THE PRESIDENT: Our good old friend, Dr. Canfield, once told a story about a critic who after a life devoted to the gentle art of making enemies was gathered to his fathers. Those who had known him, and who had for the most part been recipients of his buffetings gathered about his bier, and compared notes and estimates of the special qualities which the late departed had possessed. Yes, said one, "he loved us so well that he chastised us frequently." True, said another, "he could never catch sight of one of us without administering a vigorous kick." At this the eyelids of the deceased were seen to flutter a bit, and he sat bolt upright and his sepulchral voice made this response: "Yes, but I always kicked towards the goal."
Now perhaps this introduction may not seem to be a very happy preliminary to the paper about to be announced, and in some respects its application may not be evident, for certainly the speaker who is about to talk to us, on "How to discourage reading" is by no means a dead one. He has, however, been somewhat active in the kicking process—though always towards the goal. I present to you Mr. EDMUND L. PEARSON, of the Boston Transcript.
Mr. PEARSON: The president has very kindly referred to the fact that while I do not practice the profession of librarian, I tell other people how they ought to do it. He might have made use of a quotation or a sentence or two at the beginning of Mark Twain's "Puddin'head Wilson," only I fear that Mr. Legler was too courteous to use it. I have no hesitation in speaking of it myself. Mark Twain says of the Puddin'head Wilson maxims: "These maxims are for the instruction and moral elevation of youth. To be good is noble, but to tell others how to be good is nobler and much less trouble."
Mr. Pearson read the following paper:
HOW TO DISCOURAGE READING
When the "Five Foot Shelf" of books were published, three of my friends bought the set. One of them did so without any pretence that he was going to read them. He is a somewhat naïve young man, able to indulge his whims, and he said he thought that buying the books "would help out President Eliot." That is a very meritorious sentiment to hold toward the compilers or authors of books—I wish that there were more persons who felt that way. I have no fault to find with him, at all.
Nor have I any complaint to make against the other two men. Blame is not what they deserve, but commiseration. Like the girl in the song, they are "more to be pitied than censured." The price was a consideration with them, and they gave up their money for the sake of being forever cut off from all those tremendous "classics." For that is what it amounted to. One of these men has a very pretty office, with some nice bookshelves, painted white. He added to the books of his profession and some other works of general literature, this "Five Foot Shelf"—which occupies, I believe, about eighteen feet of shelf room. He tried to read one of the books—I know he did that, because he admitted it—and he confided to me that he thought it was silly.
The third man bought the "Five Foot Shelf," and announced his determination "to read the whole thing right through." He did this with set teeth, as if he might have said: "I'll read 'em if they kill me!" Well, he started one of them. He read a little in Franklin's "Autobiography." I know he did, because he told me about it. He and I belong to that irritating class of persons who get up early and take long walks before breakfast, and then take care to mention it later in the day, as if to cast discredit on other people. We have to go early, too, because we intersperse the walks with runs, and he has dignity to maintain, and it wouldn't do for him to dash about the streets after other people are up. While we walked, or dog-trotted, about the country roads he told me about the "Autobiography." But I have noticed that he has left the "Five Foot Shelf." I doubt if he even finished that first one of its volumes which he attempted. When he talks about books now, it is about the "History of the American people." He is a Democrat, and like many Democrats he has discovered that our history has been truly written only according to Mr. Woodrow Wilson.
Will any one of those three men ever read two whole volumes from that set? It is doubtful—very doubtful. And their cases are, I believe, typical of thousands of others. And what is true of the "Five Foot Shelf" is true of a score of other collections—the Hundred Best Books, the Greatest Books of the Universe, the Most Ponderous Volumes of the Ages, the Selected and Highly Recommended Classics of All Nations. There are dozens of them—you all know them—these "standard" sets and collections, in which learned and well-intentioned men have innocently conspired with publishers to discourage reading.