ‘resident of the British Congress on Tuheieulosis, says : “ .alcohol has never cured and never will cure tuberculosis. It will either prevent or retard leeovery. It is like a two-edged weapon; on one side it poisons the system, and on tin* other side it ruins the stem eh and thus prevents this organ from properly digesting the necessary food.”