"A PROFESSOR OF BOOKS"

In his thoroughly delightful essay on "Books" Emerson makes the very pointed comment that "Meanwhile the colleges, whilst they provide us with libraries, furnish no professor of books; and, I think, no chair is so much wanted." Anyone who has penetrated the barriers and has seen the stacks upon stacks of volumes in Widener, and has, like Emerson, computed the hours it would take him to read the books in even one corner of that mammoth collection will recognize the present truth of this half-century old observation. In other matters Emerson often had a prophetic insight. So far the remedy he suggested for an overdose of libraries has not been used, but there is no reason why in this case, too, he cannot he heralded a prophet.

To find a friendly confident guide through the mazes of Widener would be a splendid boon to the incoming Freshman, and no less to busy upper classmen who have so little time to experiment on strange volumes. In his special field of study the student soon becomes competent to select authors for himself. In the departments of his "distribution" he is also possessed of some kind of compass. But unless his education has gone far beyond that of the average undergraduate all else is an uncharted sea. To have friendly access to a humanist who would pilot him past the shoals of literary rubbish and trash to the great books that are beacons of knowledge would be an opportunity of a lifetime.

The Widener of today is cold, formal, business-like, if not super-efficient. It is a ponderous mechanism which only the skilled graduate student can rightly use. It should be the heart and soul of the University. It should be a treasure troves of knowledge, but not one that is locked to all but the initiated.

Appoint Emerson's "professor of books"; lot him be one of those scholars for whose inspiring leadership men have crossed the seas; let him lecture, talk, and guide the aspiring--and much of the problem that perplexes educators will solve itself pleasantly.