Drawer 1336

Time was, when you could pull out drawer 1336 in the Widener Library public catalogue and count on getting the librarian's tranche de vie between EBNETH and ECHAVELAR. No more. So rapid has the growth of knowledge been, that now an even larger scoop of learning is within that slender tray betrayed:

EBNET--ECHAVELAR.

Yet scholars may take comfort in one constancy of things. One subject card, "Eccentric Literature," remains unmoved, a bastion of the past amid a holey flurry of punched cards and unpunchd candidates for clubs.

What delight it is to linger over William Sheldon's treatise on aerial navigation (Eng 5508.50.3) written in the middle of the 19th century, or John Ranking's "Historical researches on the conquest of Peru, Mexico, Bogota, Natchez, and Talomeco, in the thirteenth century, by the Mongols, accompanied with elephants" (London, 1827).

What wonders of geological science are open to him who will behold "The Symmes theory of concentric spheres, demonstrating that the earth is hollow, habit-able within, and widely open about the poles" (Louisville, 1878) and C. Reed Teed's "The cellular cosmogony, or, The earth a concave sphere" (Chicago, 1901).

When scholars dare extend their scope as did James Ralston Skinner in "The ancient of days; the measure of the heavens and the earth by means of the only unit of measure the British inch" (Cincinnati, 1873), one can only gasp at the audacity with which the cataloguer writes on the card of "The book of God; the Apocalypse of Adams-Cannes," that "The writer appears to be insane."

Who is to say? The vision of apocalypse comes often in that inch of cards beheaded "Eccentric literature," and who is the more sane, the compiler of L'Histoire litteraire des fous or the author of "The basic outline of universology"?