When I consider what some books have done for the world, and what they are doing, how they keep up our hope, awaken new courage and faith, soothe pain, give an ideal life to those whose hours are cold and hard, bind together distant ages and foreign lands, create new worlds of beauty, bring down Truth from heaven; I give eternal blessings for this gift and thank God for books.

Mr. Dooley says “Books is f’r thim that can’t inj’ye thimsilves in anny other way.  If ye’re in good health, an ar-re atin’ three squares a day, an’ not ayether sad or very much in love with ye’er lot, but just lookin’ on an’ not carin’ a rush, ye don’t need books,” he says.

“But if ye’re a down-spirited thing an’ want to get away an’ can’t, ye need books.”

1921—­“Did you see that movie called ’Oliver Twist’?” FROSH—­“Yes, and say, wouldn’t that make a peach of a book?”

Young Isaac stood in line at the library to draw out a book.  When his turn came he asked, respectfully, “Please give me Miss Alcott’s Jew book.”

The young lady looked puzzled.  “A book by Miss Louisa M. Alcott?” she queried.

“Yes,” reiterated Isaac, “her Jew book.”

“Can you remember the title?”

“No; but it’s her Jew book,” he insisted.

“Well, I’ll read over some of the titles of her books to you, and perhaps you can tell me the one you want when you hear it read.”  Patiently she began, “Little Women, Little Men, Under the Lilacs, Rose in Bloom—­”

“That’s it, that’s it!” cried Isaac—­“Rosenbloom.”

A MAID (handing up two books to a library assistant)—­“Will you change these two books, please, for Mrs. Crawley-Smith?”

ASSISTANT—­“Are there any others you wish for?”

MAID—­“No.  Mrs. Crawley-Smith doesn’t mind what they are so long as they have big print and a happy ending.”

Hard to Find

LIBRARIAN—­“What kind of book do you want—­fictional, historical, philosophical—?”

PATRON—­“Oh, any kind that H.G.  Wells hasn’t written.”

LIBRARIAN—­“We have none!”

BOOKSELLERS AND BOOKSELLING

William Dean Howells, at a dinner in Boston, said of modern American letters: 

“The average popular novel shows on the novelist’s part an ignorance of his trade which reminds me of a New England clerk.

“In a New England village I entered the main street department-store one afternoon and said to the clerk at the book-counter: 

“‘Let me have, please, the letters of Charles Lamb.’

“‘Post-office right across the street, Mr. Lamb,’ said the clerk, with a naive, brisk smile.”

“You never can tell,” said a traveling salesman.  “Now you’d think that a little New England village, chock full of church influence and higher education, would be just the place to sell a book like ’David Harum,’ wouldn’t you?  Well, I know a man who took a stock up there and couldn’t unload one of ’em.  He’d have been stuck for fair if he hadn’t had a brilliant idea and got the town printer to doctor up the title for him.  As it was, he managed to unload the whole lot and get out of town before the first purchaser discovered that ‘David’s Harum’ wasn’t quite what he had led himself to suppose.”