lus to
excellence in future production. Artists in all fields are popularly
stigmatized as a testy lot--_irritabile genus_--but their techiness does
not necessarily mean opposition to criticism, but only to uninformed and
unappreciative criticism, especially if it be cocksure and blatant.
There is nothing that the true artist craves so much--not even
praise--as understanding of his work and the welcome that awaits his
work in hand from the lips of "those who know." Thus those who
appreciate and welcome the book beautiful, by their encouragement help
to make it more beautiful, and so by head and heart, if not by hand,
they share in the artist's creative effort. Also, by thus promoting
beauty in books, they discourage ugliness in books, narrowing the public
that will accept ugly books and lessening the degree of ugliness that
even this public will endure. Finally, it seems no mere fancy to hold
that by creating the book beautiful as the setting of the noblest
literature, we are rendering that literature itself a service in the
eyes of others through the costly tribute that we pay to the worth of
the jewel itself.

THE READER'S HIGH PRIVILEGE

In De Morgan's winsome story, "Alice for Short," the heroine of the
earlier portion, Miss Peggy Heath, is made to feel what it would mean to
her to be deprived of a certain companion, and thus realizes his
importance to her life.

It is this test of elimination that I shall ask you to apply to reading.
Imagine yourselves deprived of the privilege, as many another has been
by loss of sight or illness or poverty or removal from book centers. I
have in mind such an instance. The late Professor William Mathews was
injured by a fall when he was ninety years old, and until the end of his
life, about a year later, was confined to his bed. You may know him as
the author of various books of essays: "Getting on in the World," "Great
Conversers," "Hours with Men and Books," "Words, their Use and Abuse,"
and other volumes that testify a marvelous range of acquaintance with
literature. He wrote to a friend that he was brightening his hours of
loneliness by repeating to himself passages of poetry and prose that he
had learned by heart in his earlier days. Few of us can ever have such
stores of memory to draw upon as his, but how happy we should be if
under such circumstances we might be able to turn to a like source of
consolation. Yet we have a much more famous instance of a great scho