HE WHO RUNS MUST READ

The Fiushing magistrate who recently sentenced a boy in the juvenile court to "three months reading in the Public Library" has established an exceedingly valuable precedent. The praise of books has been sung in every age, and today, when even the smallest hamlet nearly always possesses some sort of public reading-room, it is easy to believe that this institution is becoming the corner-stone of American progress. Yet the association of the library with the despised text-book still discourages the schoolboy from spending an hour with a favorite volume. And it is here that the power of the court may be used to advantage to compel an acquaintance with standard literature.

The choice of the opening wedge should, however, be made with the greatest care. "You can drive a horse to water, but you can't make him drink". Forcefully to implant the recalcitrant lad in the midst of a pile of "classics" is likely to be fatal. He must be nursed along from old tastes to new. There are, fortunately, plenty of books possessing the intensity of action of the "dime novel" together with that cleverness of style which somehow creates an atmosphere of reality lacking in the latter. Men like Kipling, Mark Twain, and, above all, Stevenson will almost infallibly gain the attention of the most rebellious youth and give him a degree of pleasure which henceforth makes him vaguely dissatisfied with anything less. After all, the possession of a fund of associations does a great deal to make life pleasant; it is for their wealth of associations that good books are valuable. In the plastic days of youth, a three months sentence to reading has a good chance of becoming a "lifer".